1956 Blonde Fender Esquire | CME Vintage Demo | Nathaniel Murphy

Nathaniel takes us down, down, down into a burning ring of fire with this scorching hot 1956 Blonde Fender Esquire. Learn more about the solid-body that started it all, as well as the finer points of its technical design, all set to a time-traveling soundtrack arranged by the human jukebox himself.

The first prototype for the Esquire (and the later Telecaster) was completed by Leo Fender and George Fullerton in the fall of 1949. The prototype introduced the now-familiar square edged, dreadnought body shape with single cutaway to allow easier access to the upper frets. Likewise it already featured the distinctive combination bridge and pickup assembly, using the pickup from Fender's "Champion" lap steel guitar, with its individual pole pieces for each string, mounted at a slant, and the three bridge saddles which allow adjustment of intonation only in pairs, but individual string height.

The neck, like the first Esquires manufactured in 1950, was made from a single piece of maple without a separate fret board or truss rod. The neck was attached to the body with four screws and an anchor plate, unlike in traditional guitar construction, where a tenon on the neck is glued into the body. Unlike the Esquire, the neck was wider at the nut, and the head had 3 tuners on each side. The prototype differed from the later production guitars in several other respects: the body was made of pinewood, it was painted opaque white, its pickguard did not extend below the strings, it lacked a selector switch, and its volume and tone knobs were mounted on a slanted plate. Like the production models, it had a removable pickup cover, but unlike the production models, the cover had straight sides. The prototype had only one pickup, as did Esquires manufactured from 1951 onwards.

Over the winter of 1949/50, Fender refined the design. The neck width at the nut was narrowed to 1 5/8", and the head modified to accommodate all six tuners on one side from a Croatian design Leo liked. A tone selector switch was added, and the controls were mounted on a plate parallel to the strings. The scratch plate (pickguard) was enlarged.During late spring of 1950, Fender had added a second (Champion steel) pickup in the neck position. It was soon redesigned to pick around more easily with a smaller pickup, and encased in a metal shielding cover designed by Karl Olmstead (tool & die makers Race & Olmstead). However, this last feature was not to make it onto Fender's commercially advertised guitar, as Fender's distributor, the Radio & Television Equipment Company (RTEC), had decided that it would be easier to sell the single pickup version of the guitar.

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