Every guitar company has had its odd ducks, its failures, its forgotten models. While some are consigned to the scrapheap of history for good reason, there are always instruments that just plain never caught on. Often, this is due more to an accident of history than any fault in the actual instrument.

The late-’50s Rickenbacker Capri thin hollowbody guitars were bold, classic, and original designs that still form the basis of the company’s product line. But their full-bodied F series cousins were produced in extremely small numbers from 1959-’62, and quickly faded away.

All vintage Ricks are rare compared to comparable Fenders or Gibsons, but the 375F guitars are among the least common of all – so scarce, in fact, that even many dedicated Rick fanciers have never seen one! Published productions figures list only seven made and sold! Then again, even most fanatic Rickhounds are not looking for one, particularly.

Despite being a top-line guitar at the dawn of the greatest era for Rick collectibles, the 375F is neither the most soughtafter or costly Rickenbacker. Why? Well, the most desirable Ricks today are those that carry the whiff of Beatles about them: the double-bound 360/12 0S, as used by George Harrison, the export model 4001S bass used by all English Rick players, and the short scale “John Lennon” model 325. Original ’60s examples of these are also very hard to find, and there have been a lot of people looking the past 30 years!

The entire 330-375F series was pretty much history prior to the British invasion hoopla that put Rickenbacker on the map worldwide, and unlike the Les Paul, no legendary rock guitar god pulled one out of the closet for a bout of reclaimed glory. In sound and quality, these are the equal of any Rickenbacker, but that sweeping double-cutaway Capri body is the Rick trademark to most people, and without it, these guitars somehow don’t quite look right. Despite being very attractive, they missed achieving the iconic status of many other Rickenbackers.

It’s easy to imagine these conceived as a fail-safe model, made to appeal to the more conservative player of the late ’50s. The 310-375 sweeping double-cutaway body was a radical design for the time, however familiar it looks today. In the native southern California music scene, Fenders had become the hot item, with Gibson as the perennial alternative. Ousted ex-Fender partner F.C. Hall purchased the moribund Rickenbacker operation and may well have seen his company as able to fill a niche between these two makers, with guitars not as radical as Fender’s solidbodies, but flashier and more modernistic than the average Gibson.

After marketing the Combo series (a radical, if not particularly practical, line of solidbodies), Rickenbacker readied prototypes of a thin hollowbody guitar in 1957-’58. Expatriate German luthier Roger Rossmeisl’s designs for a series of hollow cutaway guitars owe very little to any American concepts of the era, but have roots in the post-war archtops of his native land – particularly features like the slim, non-tapered necks and slash-shaped F-holes. The necks and headstocks are specifically similar to some Hoyer guitars of the ’50s, which can feel eerily familiar to anyone accustomed to playing an old Rickenbacker. These guitars had the unusual construction feature of having the top and sides carved from one piece of wood, hollowed out and capped with a flat back. This results in an instrument almost as easy to build as a solidbody, having no bending of the sides or kerfing required, but with some of the sound of a hollow guitar. The F series probably were meant to fill out the line with a guitar that, while wholly Rickenbacker in concept, might appeal to the less adventurous electric archtop user.

With the occasional celebrity placement (Jimmy Bryant and James Burton both field tested the new Ricks, but weren’t weaned off those familiar Telecasters) the Capris were a modest success in the late ’50s, but the full bodies didn’t exactly lead the pack. Probably any guitarist who was excited by the well-advertised slim sparkletrim neck was well past being tied to the “old fashioned” single-cutaway body anyway – the more dynamic look of the flashier double-cut body was an instant trademark for Rickenbacker. After Lennon’s use of the model 325 made the shape known worldwide, it said “Rickenbacker” to most guitarists.

The 375Fs sport the ne plus ultra of Rickenbacker features: three pickups, deluxe trim, and a special long-plate Accent vibrato (with a nifty cutout musical note motif) that is the only unique appointment (besides the large, rather pancake-like body). The standard gold lucite pickguard with gold-topped “oven-style” knobs looks a bit out of place hovering in the middle of the much larger top, but still fits with the cosmetics of the instrument. The checkerboard binding and crushed pearl fingerboard inlays are standard to all “deluxe” Rickenbackers – those with model numbers 360 and above. The models 330-345 have dot inlays, no binding, and were somewhat less expensive, although none of these guitars came particularly cheap when new.

Model numbers run in an ascending series starting with model 330 (two pickups, no vibrato), the 335 (add vibrato tailpiece), and so on up to the fully equipped 375. The 310 to 325 were ¾-size bodies and never were offered in the higher grade of ornamentation. The F-style body was available for the entire 330-375 series. All full-body models are rare, but none more so than this most deluxe version.

It’s hard to imagine these guitars being successfully marketed as jazz instruments, despite the more conservative styling – they were probably aimed at the same Southern California cowboy guitarists who were already Rickenbacker’s (and Fender’s) primary market. The only well-known jazz guitarist to ever make much use of a Rick was Toots Thielman, and he used an early solidbody Combo! Even today, to the uninitiated player, Ricks tend to feel a bit strange, with the heavily lacquered fingerboard on the slim neck being the most unfamiliar feature. The F series are noticeably heavier than the standard models, as well, and with the totally flat top on the thin, wide body, do not handle quite like any other guitar. The standard Capri-style body has a certain logic to the layout, and if the player is willing to meet the guitar halfway, is quite comfortable to play – the F-style full body takes a lot more getting used to – hardly anyone seems to have made the effort!

