Fender Starcaster

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Fender Starcaster

Manufacturer	Fender
Period	appr. 1976 — 1982
Construction
Body type	Semi-hollow
Neck joint	Bolt-on neck
Woods
Body	Maple
Neck	Maple
Fretboard	Maple
Hardware
Bridge	Fixed
Pickup(s)	H-H: Fender Wide Range
Colors available
White, Natural (Blonde), Sunburst, Tobacco, Mocha Brown

The Fender Starcaster was an attempt by the Fender company to enter the semi-hollowbody electric guitar market, which was (and still is) dominated by Gibson's ES-335 and similar designs.

1 Origin
2 Popularity
3 Construction
- 3.1 Wide Range pickups
4 Notable Starcaster users
5 External links

[edit] Origin

The Starcaster was a high quality instrument (designed by Gene Fields), at a time when Fender's standards had slipped somewhat. It was commercially unsuccessful, perhaps because of a public notion that Fender was a "solidbody, single coil brand" and Gibson was the "semi-hollow, humbucker brand". Although the Starcaster was semi-hollow and had humbucker pickups, it retained Fender's bolt-on neck design (using a somewhat trouble-prone three-bolt joint that it shared with other Fenders of the time), which may have added to its unpopularity. As a result, it was only in production from 1976 or 1977 to 1980 or 1982, depending on sources. An advertisement from 1977states that the Starcaster's first creation was in 1975. While Fender has found a significant market for period-correct (and sometimes artificially "aged") reissues of some of its classic instruments (from the mainstay Telecaster, Stratocaster, and basses through lesser-known models such as the Mustang and 12-string Stratocaster), the company has never created a Starcaster reissue, nor an updated version of the model. Recently, however, the Starcaster name has been revived for a line of "value-priced" guitars and drums, but these instruments are unrelated to the Starcaster of the 70's.

[edit] Popularity

Starcasters are still rare, but are worth less than some other semi-hollow guitars to collectors because of their unpopularity—although prices have been rising since the 1990s. There was even evidence that Fender were toying with the idea of Starcaster basses, though they possibly were not going to be marketed as a Starcaster. A Fender Starcaster can be seen in the music video to Morrissey's single "You Have Killed Me". Another reason for their rarity is that although unpopular, owners of Starcasters tend to love them and their unique sound too much to part with them.

[edit] Construction

It had a unique headstock design, with a painted bottom curve matching the color of the guitar body, that no other Fender guitar has had before or since. It was also unusual for a semi-hollow guitar in having an asymmetrical ("offset") body, a maple fretboard, a bolt-on neck, and Fender's traditional six-on-a-side tuning pegs. The original Starcaster is unrelated in design to another guitar called the "Starcaster by Fender", manufactured overseas and sold as part of a starter electric guitar package at Sam's Club and Costco outlets starting in the early 2000s.

[edit] Wide Range pickups

The "Fender Wide Range" humbucking pickups were designed by Seth Lover and appeared first on various Telecaster Custom and Telecaster Thinline models in the early '70s. They are still available in reissues of those models and although the construction of the reissued Pickups has significantly changed they are still labelled "Wide Range".