This April, PAL will be having a drawing for a BRAND NEW FENDER BLACKTOP HSH STRATOCASTER, and although we know all of you love guitars, some of you might be surprised with the rich history of not only the Fender brand, but the Stratocaster model as well. Those of you looking to enter can do so right here! Read on as we give you a brief history of what would become one of the most popular electric guitars in the history of music.

The Birth of Fender

We all know the name, but do you know exactly how the Fender Musical Instrument Corporation came to be? Let’s go back to Fullerton, California in 1938 where Clarence Leonidas “Leo” Fender first began repairing radios, phonographs and amplifiers through Fender’s Radio Service. Soon after, Fender began seeing flaws in the design of musical instrument amplifiers and by 1940 he began creating custom built amps using his own techniques. Soon after he partnered with Clayton Kauffman and created the K & F Manufacturing Corporation to design, create, produce and repair musical instruments and amplifiers. Later that year, Kauffman and Fender parted ways after Fender wanted to focus more on manufacturing than repair, convinced that it was more profitable in the long run, and thus, the Fender Electric Instrument Company was born.

 

The CBS Era (1965-1985)

In early 1965, Leo Fender sold his company to CBS for 13 million and soon after, the dreaded but expected transition to “cost effectiveness” reared its ugly head. CBS began altering the designs of several of Fender’s key products that not only affected the aesthetics of the amps and instruments, but the electronics as well. CBS lauded the changes as improvements such as making a five-way pickup selector standard on most models, although no tangible upgrade in tone quality was achieved by this and in fact led to more frequent mechanical failure.

The peak of the cost-cutting era is marked by most as the introduction of the ’83 Stratocaster redesign. The guitar is infamous for its negative implementation of the barebones mentality. CBS removed the second tone knob, fitted the guitar with less expensive single-coil pickups, and included a lackluster input jack as well as active electronics (required a 9 volt battery to work). Many saw the move as CBS simply trying to sell overstock by implementing changes to their most popular model. Finally, in 1985, employees of the Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company bought the company from CBS and began to reinstate the unmatched quality that Fender was and is now again known for.

Just a side note, but don’t worry about vintage Fender reissues from the ‘60s through ‘80s just because CBS owned Fender at the time. All vintage models have been “fixed” by the current company, although even the CBS variations were by no means low in quality and still regarded in their time as top-notch guitars, not to mention a great collectible.

 

The Stratocaster

Along with the Gibson Les Paul, the Fender Stratocaster is the most popular guitar today in terms of sales and design, with multiple upon multiple copies produced by companies around the world (some authorized, most not). The body design alone is regarded by many as synonymous with the electric guitar. Think for a moment about any cartoon you’ve seen with someone using an electric guitar and chances are they’re replicating the look of the Stratocaster.

The original Stratocaster was designed by Leo Fender, George Fullerton, and Freddie Tavares in 1954 and has remained in constant production since then. The design featured several improvements over most guitars at the time, including Fender’s own Telecaster. The body itself was contoured and more ergonomic (known as the Comfort Contour Body by Fender) in contrast to the Telecasters flat slab design, the cutaways on both sides of the guitar enabled players to reach the highest frets on the neck which was also thinner than the Telecaster’s, and that’s just a few of the marked improvements. All in all, it was a breakthrough for its time, much of which is copied to this day.

 

The Stratocaster Today

The Fender Stratocaster remains one of the most enduring and popular electric guitars ever made with a professional player list that resembles a who’s who in rock, blues, country as well as several other genres. Although there have been minor tweaks, additions (subtractions even) and plenty of clones along its history, it remains the go-to-guitar for anyone looking to not only to experience a piece of music history, but create some as well.

 

 

New models honor pop-rock star Avril Lavigne, metal stalwart Jim Root, alt-rock bassist Mikey Way

Squier has added three new artist signature models, the Avril Lavigne Telecaster®, the Jim Root Telecaster®, and the Mikey Way Mustang® Bass, promising star-like vibe and tone at incredible Squier value.

The new lavish, black-on-black Avril Lavigne Telecaster joins Lavigne’s chart-topping signature Tele, and features several striking touches, including a three-ply pickguard, knurled black flat-top volume control knob, a black headstock with die-cast turners, and a distinctive 12th-fret skull and crossbones logo.