The sound of these guitars is pretty much the same as the smaller Capris – the fuller body adds a bit of depth, but overall they still ring with familiar Rickenbacker chime. To someone used to the warm purr of an archtop Gibson, they may sound downright clangorous! They have the same sort of crisp sound as early Fenders, apparently what was de rigeur on the West Coast at that time. Like most three-pickup Gibsons, the wiring on three-pickup Ricks is eccentric and does not exploit many of the possible combinations – but they sure look sharp! Shouldn’t all Rickenbackers have three pickups?

From the point of view of a collector trying to assemble a set of vintage Rickenbackers, the 375F is a particularly rare and desirable guitar. To anyone else it’s simply an interesting historical footnote. In the late ’60s, the company made another attempt to market this body shape as a 12-string. These guitars are somewhat less attractive, with a less-defined cutaway and an array of knobs on the lower bout. They were even less successful.

It’s doubtful many tears were shed at the rapid decline and disappearance of this model – within a few years Rickenbacker was caught up in an unprecedented demand for its instruments. Those that evolved from the late-’50s double-cutaway Capris – the 330-360 six and 12-strings – led the way. While the F series guitars proved a blind alley in Rickenbacker’s development, these 375Fs sure look sharp today. Is it time for one of Rickenbacker’s notoriously faithful limited-edition reissues?

This article originally appeared in VG June 1998 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Leo’s Simple Legend

The world’s greatest electric guitar was invented by a radio repairman.

Okay, we could debate just what is the world’s greatest electric guitar, but the fact is that one of the legends of collectible solidbodies was invented by a guy who wasn’t even a musician; Leo Fender had just started building amplifiers and lap steels when he saw Merle Travis play a solidbody guitar built by Paul Bigsby.

Fender’s first Spanish-style guitar was a lesson in functional simplicity: a solid body (feedback was a huge problem for amplified instruments of the day), one pickup, and a bolt-on neck. And it wasn’t just that Leo wanted the guitar to be easy to service and maintain; beyond being pragmatic, Leo was frugal. His guitar had to be made using the same machinery that made Fender lap steels, so there would be no fancy set neck or body carve.

Work on Leo’s first guitar began in late 1949. The shape was “designed” by George Fullerton, who Leo had hired to help repair amps and lap steels. And his concept has been maintained since its inception – a prototype made in ’49 looks very much like any Tele from any era, save for its lapsteel-like headstock. And when it debuted at the July, 1950, NAMM show it carried the name “Esquire.”

Though response wasn’t strong, feedback from players led to improvements including a steel truss rod and a second pickup close to the neck. Later that summer, the guitar was introduced to the market as the “Broadcaster,” in tribute to the radio – the means by which most of its notes would supposedly be heard. It listed for $169.95. But soon after, Gretsch asked Fender to drop the name because it had been granted a trademark for its use on drums. Fender abided, and from February until August of ’51, finishers clipped the word “Broadcaster” from headstock decals. Thus was born the “Nocaster,” a name never adopted by Fender, but well-known amongst vintage guitar enthusiasts. The final burst of inspiration came when Leo borrowed a name from the television – the cutting-edge broadcast technology of the day.

The guitar surprised naysayers by selling well in its first few years. And shortly thereafter, the solidbody guitar took flight as other companies jumped into the fray.

As Played By

• Jimmy Bryant
• Jeff Beck
• Roy Buchanan
• B.B. King
• Paul Burlison
• Roy Nichols
• Don Rich
• Muddy Waters
• Steve Cropper
• Jimmy Page
• Albert Lee
• Bruce Springsteen
• Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown
• Keith Richards
• Etc., Etc., Etc.!

Further Facts

• Pickups are both fully height-adjustable.
• String ferrules are recessed into the back of the body.
• Fender employees typically penciled in build dates on body-end of necks, in body neck cavity, and/or bridge pickup cavity (the latter often on masking tape).
• Neck screws changed to Philips-head in early ’52.
• Audio controls in ’52 used 250K-ohm potentiometers (pots), one .05-microfarad capacitor between the switch and master volume pot, and one 15K-ohm resistor soldered to the pickup selector; in ’53, the selector resistor was changed to a .1-microfarad.
• Offered only in “blond” finish.

Special thanks to S.J. “Frog” Forgey (Elderly Instruments), Kenny Rardin (Solidbodyguitar.com), George Gruhn, Sam Calveard, and Phil Jones (Gruhn’s Guitars), Dave Rogers (Dave’s Guitars), Dave Hinson (Killer Vintage), and Nate Westgor (Willie’s American Guitars). For an in-depth look at the Telecaster, grab A.R. Duchossoir’s The Fender Telecaster: The Detailed Story of America’s Senior Solid Body Electric Guitar.

This article originally appeared in VG July 2005 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

National. The name is patriotic! And what else but American inventiveness could have brought about a metal-bodied guitar?

