Fenders & Gibsons: artful guitars lead to revolutions in music

Stratocaster
Originally uploaded by merz masetti

The Fender Stratocaster, often referred to as "Strat", is a model of electric guitar designed by Leo Fender, George Fullerton, and Freddie Tavares in 1954, and manufactured continuously by the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation to the present, says Wikipedia. Fender guitars were designed and made in Fullerton, CA, part of Los Angeles.

Along with the Gibson Les Paul, the Gibson SG and the Fender Telecaster, it is one of the most common and enduring models of electric guitar in the world.

The design of the Stratocaster has transcended the field of music to rank among the classic industrial designs of all time; examples have been exhibited at major museums around the world.[2][3]


The Gibson company, maker of the Les Paul model, was founded in the 1890's as a mandolin company by Orville Gibson - in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He invented archtop guitars by using the same type of carved, arched tops found on violins. By the 1930s, the company was also making flattop acoustic guitars, as well as one of the first commercially available hollow-body electric guitars, used and popularized by jazz player Charlie Christian. Gibson was at the forefront of innovation in acoustic guitars, especially in the big band era of the 1930s; the Gibson Super 400 was widely imitated. In the early 1950s, Gibson introduced its first solid-body electric guitar and in 1952 began producing its most popular guitar to date — the Les Paul, designed by Ted McCarty and Les Paul.