Designed in cooperation with Slipknot/Stone Sour guitar speed demon Jim Root, the Jim Root Telecaster boasts several foreboding features, most notably an elegant satin-matte finish in black or white, starkly simple single-knob/single switch control layout, black die-cast tuners and other black hardware, and two pulverizing passive humbucking pickups with black covers.

The Mikey Way Mustang Bass, designed with the input of My Chemical Romance bassist Mikey Way, takes the classic Mustang Bass and amps it through the roof with a dazzling large-flake Silver Sparkle finish with black racing stripes, a single seismic humbucking pickup with a black cover, and a black headstock with Way’s signature on the back.

Also in the signature series are the Simon Neil Signature Stratocaster and the James Johnston Jazz Bass guitars. Released in Europe in 2009, these popular signature models designed in collaboration with the Scottish rockers are now available worldwide.

Two years ago, TC introduced polyphonic tuning to the world and since then guitarists everywhere have welcomed this next-generation way of tuning with open arms. Now TC reveals the world's smallest polyphonic tuner: PolyTune Mini that will fit on any pedal board.

Sometimes size actually does matter and in such cases, PolyTune Mini is the perfect solution as no other pedal tuner in the world will take up so little space - which means more room for other pedals.

"When designing PolyTune Mini we set a goal right from the start: we didn't want to compromise on features in any way," says TC's guitar product manager Tore Lynggaard Mogensen. "Despite shrinking it down to a third of the size of the original PolyTune, our engineers did an absolutely incredible job taking all the cool stuff from PolyTune and shrinking it down to a tiny package. It really is the kind of product you have to hold in your hand to truly appreciate the size, build quality and attention to detail."

PolyTune Mini is based on the exact same technology as the original PolyTune, so like its bigger brother it shows the tuning state of all strings simultaneously by simply strumming the guitar, enabling guitarists to get back to playing in a matter of seconds.

Just like the original PolyTune, PolyTune Mini is among the most precise tuners in the world, tuning with +/- 0.5 per cent precision in chromatic mode and +/- 1 per cent accuracy in polyphonic mode. Also, it automatically switches between chromatic and polyphonic modes depending on whether all strings are strummed at once or each string is picked individually.

Finally, PolyTune Mini features Drop-D and Capo modes as well as True Bypass for zero tone coloration and a super-bright LED display with the same amount of LEDs as the original PolyTune.

PolyTune Mini Main Features

• Ultra-small Footprint – Will Fit on Any Pedal Board
• PolyTune – Tune All Strings Simultaneously
• +/- 0.5 Cent Tuning Accuracy
• True Bypass w/ Silent Tuning
• Super-bright LED Display
• Up to 5 Semitones Flat Tunings
• Drop-D and Capo Tuning

High resolution audio interface with classic analog sound!

Apollo is the first professional, high-resolution computer audio interface that delivers the sound, feel, and flow of analog recording. This 18 x 24 FireWire/Thunderbolt - ready interface combines genuine UA analog design with class-leading 24-bit/192 kHz sound quality and onboard Realtime UAD Processing. Using Apollo, music producers and performers can finally track audio through a range of classic UAD analog emulation plug-ins — from Neve, Studer, Manley, Lexicon and more — in real time, and with a sleek, elegant workflow on both Mac and PC.

StageScape™ M20 is the world’s first smart mixing system — an integrated live sound solution that uses touchscreen-based visual mixing to explode the traditional mixer/outboard gear paradigm. StageScape M20d uses a combination of input jack sensing, a visual mixing environment and professionally crafted sound tools to prepare, process and route signals automatically. The StageScape M20d can guide you through optimally setting signal levels, EQ, dynamics, effects, monitor routing and more, to get your mix quickly sounding great. Instead of a complex surface of knobs and faders, StageScape M20d uses a touchscreen with a graphic representation of your stage — just touch an image to access total control of the channel. Dialing in a sound is as simple as moving your finger around the touch screen. If you’re a professional or A/V installer, the advanced tweak mode allows you to go right in and add 5kHz or change compression ratios. With premium mic pres, world-class DSP and premium sound quality, StageScape M20d will satisfy even the most experienced ears. It’s the only smart mixing system designed to keep you in the creative zone.