The answer lies in the state of the guitar as a musical instrument circa 1925. The mandolin was popular and the guitar was beginning to evolve, particularly in Gibson’s new L-5, which revolutionized its sound and adaptability to popular music. In the mid ’20s, the banjo was king in orchestral settings, but Hawaiian music – in a craze began a decade earlier – became very popular and while traditional wood-bodied guitars were adapted to Hawaiian-style playing, there was a need for something different. While the size of the L-5 might have implied “bigger is better” (or at least louder), the search for an instrument with the volume of a banjo, the playability of a guitar, and the sweetness of the mandolin probably caused experimentation not only into new materials, but also new mechanisms for projecting the sound.

So why build a guitar out of metal?

Obviously, wood designs were experimented with and National used wood bodies on some low-end single-cone resonators. But why not use wood for the tricones? Better tone and volume were the easy answers, but there’s more to it. California’s John and Rudy Dopyera were striving for nothing short of a reinvention of the guitar as an instrument, which required new materials, designs, and manufacturing methods. Metal and its use in manufacturing were a product of the industrial age and certain metal products offered lasting durability, beauty, and functionality. This includes the National Style O.

Introduced in 1930, the Style O was the first in a series of single-resonator designs by National. Initially produced in a 12-fret style, the model received a facelift in 1934 with a tighter body that gave access to 14 frets clear of the body, and the following year brought a new coverplate design and headstock inlay.

This version of the Style O was immortalized on the cover of the Dire Straits Brothers in Arms album. Remaining unchanged was the brash, sinewy sound blues artist Johnny Winter once compared to “…a garbage can lid with strings.” The combination of nickel-plated brass body construction and a single resonator provided the Style O with a sound subtly different from the sheet steel-constructed Duolian and Triolian, or from the multi-resonator tricones. The Style O was adorned with sandblasted designs quite different from the etched tricones. A strong Hawaiian motif captures some of the romance of the period, the swaying palm trees and gentle surf evoke of a tropical paradise. A strong seller, the Style O remained popular through the ’30s.

By the dawn of the ’40s, changing musical tastes slowed National production, the rise of electronically amplified instruments further reduced demand for resonator guitars, then the intervention of World War II and attendant materials shortages meant an end. The company never recovered and the National name was absorbed into the giant Valco conglomerate. A sad end, but the legacy of the Dopyera brothers remains with fine instruments such as the well-preserved Style O pictured here. As musical instruments, they produce a tone unmatched by any guitar before or since. As physical objects they are as fine as any art-deco inspired works, and make excellent wall-hangers and conversation pieces, as well as fine instruments. The National Style O is truly a piece of history.

This article originally appeared in VG’s December 1998 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

On September 20, 1983, Jimmy Page re-emerged into the public eye after the death of John Bonham and the breakup of Led Zeppelin with a thundering ovation at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Instead of a sunburst Les Paul, the model synonymous with his onstage persona with Zep, Page chose as his primary instrument an austere-looking, brown Telecaster with what looked like an additional chrome volume knob behind the bridge.

Of course, it was not a volume knob; Page’s Tele was equipped with a Parsons/White StringBender, which Page had previously used to great effect on the beautiful, melodic, bent-note runs on Led Zeppelin’s classic ballad, “All My Love,” and live on “Ten Years Gone.”

Page had begun to use the StringBender on Zeppelin’s 1977 tour. Prior to that, he frequently bent notes behind the nut of his instruments with his fingers, as can be heard on the unaccompanied “Heartbreaker” solo on Led Zeppelin II and seen on the same number in the DVD of The Song Remains The Same.

Curiously, this was how the StringBender was invented by Gene Parsons (above) and the late, great Clarence White in 1967, some 10 years prior to Page incorporating the device. Parsons recalls, “I was doing some sessions with Clarence White, and he was one of the very first ones to chime a string – the B string, or high E string – and pull it over the nut of a Telecaster” (Ed. Note: strike a harmonic and reach behind the nut to press down on the string and raise the pitch). The sessions Parsons and White were recording were, to the best of Gene’s recollection, for a never-released Rex and Vern Gosdin album.

White, one of the most important figures in country music, was the rare example of a guitarist who was already hailed as a true pioneer, then reinvented himself and became equally staggering as a pioneer in a different style on a different instrument. First, he was a flatpicking bluegrass prodigy, known for both his phenomenal solo and rhythm work while still in his teens. He and his brothers, Eric and Roland, formed the Country Boys, later renamed the Kentucky Colonels, whose 1964 album Appalachian Swing still sounds groundbreaking 40 years later. After making the switch to electric guitar, White became an in-demand session player in Los Angeles, appearing on Byrds LPs as far back as Younger Than Yesterday (recorded in 1966) and helping forge country-rock on their pivotal Sweetheart Of The Rodeo album in 1968, before becoming a full-time member.

But before joining the Byrds (and prior to Sweetheart), White was playing Telecaster in a country-rock band called Nashville West at a club also called Nashville West, in El Monte, California. The group’s drummer was Gene Parsons, and by the time of Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde, recorded in the fall of 1968, the pair comprised one-half of the Byrds, along with bassist John York and sole original member Roger McGuinn on lead vocals with his trademark Rickenbacker electric 12-string.

