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. Along with the Gibson Les Paul, Gibson SG, and Fender Telecaster, it is one of the most-often emulated electric guitar shapes. "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.
The Fender Starcaster is a series of semi-hollowbody electric guitars made by the Fender company. The Starcaster was part of Fender's attempt to enter the semi-hollowbody market, which was dominated by Gibson's ES-335 and similar designs.
The Fender Jazzmaster is an electric guitar designed as a more expensive sibling of the Fender Stratocaster. First introduced at the 1958 NAMM Show, it was initially marketed to jazz guitarists, but found favor among surf rock guitarists in the early 1960s. Its appearance is similar to the 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. Also see the badge change of Stagemaster due to legal reasons.
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.
Paul Reed Smith Guitars, also known as PRS Guitars or simply PRS, is an American guitar and amplifier manufacturer located in Stevensville, Maryland. The company was founded in 1985 in Annapolis, Maryland by Paul Reed Smith. Products manufactured by PRS include electric and acoustic guitars, basses, and amplifiers.
Charvel is a brand of electric guitars founded in the 1970s by Wayne Charvel in Azusa, California and originally headquartered in Glendora, California. Since 2002, Charvel has been under the ownership of Fender Musical Instruments Corporation.
The Fender Lead Series was produced by the Fender/Rogers/Rhodes Division of CBS Musical Instruments. The series comprised Lead I, Lead II, Lead III and Lead Bass models.
DiMarzio, Inc. is an American manufacturer best known for its direct-replacement guitar pickups. The company also produces other guitar accessories, such as hardware, guitar straps, and instrument cables.
Schecter Guitar Research, commonly known simply as Schecter, is an American manufacturing company founded in 1976 by David Schecter, which originally produced only replacement parts for existing guitars from manufacturers such as Fender and Gibson.
The Lace Sensor is a guitar pickup designed by Don Lace and manufactured by AGI since 1985. Lace Sensors are true single coil pickups; however, internally they are different from classic single coils. The chief difference is that, like the pickups used on the Fender Jaguar, the coil is surrounded by metal barriers which are designed to reduce electromagnetic interference such as power line hum. According to the manufacturer, these barriers also help concentrate the magnetic field, allowing weaker magnets to be used, which results in less string pull. This line of electric guitar pickups was used exclusively by Fender from 1985 to 1996.
Yamaha Pacifica is the name of a series of electric guitars manufactured by Yamaha. The line was originally designed in Yamaha's California custom-shop by Rich Lasner, working with guitar builder Leo Knapp. Initially intended by Lasner and Knapp as a test project, Yamaha Japan chose to produce the instruments.
The Yamaha RGX and RGZ electric guitars Series are manufactured by the Yamaha Corporation and bear a close resemblance to the Ibanez RG series, the Jackson Soloist and other "superstrat" enhanced copies of the Fender Stratocaster. These Taiwan-made instruments were introduced in 1987.
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 60-cycle hum attenuation. Alnico V 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.
Starcaster by Fender is a range of instruments and accessories aimed at students and beginners, marketed by the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation from the early 2000s until at least 2011. As of April 2018, no products were being marketed under this brand.
Suhr Guitars is an American company that manufactures electric guitars and basses, guitar amplifiers, and effect units. The company is based in Lake Elsinore, California and was founded in 1997 by John Suhr, who "has a reputation for building exquisitely crafted guitars" and Steve Smith.
The Yamaha Corporation is a multinational corporation and conglomerate based in Japan with a wide range of products and services, predominantly musical instruments, motorcycles, power sports equipment and electronics.
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.
David Michael Murray is an English guitarist, best known as a member of the heavy metal band Iron Maiden. He joined Iron Maiden early in its history, and is the second-longest serving member of the band after founder Steve Harris. He and Harris are the only members of Iron Maiden to have appeared on every album.
