History
The popularity of heavy rock in the late 1960s led Fender to re-think its strategy of exclusively using single-coil pickups, as they were not perceived as being suitable for the thick sound and extended sustain favoured by heavy rock guitarists using double-coil humbucking pickups. Consequently, Fender hired former Gibson employee Seth Lover, the inventor of the humbucker himself, to design a humbucking pickup for use in a number of Fender guitars. The result was a pickup known as the Wide Range humbucker, and it was used in a variety of different Fender models including the Deluxe, Custom, and Thinline Telecasters as well as a semi-hollowbody design called the Starcaster. The Deluxe, originally conceived as the top-of-the-line model in the Telecaster series, was the last of these to be released, in late 1972.
The "humbucker" Telecasters failed to draw potential customers away from competition like Gibson's Les Paul model, and the Telecaster Deluxe was discontinued in 1981. However, in 2004 Fender decided to re-issue the Deluxe, probably in response to the belated popularity of the original 1970s version.
Read more about this topic: Fender Telecaster Deluxe
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