“I Need a Third Hand!”

While Parsons doesn’t recall the specific song from the Gosdin Brothers session, he does remember that White began to record a simple lead part. “He wanted to chime the string and pull it over the nut, and then he wanted to do it at the second position and the third position. He said, ‘Gee, I wish I could do that, but I’d need a third hand!’” Parsons volunteered to be that “third hand,” pushing the strings behind the nut in time with White’s playing.

Afterward, the two wondered, “How can we do this?” Parsons, who later joined the Flying Burrito Brothers and recorded with the likes of Randy Newman and Arlo Guthrie, is a multi-instrumentalist in addition to being a master machinist. (Ed. Note: Gene is not to be confused with, and is not related to, the late Gram Parsons, even though both were members of the Byrds and Burritos at different times.) He remembers that his first reaction was, “Well, I can rig up a bridge on the back of your guitar, and attach cables and foot pedals.”

“If I wanted to play pedal steel, I’d play pedal steel,” White replied tersely. This helped shape the StringBender’s development with some important parameters: Its mechanism should be entirely self-contained and not very obvious or visible; and it shouldn’t, in White’s words, “take my hands out of their normal stance or alter the way that I play the guitar, except that I’m able to bend strings, or pull strings, somehow.”

That was a tall order, but Parsons had prior experience modifying banjos with Scruggs tuners and at one point had even tried to build a cross between a banjo and pedal steel.

Choosing Which String

Parsons eventually came up with the idea of using the shoulder strap as the primary method of bending the note. Parsons procured some pedal steel parts from steel ace “Sneaky Pete” Kleinow. Then the question was which string would be pulled. Gene recounts, “Clarence said, ‘I bend the G string a lot with my fingers, but the B and E strings are harder to bend, and the B lends itself to more combinations with other strings.’”

To cover his bets, though, Parsons first devised a mechanism capable of both raising and lowering each of the top four strings of the guitar, using parts from a Fender 800 pedal steel. But in fairly short order, he and White knew their hunch about the B string was correct, and the multiple-string Bender was jettisoned in favor of a mechanism that would allow the player to raise the B string’s pitch a whole tone. Pushing down on the guitar’s neck would, in essence, pull up on the strap button, which was connected to a hub behind the bridge, where the B string was secured.

“People started calling it the ‘B-bender’ or ‘pull-string,’ which are sort of generic terms that players gave it,” Parsons explains; however, the correct name was originally Parsons/White StringBender. “I’ve done ‘E-benders,’” Gene points out, “but Clarence found that the B was the one that lent itself to the most combinations of pleasing bends used in concert with bending the G string with your fingers.”

The StringBender allowed White to perfect a unique and enduring playing style, as it’s a much different device than the traditional vibrato arm (like a Bigsby) on electric guitars – or “tremolo” arm, as Fender literature incorrectly refers their whammy bars. It was the ability to play a bent note in combination with a stationary note, or having more than one string moving – essentially aping what a pedal steel does – that attracted Clarence and became the foundation of a whole new approach to the guitar. “The StringBender allows for a totally tunable, bendable note,” says Meridian Green, a singer/songwriter and daughter of the late folk singer Bob Gibson. Green joined StringBender, Inc. in 1988 and became the company’s CEO.

“It’s much more ‘pedal-steely’ because you get to hear this one note moving really smoothly from the starting position to a full-step up,” she explains. “And when people get really good, they can do half-step bends and stuff like that.”

But as early recordings of Nashville West (not released until 1976) reveal, White was achieving multiple-bend pedal steel-type licks with his fingers prior to the StringBender’s arrival; so he and Parsons essentially invented a device to fit a style that Clarence was already playing. Of course, White wasn’t the only player, then or now, to emulate steel licks on a standard electric guitar; Amos Garrett, Gerry McGee, Roy Buchanan, Jerry Donahue, Thumbs Carllile, and others incorporated steel-like bends into their playing decades ago.

Parsons had suggested routing out White’s Telecaster for the mechanism, but per White’s request, the initial Bender mechanism was largely mounted on top of the guitar’s back, and covered with a piece of wood shaped like the Tele’s back. This made the guitar look like an extra-thick Telecaster, which was fine with White, who was used to playing Martin D-18 acoustics. Parsons says, “He’d only been playing electric for a couple of years, so he said, ‘That’ll actually help me if you build the body out.’ He also put Scruggs [banjo] tuners on the high E and the A.”

The original patent – for a “shoulder strap control for string instruments” – was filed under the names of Gene Parsons, who invented and built it; Clarence White, who, as Gene says, “invented the need for it and the way to play it” and refined the concept; and Ed Tickner, then-manager of the Byrds, who financed it and arranged for it to be licensed to Fender.

Visiting Fender, Episode I

In 1968, Parsons and White took their design to Leo Fender, who was still a consultant with the company that bore his name after its sale to CBS. Parsons says that Leo, an inveterate tinkerer himself, was intrigued by the idea, and created a prototype for a mass-produced version. “Leo and George Fullerton liked it a lot,” Parsons says, “and the company gave Leo the okay to do a prototype. And Leo built a very nice, easily mass-produced prototype, which was a combination of a couple of ideas – one being the StringBender, the other being a guitar that was pretty much bullet-proof. Leo made Clarence jump up and down on the thing, and it just bent like a spring, but was still reasonably in good tune.”

