FENDER AMERICAN VINTAGE II TELECASTERS
Time has mellowed the wrath of the detractors and reinforced the joy of the believers in a range that divided opinion when first released in the early 70s
By the early 1970s, the Telecaster had already been around for more than 20 years. Five decades on and this seems like nothing at all. But back then it made Fender, still under relatively new management, feel that a change of direction was needed in order to refresh the range and perhaps chime better with the tougher music scene that was emerging. The company was experiencing a dip in popularity, since everyone from The Stones’ Keith Richards to Wishbone Ash, Aerosmith, Mick Ronson with Bowie, Phil Manzanera with Roxy Music, Adrian Fisher with Sparks, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Martin Barre with Jethro Tull and, of course, a still massive Led Zeppelin were all mainly toting Gibsons. So perhaps those once all-conquering single coils had become the problem?
Enter the Thinline (the second version), Custom and Deluxe Telecasters, all fitted with at least one brand-new Fender humbucking pickup. Fender co-opted Seth Lover, designer of Gibson’s own humbucker, to develop something that would not only suit the Fender style but produce the thicker tones that 70s rock demanded. Using a material called CuNiFe (pronounced “cu-ni-fay”), Lover came up with what Fender called the ‘Wide Range’ pickup. Here’s a brief history from Tim Shaw, chief engineer at Fender.
“CuNiFe has been around for about 80 years,” he explains. “It’s an alloy of copper, nickel and iron, has been used in many different applications and, if you messed with it long enough, you could make a magnet out of it. At the time, it was the only magnet material that could be made into a screw. Since the patent for Seth’s original humbucking pickup was still in force, he couldn’t infringe himself, so – knowing about CuNiFe – he decided to try to make a pickup out of it. Seth learned pretty quickly that it wasn’t like Alnico or other magnets, and had to allow fo