Mixing Sound and the Left-Brain/Right-Brain Conundrum

Mixers have remained essentially the same for decades. What began as a rack-mounted mic pre was eventually oriented vertically into a channel strip and became the basis of every mixer since the '60s. Even in the last decade as mixers went “digital,” the format and approach stayed the same: rows and rows of channel strips often resulting in redundant hardware, and a need for a lot of technical understanding to get a great result.

As musicians, when we mix live sound, we generally do the minimum — meaning we just bring up a level and maybe add some EQ. Some players study engineering, learn the “lingo” and become experts in that skill. For the rest of us, there’s a lot of unknown territory involved in getting a good sound live.

We musicians spend so much time writing and recording, yet sadly leave much to chance during performance. The truth is that it's critical to sound great live if you want to be taken seriously. It's a challenge just to get things to work, not to mention dealing with all of the complexities in getting a good sound. Making music is a right-brain activity, yet we are constantly getting pulled into left-brain tasks like problem solving, analyzing and decoding:

What’s wrong with that sound? Do I boost a frequency to make it right, or cut one? Which frequency? I wish I could get my acoustic guitar to sound better in this room… I wish I could get the vocal to sound more like the recording…

The StageScape M20d mixer and StageSource loudspeakers offer a different approach.

StageScape M20d was designed to bypass the complication of getting good live sound. Instead of keeping track of channel strips, StageScape puts the landscape of the stage in front of you using a graphical representation of, that’s right… a stage. The M20d lets you think in musical terms like “light” and “dark” to dial in sounds. And instead of bringing along racks of outboard gear and making it all work together, everything is integrated within StageScape — even recording to a USB drive or a computer.

The clash between right-brain artistry and left-brain analytics often derails the creative flow. StageScape was designed to avoid the left-brain/right-brain duality by removing layers of non-creative tasks between you and your live mix.

Instead of facing the complexity of multiple knobs and faders, StageScape M20d provides you with a graphic of your stage, complete with all the instruments, monitors and mics for your performance. Connect a mic, and a mic stand appears on the stage. Just touch that image to access channel parameters. Move your finger around the touchscreen to change multiple parameters at the same time — what used to be a dozen individual parameter adjustments using multiple knobs now becomes one finger. Instead of getting caught up decoding settings, StageScape frees you to do what’s most important: perform.

Musicians often buy a PA speaker only to find out that it can only do one thing well: amplify the output of a mixer. But as you start adding other musicians to the band or you move from electric to acoustic sets, you find out you need more gear, or you end up compromising your sound. Line 6 StageSource™ L3t is designed to be a lifesaver for the performing musician by providing an integrated professional live sound solution for a variety of common scenarios.

And if you use the StageScape mixer with StageSource loudspeakers, it gets even better.

Using proprietary digital networking called L6 LINK™, the mixer and loudspeakers integrate into a smart system. The M20d will recognize which loudspeakers are being used as monitors and send them monitor feeds. Loudspeakers will automatically self-configure, pan stereo signals, adjust Smart Speaker modes and perform system-wide optimization.

Both StageScape and StageSource products were designed to be a smarter, faster way for musicians to get great live sound and help them stay in the creative zone focused on the music. Whether you play small acoustic shows or have a full band, playing live will never be the same.

Fender introduced its new Pawn Shop Special amplifiers at this years NAMM show, which present a coolly unconventional take on amp design by evoking the enjoyably esoteric finds you might find in a pawnshop or second-hand store. They have the air of the early days of electrified sound, when musicians grabbed whatever amp they could get—be it for guitar, harmonica, lap steel, accordion, vocal mic, etc. Those amps produced sounds that were wonderfully distinctive precisely because they were so primitive, and it was exactly their oddball nature that made them so much fun.