Unfortunately, though, still in the wake of the CBS takeover, there was a lot of hiring and firing going on, and, in Gene’s words, “We had to re-educate a whole new crew, and they were all kind of looking over their shoulder, realizing that the bunch before them all got fired. So they weren’t wanting to stick their necks out with much new product, and it got stalled.”

At that point, Parsons licensed it to Dave Evans, who built “a sort of sandwich type of Tele” and made some modifications to the Bender. It was an Evans version that Albert Lee acquired, and played some of his most famous solos with; he still uses it to this day, along with a Parsons model. “There are different schools of thought,” Gene allows. “Some people like a short, jerky stroke, which is the way the Evans and the Glaser are. In other words, you don’t move very much, and the string moves a whole tone. I didn’t remember how far the travel of the strap pin moved on Clarence’s original model until I later measured it. In order to raise that B string one full tone, that lever is traveling an inch and one-eighth. That’s much longer than my standard version, which is a half-inch to five-eighths. But a lot of people listen to what Clarence did on those old records and say, ‘How did he get such a sweet bend?’ Part of it is Clarence’s technique, but the other part is that he had this machine that made it easy to do a really slow, linear, sweet bend. So for close to 10 years, I’ve had a long-stroke option available for the ones I produce here. The way I explain it is, it’s not so much the destination when you’re bending, it’s the trip that gives it the intrigue.”

Parsons, now 59, eventually began making and installing StringBenders himself, but sadly, Clarence White died in 1973. He was loading his guitar into his car after a jam session when he was hit by a drunk driver. He had just turned 29. As for his original StringBender-equipped axe, country star Marty Stuart now owns it (see sidebar).

“CLARENCE” – The Grandaddy of Bender Guitars

Marty Stuart’s well-known Bender guitar started life as a 1954 Fender Telecaster or Esquire, and was the main electric axe of legendary country-rock pioneer Clarence White (The Kentucky Colonels, The Byrds). White and multi-instrumentalist Gene Parsons fashioned a steel guitar-inspired mechanism that raised the B string a whole step when downward pressure was applied on the strap, tweaking and modifying their invention until it was stable and consistent. A G string pull was added a short time later. White used the guitar almost exclusively until his untimely end in 1973; it’s heard on many of his recordings with the Byrds, Muleskinner, and others. With White’s death, the “Clarence White Tele” sat unused at his home in Kentucky until his widow, Suzy, contacted Marty Stuart.

“The guitar really found me,” recalls Stuart. “Roland White, Clarence’s brother, got me my gig with Lester Flatt, and I was friends with the family. The guitar already had a following of its own by that time – I was always fascinated by it, lusted after it, and I’d even had a similar bender put in another guitar to try and duplicate the effect. I bought if from Suzy, along with some clothes and some other things of Clarence’s.

“I’ve never considered it my guitar, really. It’s his, and now it kind of has a life of its own. The spring gets dry and squeaks, so I spray WD-40 on it now and then, but I’ve never cleaned it. All the dirt inside and behind the strings is the original dirt. We call it ‘Clarence.’”

The prototype of the Parsons/White StringBender, the unit in Stuart’s guitar, is far heavier and complex than current production pieces. White and Parsons installed a favorite Strat-style pickup in the front position, and West-Coast steel legend Red Rhodes re-wound the original Tele/Esquire pickup. A wooden “rim” was added to the back of the guitar to accommodate the protruding parts, effectively doubling the body thickness (the current P/W is more compact and is covered by a large metal plate on the guitar back). The “fingers” which pull the strings, Stuart says, are taken from an old Fender steel guitar.

“I don’t know if Gene did it intentionally, but the pull on this one is longer, not as snappy as the new ones, and I think that’s part of the magic. If you listen to ‘It’s All Over Baby Blue’ (Ballad Of Easy Rider), that really shows you the effect. It really has a unique sound – the lows and mids really speak, and the highs have a roundness that I just don’t hear out of any other Tele. I moved one of the Scruggs banjo tuners, from the fifth string, where Clarence had it, to the sixth string, and the only other thing I’ve changed is (steel guitarist) Ralph Mooney and I put this pedal on it that lowers the first string a half step (the ‘plunger’ between the bridge and control plate on the guitar’s top).”

According to Stuart, the guitar’s provenance includes a bit of historic hippidom.

“The first time I opened up the back, I found this little white piece of paper folded up in there, with a chunk of something inside it. We had it analyzed at a lab – it was acid!” – Rusty Russell

Hand-Crafting The StringBender

Back in the 1960s, though, after Parsons completed White’s guitar, the next player who wanted a Bender was Bob Warford, who had played banjo with the Kentucky Colonels and was playing guitar with Linda Ronstadt and the Everly Brothers. “He emulated Clarence like crazy,” Meridian says, “but sadly lacked a Bender.”

