The Stratocaster's curves were designed for comfort, and they became the industry standard
In 1954 most solid-body electric guitars were flat slabs with squared edges. Fender's new Stratocaster had a sculpted back that hugged the player's ribs, a stretched upper horn for balance, three pickups and a spring-loaded vibrato. Seven decades on it has never gone out of production, and rivals still copy its outline.
The guitar was designed between 1952 and 1954 by Leo Fender with Bill Carson, Rex Gallion, George Fullerton and Freddie Tavares. Don Randall named it, drawing on the stratosphere. It was the first Fender with a contoured body, three pickups and a spring-tension vibrato, a sharp contrast with the flat-edged Telecaster that preceded it. Its bolt-on neck and removable parts also made it easy for owners to swap pickups or necks, a modular approach that spread across the industry.
A classic Strat has an alder or ash body, a maple neck fixed with screws, six tuners in a line along one side of the headstock and a scale length of 25.5 inches. The electronics sit in a plastic pickguard: usually three single-coil pickups, a selector switch, a volume knob and two tone knobs. Most have a pivoting tremolo bridge balanced by springs in a rear cavity, though fixed hardtail versions were added in March 1955. Early guitars shipped with a metal cover over the bridge, but it got in the way of palm muting and many players threw it away; Fender dropped it by the late 1970s.
The details kept evolving. The first 1954 models had deeply contoured ash bodies, one-piece maple necks and a two-tone sunburst. From 1956 Fender switched most bodies to alder, which needed less filling and sanding. In 1959 came a thick Brazilian rosewood fingerboard, thinned to a veneer in 1962, and in 1960 custom colours were standardised, many borrowed from DuPont car lacquers for a 5 percent surcharge.
Players from Buddy Holly to Jimi Hendrix made it iconic. Because the shape and name are Fender trademarks, other makers' copies must differ slightly and are known as S-type guitars. Heavily modified 1980s look-alikes with new bridges and pickup layouts earned the label Superstrat.
Source: Fender Stratocaster
