Bonnie Raitt got her first one in 1969, buying it on the street at 3am after a gig. She has played it at every one of her shows since, and it was pivotal to her 13 Grammy wins. “There’s just a tone that doesn’t happen with other guitars,” she says. “It’s all about that middle pickup – you just can’t beat it.”
The Strat, with its neatly nipped navel and two-horned cutaways, is probably what first comes to mind when anyone hears the words “electric guitar”. Millions of players have learned on a Strat – whether made by Fender, its budget Squier imprint, or one of the numerous companies producing copies. Many others dream of owning a top-of-the-range model from the Fender custom shop, costing a five-figure sum. Then there are the secondhand Strats with one previous famous owner. The black 1969 model that Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour played on The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall went under the hammer for almost $4m, in aid of a climate change charity.
So what does a Strat sound like? Anything you want. You can get a taste of its range on all these tracks: Misirlou, Apache, Nowhere Man, Little Wing, Smoke on the Water, Comfortably Numb, There Is a Light That Never Goes Out, Smells Like Teen Spirit, Last Nite, and I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor.
Blues maestro Joe Bonamassa has one of the world’s largest guitar collections, including many museum-grade vintage Strats as well as the Howard Reed, the first black Strat. “Talk about Leo Fender getting it right the first time!” he says of the man whose small California company changed the world. “Very little has changed between 1954 and now,” he adds. “It’s essentially been the same guitar for 70 years.”
Indeed, there have been only a handful of alterations. In 1956, alder replaced ash for the body, while rosewood fretboards arrived in 1959. Tone knobs have changed shape, lacquer has been improved, wiring has been tinkered with and necks have morphed. But a Strat has always been a Strat.
“Fender are in a weird business,” says Bonamassa, whose favourite is his 1955 “Sunburst” Strat, nicknamed Bonnie. “Imagine being the CEO of Ford and your core business is making a car that looks the same as the one you made in the 1950s. And your customers don’t want improvements like satnav or electric engines. Guitar companies are selling nostalgia – but also something that’s timeless so it stays relevant. If you have some creativity, ingenuity and a little chutzpah, you can rule the world with a Strat.”
“My favourite term for this is ‘colouring inside the lines’. The Strat exists – and there are things you can tinker with inside that. It’s what Leo Fender did and it’s what we continue to do. What’s fascinating is that it has never become a relic. That’s down to new bands coming along and blowing up the music scene with a 70-year-old design. The Strat is reinvented with each generation.”
For all its instant recognisability today, the Strat that Fender first designed was basically a glorified Telecaster. But the arrival of designer and engineer Freddie Tavares changed that. He took inspiration from the two-horned Precision bass while adding innovative touches including the gamechanging tremolo bridge – incorrectly named since the pitch-shifting effect the short metal arm creates is actually vibrato. Three pickups and advanced switching offered greater tonal variation than almost any other guitar on the market, while curves, contours and chamfers were added in all the right places, meaning the Strat sits on the hip and clings to the body more like an item of clothing than a musical instrument. (...)
When the Stone Roses were recording their eponymous debut album in 1988, the producer John Leckie was unimpressed with the thin sound coming from John Squire’s Gretsch Country Gentleman, so rented him a Strat. “I ended up buying it,” says Squire. “It was a battered pink one – and it was a great guitar.”
Squire says he’s not a collector, although, while he’ss speaking to me by phone from his home, there are four Strats around him. His favourite is a candy apple red that can be seen in the video for Just Another Rainbow, the recent single from his collaboration with Liam Gallagher. This 2012 masterbuilt 57 reissue is “all over” their new album: Squire says if could get away with it, it would be the only guitar he’d play. “They’re like a Swiss Army Knife,” he says. “They can do everything. There’s a sound in there that reminds me of Hendrix’s less ferocious moments. I think of them like a pair of brogues – something that just doesn’t need any more refinement.” (...)
Leo Fender sold his company to media giant CBS in 1965. While collectors covet pre-takeover instruments, citing a drop in quality under CBS, the company increased sales by 30% in its first year, and 45% the year after, taking the electric guitar to dizzying new heights. After a steady decline in sales in the 1970s and 80s, though, CBS sold the firm to a group of investors, including employees in 1985. These days, Fender is largely owned by Servco Pacific. As a private company, it doesn’t release sales figures, but Norvell nods when I suggest there could be millions, possibly tens of millions, of Strats in existence. It was also reported that the pandemic years saw Fender’s best ever sales, suggesting there is still plenty of appetite for this 70-year-old classic.
by Andy Welch, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Bonnie Raitt; Robert Knight Archive/Redferns[ed. Eh, not really a fan. Great guitars, just kind of generic. Glad the article mentions Freddie Tavares, the unsung Hawaiian hero responsible for many important contributions.]