“I gave him my drawing,” Parsons continues, “and he had a friend who worked in a machine shop, and he modified it slightly, but built himself a StringBender, with a little coaching from me. So that was the second one.”

Then, when Parsons first went into production of StringBenders, there was a transitional design. “I made the strap lever in one piece, and in order to install it, I had to route all the way to the bout just above the neck. So there’s a big slot there, with a big aluminum plate that covered it. It looked a little bit clunky. It was a little bit on the crude side, but it worked. Then I refined it by making the strap lever in two pieces so I could just put a slot there and not route all the way to the back face of the guitar; in other words, have the strap lever working in an elongated hole rather than a deep cut in the guitar. I could put just a little trimplate over that, which looked much more sanitary, and it kept more of the integrity of the body of the guitar.”

In the mid-1970s the design of what has come to be known as the Classic Parsons/White StringBender (to differentiate it from the version that Parsons and Meridian Green would later create for Fender), would be finalized.

“I realized that I needed to go to a little bit more modernized, more refined design,” Gene says. “So I began building what is currently the Classic StringBender.” Since then, Green speculates there have been between 1,500 and 2,000 guitars equipped with the Classic Parsons/White mechanism in Parsons’ machine shop in Caspar, California, 150 miles north of San Francisco.

Over the years, variations by other manufacturers have surfaced. Joe Glaser’s aforementioned unit, which is much more compact and pivots from the guitar’s neckplate, has been the choice of Ricky Skaggs, Steve Wariner, Ron Wood, Keith Richards, Brent Mason, Brad Paisley, whose setup operates the G string, and Diamond Rio’s Jimmy Olander, who prefers a Glaser double-bender, hooked up to the B and G. HipShot, which operates with a lever at the base of the guitar’s body (against the player’s hip), is an option for players who don’t want to route their guitar; it’s endorsed by Will Ray of the Hellecasters. And Frank Reckard, who followed Albert Lee into Emmylou Harris’ Hot Band, had a custom-made unit attached to the back of his Les Paul Junior, fashioned by Thomas J. Sullivan – the “Sulli Steel” – although he now plays a Glaser-equipped Music Man. A more elaborate system was designed by the late Phil Baugh, featuring cables and pedals going to each string – a concept Steve Hennig later employed in his self-designed variation.

Branching Out in the Mid ‘80s

Meridian Green’s association with Gene Parsons began in 1986, when Parsons was still machining all of the parts for his StringBender mechanism by hand, except for the unit’s pull hub, which, due to the complexity of the machining required, he farmed out. Because Green and Parsons were both working musicians who wanted to resume playing live, Green suggested that Parsons stop machining his own parts and have them produced for him. At first, Parsons was incredulous.

“We’d have to do bigger runs than we can afford,” he told Green, who replied, “Well, that’s only if we don’t let anybody do the installations. Why don’t we figure out how to get some other people doing the installations?”

The result was a series of StringBender-licensed firms installing the units, which simultaneously allowed Parsons and Green to spend more time playing, rather than producing parts and modifying guitars. (Parsons and Green have both recorded several CDs, available on stringbender.com; however, Gene continues to personally install StringBenders to this day and welcomes inquiries via parsons@stringbender.com.)

Fender, Take II

In the late 1980s, Meridian also contacted Fender, by then free of CBS’s control and busy setting up its innovative Custom Shop. She eventually hooked up with Fred Stuart, then a senior master guitar builder with the company, and a man Green describes as “the most amazingly enthusiastic builder at the Custom Shop, especially as far as Benders go. He had the Telecaster tattooed on his bicep – he’s serious about this stuff!”

Stuart produced a Clarence White Model Tele with the Classic StringBender installed that was sold by the Custom Shop, which proved to be a surprisingly popular axe. And Stuart, Parsons, and Alan Hammel of the Custom Shop collaborated on a unique doubleneck Telecaster with two six-string necks, each with its own Bender mechanism. This guitar, originally produced for a NAMM show and since purchased by a collector, can be seen in the coffee table book Fender Custom Shop Guitar Gallery, by Richard R. Smith and the Pitkin Photography Studio (Hal Leonard, 1996). Other variations have included an electric 12-string and a baritone.

The Working Man’s Bender

According to Stuart, Fender produced about 200 Classic Parsons/White StringBender-equipped Teles virtually by hand in the Custom Shop – a surprising number for such a seemingly esoteric feature. Based on those numbers, in the mid ’90s Fender decided to truly mass-produce the device, offering an “American Nashville B-Bender” Telecaster, with two Telecaster pickups, a Stratocaster middle-position pickup, and a Strat-style five-way selector switch. But first, Parsons and Green had to redesign the Bender’s mechanism to better suit assembly-line production.

Parsons’ original mechanism requires that the guitar be routed, and then all of the parts installed into positions carved into the wood of the rout – a complex and labor-intensive procedure. This was fine for the craftsmen of the Custom Shop, but impossible for an assembly line, where each person is skilled in only one or two tasks. Green suggested they flip the design over, making the entire mechanism mount onto a back plate that attached to the guitar. Parsons and Green obtained a new patent, and licensed the newly dubbed Parsons/Green design to Fender. The new unit also simplified routing by relocating the B-Bender’s tuner (a small wheel designed to ensure that the bent note at its peak is in tune) to the back plate as well, rather than requiring a separate hole in the top of the body as in the Classic Parsons-White mechanism.