The two new Pawn Shop Special models—the diminutive Greta™ and the elegant Excelsior™—deliver that offbeat no-school-like-old-school spirit in spades. Neither is intended as your everyday main amp (in fact, you’ll be hard-pressed to find the name “Fender” anywhere on them), but you’re nonetheless in for a delightful sonic experience that just might spark some magic creative impulse, spur a great idea or lend a certain never-heard-that-before sound to your recording. Plug in, and you’ll find new voices, new sounds and new songs hiding in these unruly little boxes—all just waiting for you to let them out.

In the playful form of a vintage tabletop radio, the Pawn Shop Special Greta model is quite possibly the most unusual Fender tube amp ever. In fact, nobody would blame you if you saw a Greta and, not yet realizing its true identity, tried to tune in the local weather on it.

But an amp is exactly what it is—a two-watt tabletop beauty with a 4” Special Design speaker, old-school VU meter with “clean to overload” indicator display and simple volume and tone controls. Its charmingly vintage-style enclosure has front and rear wood panels finished in bright red, gold-finished metal top and sides for increased shielding, “Greta” script badge on the front panel and tabletop feet. Under the hood and on the back panel, the Greta features a single 12AT7 output tube and 12AX7 preamp tube, with a ¼” instrument jack and ¼” line out jack (for preamp use with another amplifier). Greta produces a variety of low-volume clean and overdriven guitar tones, but even if you never plug a guitar into it, the 1/8” back-panel auxiliary input is perfect for iPod or other media player use, with great mono tube playback sound that’ll have you rocking right there at your desk.

Alluringly refined yet harboring tones from polite to raw to raucous, the Pawn Shop Special Excelsior model is undoubtedly one of the most distinctive tube combo amps in Fender history. Its brown textured vinyl covering, smartly stylish “E” grille design and bold crossed-swords front-panel badge convey a decidedly stately vibe with a marked air of cold-war cool.

To say nothing of its admirable tone and power. The 13-watt Excelsior elegantly encloses a single 15” Special Design speaker, with a bottom-loaded primary chassis and top-loaded control chassis for operating convenience and low noise (powered by two 6V6 output tubes and two 12AX7 preamp tubes). Distinctive features include “instrument,” “microphone” and “accordion” inputs that each have individually optimized circuitry; tremolo circuit with speed control, bright/dark tone switch (for treble or bass emphasis), volume control and ¼” internal speaker disconnect that lets the amp drive an external speaker enclosure. For playing at home, smaller gigs and studio sessions, the Excelsior is a class act that brings a fresh and unconventional new vibe to your playing.

If your looking for a fun guitar app that actually teaches you to play shredder songs then look no further. Megadeth have released the "Dave Mustaine: Guitar Prodigy," an iPad application where Mustaine teaches fans to play hits like Tornado of Souls or Public Enemy No. 1 from the band's new album, TH1RT3EN.

Guitar Prodigy shows you how to play a real guitar just like Mustaine. The app uses his master tracks and listens to the notes you play, giving you instant feedback on your performance. Mustaine digs into rhythm, technique and theory. It's the next best thing to taking private lessons with Dave.

Guitar Prodigy includes several Megadeth mega-shredding hits like "Tornado of Souls," "Holy Wars… The Punishment Due," and "Public Enemy No. 1" from Megadeth's new album TH1RT3EN. Also included are a number of progressive bite-sized "Micro Lessons" created by Mustaine himself covering areas like rhythm, technique and theory revealing the true genius behind his music.

The app comes with multiple skill levels from beginner to advanced, and even features a leader board to show off top scores. Never before has there been an affordable way for a fan to get a one-on-one connection with the artist, to experience the music – by playing the music.

Download your copy of Dave Mustaine: Guitar Prodigy HERE

Bass players, it's your turn: Fill in the holes in a power trio with this growling, monster effects box!

Fission Bass Powerchord FX Pedal lets any bassist lay down beds of power by adding stacked harmonies over their bass lines. Through an intuitive set of controls and footswitches, several combinations of octaves, 4th and 5th above the root note combine to produce powerchords or octave-up effects.

It’s also a multi-effect pedal with up to 3 voices of harmony, adjustable noise gate, overdrive, tone and effect level. This power-effect combo gives you creative control over anything from subtle octaves to thick, grinding effects that even your guitar player will envy.

