The Fender Stratocaster, colloquially known as the Strat, is a model of electric guitar designed between 1952 and 1954 by Leo Fender, Bill Carson, George Fullerton, and Freddie Tavares. The Fender Musical Instruments Corporation has continuously manufactured the Stratocaster since 1954. It is a double-cutaway guitar, with an extended top "horn" shape for balance. "Stratocaster" and "Strat" are trademark terms belonging to Fender. Guitars that duplicate the Stratocaster by other manufacturers are sometimes called S-Type or ST-type guitars. Many prominent rock musicians have been associated with the Stratocaster for use in studio recording and live performances, most notably Eric Clapton, Buddy Holly, David Gilmour, Mark Knopfler, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Frusciante, Jeff Beck, George Harrison, and Tom Petty.
The Fender Jazzmaster is an electric guitar designed as a more expensive sibling of the Fender Stratocaster. First introduced at the 1958 NAMM Convention, it was initially marketed to jazz guitarists, but found favor among surf rock guitarists in the early 1960s. Its appearance is similar to the Fender Jaguar, though it is tonally and physically different in many technical ways, including pickup design, scale length and controls.
The Fender Showmaster is a discontinued model of electric guitar made by Fender, and is characteristic of a superstrat.
The Fender Jaguar is an electric guitar by Fender Musical Instruments characterized by an offset-waist body, a relatively unusual switching system with two separate circuits for lead and rhythm, and a short-scale 24" neck. Owing some roots to the Jazzmaster, it was introduced in 1962 as Fender's feature-laden top-of-the-line model, designed to lure players from Gibson. During its initial 13-year production run, the Jaguar did not sell as well as the less expensive Stratocaster and Telecaster, and achieved its most noticeable popularity in the surf music scene. After the Jaguar was taken out of production in 1975, vintage Jaguars became popular first with American punk rock players, and then more so during the alternative rock, shoegazing and indie rock movements of the 1980s and 1990s. Fender began making a version in Japan in the mid-1980s, and then introduced a USA-made reissue in 1999. Since then, Fender has made a variety of Jaguars in America, Mexico, Indonesia and China under both the Fender and Squier labels. Original vintage Jaguars sell for many times their original price.
The Fender Precision Bass is a model of electric bass guitar manufactured by Fender Musical Instruments Corporation. In its standard, post-1957 configuration, the Precision Bass is a solid body, four-stringed instrument usually equipped with a single split-coil humbucking pickup and a one-piece, 20-fret maple neck with rosewood or maple fingerboard.
Superstrat is a name for an electric guitar design that resembles a Fender Stratocaster but with differences that clearly distinguish it from a standard Stratocaster, usually to cater to a different playing style. Differences typically include more pointed, aggressive-looking body and neck shapes with increased cutaways to facilitate access to the higher frets, an increased number of frets on the fingerboard, a contoured heel at the neck joint facilitating easier higher fret access, the usage of humbucking pickups, and locking vibrato systems, most commonly the Floyd Rose.
The Fender Bass VI, originally known as the Fender VI, is a six-string electric bass guitar made by Fender. The instrument is tuned an octave below a standard electric guitar. It is thus similar to the Bajo Sexto, an acoustic guitar from Mexico that is tuned an octave below the standard guitar.
The Fender Mustang is a solid body electric guitar produced by the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation. It was introduced in 1964 as the basis of a major redesign of Fender's student models, the Musicmaster and Duo-Sonic. It was produced until 1982 and reissued in 1990.
The Fender Toronado was an electric guitar made by Fender Musical Instruments Corporation. Introduced at the NAMM Show in 1998, it is a part of the "Deluxe Series" of Fenders produced in Mexico, generally to higher specs than most "Standard" models.
The Fender Duo-Sonic is an electric guitar launched by Fender Musical Instruments Corporation as a student model guitar, an inexpensive model aimed at amateur musicians. It was referred to as a "3/4 size" Fender guitar.
The Squier '51 is an electric guitar made by Squier, a brand of Fender. The '51 is notable for being one of the few original designs made by Squier, which normally sells budget versions of Fender's popular guitars and bass guitars.
The Fender Telecaster Bass is an electric bass introduced in 1968 by Fender Musical Instruments Corporation. With few physical changes through the 1970s, it was discontinued in 1979 and reissued in 2007 by Fender's subsidiary Squier as the Squier Vintage Modified Precision Bass TB, which was discontinued in 2014. In 2023, the instrument was reintroduced as part of Fender's Vintera II lineup.
Fender Contemporary Stratocaster electric guitars were produced by Fender Japan in the 1980s.
The Fender HM Strat was an electric guitar produced by Fender Musical Instruments from 1988 until 1992. A relatively radical departure from Leo Fender's classic Stratocaster design, it was Fender's answer to Superstrats produced by manufacturers such as Jackson Guitars and Ibanez. The HM in the guitars name stands for heavy metal.
The Fender Bullet was an electric guitar originally designed by John Page and manufactured and marketed by the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation. It was first introduced as a line of "student" guitars to replace the outgoing Mustang and Musicmaster models.
Fender California Series electric guitars included both a Stratocaster and Telecaster models produced by Fender in 1997 and 1998. In 1997 Fender described the California Series guitars as "a combined effort by our guitar makers in Corona, California, and Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico. All California series are produced along the Pacific Coast Highway. First the bodies and necks are cut and shaped in Corona. Then, they're sent to Ensenada where they're sanded, painted and buffed. Final assembly is then performed in Corona using genuine Fender hardware and electronics."
The Fender Noiseless series is a line of electric guitar pickups made by the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation designed to cancel 60 cycle (Hz) hum noise while retaining the characteristic sound of single coil pickups. Introduced in 1998, these pickups consist of a pair of single coils stacked one on top of the other, compacted so as to match the shape and width space as a traditional Fender single coil guitar pickup, while being only slightly taller. The upper coil is actually the sound source, while the lower coil is responsible for the mains hum attenuation. Alnico 5 magnetic bars span from one coil to the other, crossing a soft ferrous steel spacer plate that isolates them, without touching it. The spacer plate has mainly two functions: to isolate the lower coil from the vibrations of the string, making sure that the sound is picked up only from the upper one, and to increase the magnetic flux that passed through both coils, increasing the output of the pickup. This is to be contrasted with the original noise canceling pickup, the humbucker, which is a double-wide, horizontally adjacent pair of single coil pickups with opposing phase.
The Fender Elite Stratocaster is an electric solid body guitar that was manufactured by Fender in 1983 and 1984. The name was revived from 2016 to 2019 with the Fender American Elite Stratocaster Series.
The Fender Telecaster, colloquially known as the tele, is an electric guitar produced by Fender. Together with its sister model the Esquire, it was the world's first mass-produced, commercially successful solid-body electric guitar. Its simple yet effective design and revolutionary sound broke ground and set trends in electric guitar manufacturing and popular music. Many prominent rock musicians have been associated with the Telecaster for use in studio recording and live performances, most notably Bruce Springsteen, Luis Alberto Spinetta, Keith Richards and George Harrison.
The Fender Cabronita Telecaster is a class of guitars built by Fender Musical Instruments Corporation based on their Telecaster body shape. The name Cabronita is Spanish slang and roughly translates as little bastard or little devil. While retaining the shape and general feel of a Telecaster, they are a radical departure from the traditional electronics and sounds associated with the instrument. Like virtually all Telecaster submodels, they are labeled simply as a Fender Telecaster on the headstock logo, identifiable only by their features.