“All of the components are mounted onto the plate,” explains Gene, “and then it’s screwed onto the guitar as a unit. Fender wanted to make a lot of these things and install them easily. On the Parsons/Green, instead of a hub, we have more like a pedal steel mechanism, which is a rocker arm or a pendulum; instead of revolving, it actually tilts, like a lever. It mounts onto the plate, and it has a little tower that protrudes though a little hole that goes all the way through the guitar, and comes up behind the bridge.”

This newer style also doesn’t stick above the guitar’s face as high as the hub (the wheel that would turn the B string behind the bridge to raise the pitch when the strap lever was pulled down) stood up on the original version.

The result is a Bender-equipped Telecaster, easily affordable for most serious players. The mechanism, though designed for mass production, works as well as the original Parsons/White. About the only unfortunate aspect of the whole enterprise is its Nashville moniker, which suggests the instrument is only suitable for country players. With StringBender players as diverse as those already mentioned, as well as Pete Townshend, Bernie Leadon, the Black Crowes, and Metallica, nothing could be further from the truth (see accompanying discography for a list of suggested listening).

Tangents With A Framework

Since licensing the B-Bender design to Fender, StringBender, Inc. has come up with some surprising variations on its form. In addition to Teles, Parsons has installed units in Les Pauls – Jimmy Page has played a StringBender-modified Les Paul since the mid 1980s, most prominently on “Thank You” on the 1995 MTV “Unledded” special – and the company has produced Double Benders, which allow the player to bend both the B and G strings. They also make a nifty B-Bender that installs in acoustic guitars, with surprisingly minor modification.

Parsons enthuses, “That’s the one that I’m in love with right now. There were some inherent problems with that; for starters, putting any kind of machinery in an acoustic guitar has the potential of taking sound away from the guitar, because of the mass of it. Also, how the hell do you get this thing inside an acoustic guitar? It’s kind of like building a ship in a bottle. So the first prototype I made, we built the StringBender and then built the guitar around it. It took me about 15 years to work out all of the bugs, but I eventually made all the components so that they could be installed through the soundhole. It attaches to the guitar’s neck block. It’s a beautiful device, very light, and it can be installed without doing any modifications to the top of the guitar. I engineered the device so there’d be a minimum of metal with a maximum of strength. A slot has to be made in the bout for the strap lever to come through with the current model, but the pulling lever goes into the bridge pinhole. It’s just a foolproof, wonderful gadget, and it works really well. It’s a very musical apparatus.”

Casper Rawls, guitarist with Austin’s Toni Price, as well as the LeRoi Brothers, has several Bender-equipped Teles and an early version of Gene’s acoustic Bender, and has demoed StringBenders at several NAMM shows.

“The true genius of Gene Parsons is his continuing evolution of his music and his device,” he says.  “He didn’t just co-invent [the Bender and his own niche what became ‘country-rock’] and sit back; he continues to refine and improve both.  The new acoustic Bender is flat-out amazing.”

Parsons speaks in equally glowing terms of Rawls, claiming he can tell where Casper has been on tour by the calls he gets from new customers. On a given night, Rawls will quickly dispel any notion that the gizmo is strictly for country music – playing blues, rock, Cajun, and even surf music, seamlessly incorporating the StringBender all the while. “He’s our man in the field,” Parsons laughs. “He’s been a wonderful advocate of StringBender, spreading the word. He goes around and plays it, and people can’t believe what they’re hearing. So they ask, ‘How are you doing that?’ And he’ll take the time to show them what the StringBender is. We’ve gotten a lot of inquiries as a result of that.”

Just what makes the StringBender so special? Green speculates that the basic design that Parsons and White hit on has endured all these years because of its logical and intuitive mechanism. “When you go to bend a string, you’re bending it with your left hand already. The brain wiring is already running through the left hand. So if, instead of pushing up one string, you push down on the neck with your thumb, it still goes down the same neural pathway. Which is why I think so many people are able to incorporate it as such an integrated part of their playing style.”

The StringBender has survived, evolved, and flourished for more than 30 years, and hopefully players in a variety of styles will still be bending their B strings for at least another 30. Nothing would make Gene Parsons and Meridian Green (and no doubt Clarence White) happier.

This article originally appeared in VG April 2004 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

The Stromberg Master 400, measuring a gigantic 19″, is considered by many to be the ultimate orchestral rhythm guitar. The instrument of choice for Freddy Green with the Count Basie Orchestra and other players who needed the ultimate in power and projection to cut through a brass band or full orchestra without the benefit of electronic amplification. From 1940 onward, Stromberg’s top models, the 17 ¹/₈" (measured across the lower bout) Deluxe and 19″ Master 300 and Master 400, featured one diagonal brace on the underside of the top. These guitars are among the most sought-after of all rhythm guitars, and possess a sound of their own, epitomized by a power and projection unsurpassed by any other archtop acoustic.