The Fission Bass Powerchord FX Pedal uses state-of-the-art 32-bit signal processing and 24-bit audio conversion.

The first product to be introduced from the new “Larry’s Garage” series, the Blackstack passive soundhole pickup offers the vintage sound of a humbucking magnetic pickup in a modern, battery-free design.

A departure from the warm, transparent tone of Fishman's Rare Earth soundhole pickups, Blackstack has its own voice... a more vintage roadhouse sound perfect for high volume band situations that require a driving acoustic to cut through the mix and keep up with the rest of the band.

Hard rockers will love it, but so will those guitarists looking for a vintage-inspired tone. Whether your taste is country, classic rock, alt country, or something completely your own - you'll find the Blackstack delivers with a bold, powerful acoustic voice.

The new Blackstack is delivered in a specially-designed metal "poker case" package, complete with Fishman playing cards and a stack of black poker chips. But save the gambling for something other than your acoustic tone - this humbucking pickup is ultra-quiet, extremely feedback resistant, and features adjustable pole-pieces for perfect string balance adjustments.

Made in Fishman's Andover, MA factory, these new pickups offer our legendary quality, performance and heavy duty durability - perfect for professionals and weekend warriors alike.

Like all of Fishman's soundhole pickups, it provides easy installation with no modifcation required - plug and play right out of the box!

INTRODUCING THE BLACKOUTS MODULAR PREAMP
MAKE ANY PICKUP ACTIVE!

Get the extreme gain of active pickups—with any pickup.

Just swap your volume pot with a Blackouts™ Modular Preamp. It combines the high-output, low-noise Blackouts™ preamp with a quality volume pot and our Liberator Solderless Pickup Change System for quick connections. Get your own sound—with your own look.

The genre-defining crunch and wail of modern heavy rock guitar often comes from active guitar pickups, which have a built-in, battery-powered preamp epoxy-sealed into a stark black casing. It's a distinctly modern sound married to a patently modern look. Now, for the first time, you can make any pickup an active pickup, even pickups with a more traditional look.

Seymour Duncan has taken its award-winning, low-noise Blackouts™ balanced differential preamp out of the pickup and integrated it with a high-quality volume pot. Blackouts™ Modular Preamp is an ingenious way to get that high-gain, active guitar sound with any passive four-conductor pickup. Simply by swapping a volume pot for a Blackouts Modular Preamp volume pot, you can get active pickup performance with a more classic look.

To capture the precise tone and performance of Original Blackouts™ pickups, Seymour Duncan created the specially voiced Blackouts™ Coil Pack, a replacement humbucker designed specifically for use with the Blackouts Modular Preamp. The Coil Pack will be available as a stand-alone neck or bridge humbucker or in a two-humbucker set packaged together with the Blackouts Modular Preamp.

Connecting the Coil Pack or any pickup to Blackouts Modular Preamp is an incredibly simple, solderless procedure, thanks to the same bare-wire Lockdown connector stations used in the Seymour Duncan Liberator™ Solderless Pickup Change System. Installing pickups only requires a mini-screwdriver to secure pickup and battery leads into the rock-solid screw-clamp connectors.

The new Fender Pawn Shop Series. Two Fender ’72 guitars (front and far left) and two Fender ’51 guitars (far right) flank two Mustang Special guitars.

Fender is proud to continue its long tradition of innovation by introducing the new Pawn Shop Series guitars—the Fender ’51, Fender ’72 and Mustang® Special. These instruments draw inspiration from the eccentric and sometimes wildly innovative Fender creations of the mid-’60s to mid-’70s era that sometimes found their way to the outside world and into the more esoteric pages of Fender history. With this adventurous spirit in mind, Pawn Shop Series instruments emerge as all-new Fender guitars with a boldly creative alchemy of diverse Fender components. And while they are brand-new members of the Fender family crafted with thoroughly modern sound and quality, Pawn Shop Series instruments now take the stage with a remarkable new identity as “guitars that never were but could have been.”