Stromberg guitars are exceedingly scarce. Charles Stromberg and his son, Elmer, worked alone in a small shop in Boston. They started building guitars in the early 1930s, about the same time as D’Angelico. But while D’Angelico produced approximately 1,100 guitars in his lifetime, Stromberg serial numbers only run up to 636 (a G-5 cutaway model finished at the time of Elmer’s death), but they appear to start at about 300.

Prior to producing guitars, Charles made drums and banjos. Higher-grade Stromberg tenor banjos are very fine instruments with a distinct Stromberg Marimba-Tone sound quality, and fancy ornamentation. While these banjos are valuable, the Stromberg reputation today is based primarily on guitars.

Early Strombergs employ pressed arched tops with two parallel top braces running lengthwise, transverse cross braces, and they have laminated backs and sides. The F holes on early models are three-piece, similar to the hole/slot/hole design used on early Epiphones. Makers such as Gibson, Epiphone, and D’Angelico were producing guitars with carved tops and backs, and all solid wood. It’s remarkable that a hand-builder such as Stromberg was using pressed tops and laminated backs in much the same manner as Kay or Harmony. But the tonal quality of early Strombergs, while not equal to their later productions, is so good that these instruments are still highly sought by collectors.

Starting about 1940, Stromberg instruments went through radical design changes such that those produced from that time onward are notably different from earlier examples. The three-piece F holes were replaced by one-piece F holes and the tops were carved and graduated rather than pressed. The earliest examples with the one-piece F holes have two parallel top braces, but shortly thereafter the top models featured one diagonal brace. At least one Master 300 model, with a serial number in the mid 480s, has parallel top braces. The earliest diagonal-braced Stromberg I’m aware of is Master 300 serial number 497 with one diagonal brace. Serial number 498 is a Master 400 in natural finish with one diagonal brace, and serial number 500 is another diagonally braced Master 400. 501 is a diagonally braced Master 300. At about the same time, Stromberg introduced an adjustable truss rod in the neck with the adjustment nut located under the removable bone string nut.

The Master 400 pictured here (SN 503) is typical of the period, with a 19″ body, carved top, with one diagonal brace, one-piece F holes, and pearl inlay on the peghead rather than the plastic engraved-and-painted peghead veneer with beveled edges used on earlier and later model Strombergs. This inlaid peghead was used only briefly on top-of-the-line Strombergs. At the time this guitar was made, though the top construction had evolved to being carved and graduated with one diagonal brace, the back and sides were still made in Stromberg’s earlier-style construction, since they are laminated rather than solid. Strombergs made shortly after this guitar feature carved graduated backs and tops, but the sound of this guitar is remarkably similar to those with the carved backs.

Master 400 number 498 also has laminated back and sides, so it’s reasonable to assume this was standard construction at this time; the serial number of the first Stromberg to feature a solid-wood carved and graduated back would likely have been during (or not long after) 1940. But even after 1940, and quite late into his career, Stromberg used laminated backs on an almost random basis, such that some guitars from the same period have laminated backs, while others have solid backs.

Unfortunately, Stromberg left virtually nothing in the way of written records, making it exceedingly difficult to know exactly what roles were played by Charles and Elmer, but their customers recall that Charles was primarily involved with drums and banjos while Elmer was the primary guitar builder. In fact, the radical change in construction was likely the result of Elmer taking over production.

Unfortunately, Charles and Elmer died within a few months of each other in 1955, so the “golden age” of Stromberg guitars lasted only 15 years, during which time only about 150 guitars were made. Few were the top model Master 300 and Master 400. Of these, only a fraction were cutaway models. Stromberg’s greatest reputation was for orchestral rhythm guitars. The exceedingly scarce cutaway Strombergs are superb instruments and are among the most valuable of all vintage archtop guitars. Interestingly, the cutaway Master 400s measured 18 ½", while the non-cutaway version was 19″.

While Stromberg guitars exhibit very fine craftsmanship, their binding, inlay, and finish work is not as slick and smooth as many modern makers. While Stromberg did pay attention to cosmetics, its guitars were designed to be working tools rather than strictly pieces of art. While many modern makers are rather obsessive about cosmetics, Stromberg was much more in the tradition of early violin makers, for whom it was acceptable to have a few visible chisel marks and asymmetry in work, as long as the end result showed artistic character and combined superb sound with great playability.

Stromberg guitars produced from 1940 onward are very innovative instruments. No maker before or since has produced archtop guitars with one diagonal brace on the top. Many have made parallel-braced or X-braced archtops. Most modern archtop makers have strived for smooth, mellow sound with good sustain suitable for studio use, whereas Stromberg aimed for a more percussive sound with great projection, specifically to cut through a band or orchestra. For this purpose, not only are Strombergs unsurpassed, but no other maker has even come close. They don’t pretend to be solo lead guitars or “modern jazz” instruments, nor are they ideal instruments to be fitted with a pickup. They are superb acoustic projection machines, but they seem to fight amplification. Just as a Mac truck and a Ferrari are both superb for their intended function, but are clearly not interchangeable, a Stromberg guitar does not make any pretense of being a multi-purpose instrument. For its intended function, though, the Master 400 is unsurpassed.

This article originally appeared in VG December 2004 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.