The Pawn Shop Fender ’51 melds Fender elements from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s into one truly distinctive-looking, dynamic-sounding guitar. It has a Stratocaster® body and a C-shaped Telecaster® neck, with a single-coil Texas Special™ neck pickup, Fender Enforcer™ humbucking bridge pickup and an early-’50s Precision Bass-style dual-knob chrome control plate. Other features include a maple fretboard with modern 9.5” radius and medium jumbo frets, master volume control with push-pull coil split function to get single-coil tone from the humbucking bridge pickup, three-position rotary pickup selector knob, ’70s-style hard-tail Stratocaster bridge, vintage-style tuners and strap buttons, and deluxe gig bag.

The Pawn Shop Fender ’72 presents an unusual combination of classic Fender design elements, not the least of which is its semi-hollow Stratocaster body with an f hole. The result is a truly distinctive instrument with a huge sound, with other features including a U-shaped Telecaster neck, rosewood fretboard with modern 9.5” radius and 6105 frets, Fender Wide Range humbucking neck pickup and Fender Enforcer™ humbucking bridge pickup, early-’50s Precision Bass-style dual-knob chrome control plate with master volume and center-detented pickup blend controls, ’70s-style hard-tail Stratocaster bridge, ’70s-style Fender “F” tuners, mint green pickguard, bullet truss rod, three-bolt neck attachment and deluxe gig bag.

The Pawn Shop Mustang Special is a classic in everything from a venerable Fender model name to its sleek amalgam of design elements and matchless tonal versatility. Its modified offset Mustang body imparts a sleek 1960s vibe, and its 24” short-scale maple neck with a ’60s-era C shape is comfortable for those accustomed to vintage-style instruments. Other features include a rosewood fretboard with modern 9.5” radius and medium jumbo frets, dual Fender Enforcer™ humbucking pickups with ’70s-style covers, pickup toggle switch, three-way coil selector slide switch for each humbucking pickup (enabling 18 different tonal options), mint green pickguard, ’70s-style hard-tail Stratocaster bridge, vintage-style tuners and strap buttons, and deluxe gig bag.

Check Out The Original Fender Article

Fender Bass Amplification now complements its popular Rumble combo amps with two new heads and three new cabinets. These newest members of the Rumble family are small and powerful, with a special magnetic mounting system that keeps the heads firmly fixed to any of the cabinets without interference from vibration, even at extreme volumes.

The new Rumble amp heads and cabinets.

Further, these new Rumble rigs deliver colossal sound considering their relatively diminutive size. The cabinets are tuned for enhanced frequency response that produces the kind of powerful low end you’d expect from a much larger Fender PRO series rig, and the overdrive circuit in both amp heads lets you mix of clean and dirty signals for wholly satisfying grit without sacrificing low-end power and definition.

The Rumble 350 Head and Rumble 150 Head deliver powerful tone, professional features and easy operation in a compact and lightweight package. Each boasts a very conservative power rating of 350 watts and 150 watts, respectively. Both heads have an XLR output and two preset EQ shapes, and bassists can blend clean and overdriven tones using the footswitchable overdrive (footswitch optional). The Rumble 350 head comes with a carrying bag.

The Rumble 112 Cabinet handles 500 watts but weighs a mere 24 pounds. Its special lightweight design delivers more pronounced low-end frequency response than most small cabs, and its 12” Eminence® neodymium speaker delivers the knockout punch of a 10” speaker and the seismic boom of a 15” speaker. Other features include a switchable tweeter (full/off/-6db), side handle for easy portability, and the new Rumble magnetic mounting system.

The Rumble 2x8 Cabinet also handles 500 watts. It weighs in at a mere 28 pound, with dual 8” Eminence® neodymium speakers that deliver even more punch than 10” speakers. It too delivers more pronounced low-end frequency response than most small cabs, and it too features a switchable tweeter (full/off/-6db), side handle for easy portability, and the new Rumble magnetic mounting system.

The Rumble 4x10 Cabinet boasts huge Fender bass tone from a great-sounding modern cabinet design. Four 10” Fender Special Design speakers pump a lot of air and fill a lot of room, with a switchable tweeter (full/off/-6db) for adjustable high-end response. Rated at a volcanic 1,000 watts (at 4 ohms), it also features removable casters and the new Rumble magnetic mounting system.

Original Fender Article