Fender Starcaster

The Fender Starcaster was a semi-hollowbody electric guitar made by the Fender company. The Starcaster was part of Fender's attempt to enter the semi-hollowbody market, which was dominated by Gibson's ES-335 and similar designs.

Design and production

The Starcaster was designed by Gene Fields to be a high quality instrument, although it was manufactured at a time when Fender's standards had lowered considerably. Unlike most semi-hollow guitars which had their necks set in the bodies in the traditional style, the Starcaster retained Fender's bolt-on neck design, which at the time, used a three-bolt joint.

The Starcaster was in production from 1976 or 1977 to 1980 or 1982, depending on sources. An advertisement from 1977 states that the Starcaster's first creation was in 1975.^[1]

Re-use of Starcaster name

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. There was evidence that at one point Fender were toying with the idea of Starcaster basses, though they possibly were not going to be marketed as Starcasters. The Starcaster name was, however, recently revived for a range of "value-priced" Starcaster by Fender guitars and drums unrelated to the Starcaster of the 70's.

Popularity

The Starcaster 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". As a result, Starcasters are very rare, but are worth less in today's vintage market than many other semi-hollow guitars from the same period to collectors because of their unpopularity and lack of name endorsers at their time of manufacture. Despite (or possibly because of) their modest vintage investment value, several modern high profile guitarists use the Starcaster as a preferred instrument. Jonny Greenwood, guitarist of Radiohead, can frequently be seen playing a Starcaster on stage. Sammy James, Jr., guitarist and front man of the Mooney Suzuki, uses a natural finished one and appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien with it on June 21, 2007. The guitar can also be seen in the music video to Morrissey's single "You Have Killed Me". Dave Keuning of The Killers also started using one shortly before the release of the album Sam's Town. He could be seen playing his Starcaster during The Killers headline slot at Glastonbury Festival 2007, on Later... with Jools Holland for "Read My Mind" and in the videos for "For Reasons Unknown" and "Human". Trey Anastasio of Phish plays a custom Languedoc guitar that was originally designed after the vintage Fender Starcaster. Arctic Monkeys guitarist Jamie Cook can also be seen playing one at the 2009 Reading Festival, also in the video for the 2009 single 'Crying Lightning'. Chris Walla of Death Cab For Cutie has occasionally used a Starcaster live Chris Walla - Starcaster.

Construction

The Starcaster 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. (Some prototypes of the Fender Marauder guitar, a model cancelled before production and also designed by Fields, had a similar headstock design.) It was also unusual for a semi-hollow guitar in having an asymmetrical ("offset") body, a maple fretboard, a bolt-on neck, a novel control configuration consisting of a volume and tone control for each pickup as well as a master volume control, and Fender's traditional six-on-a-side tuning pegs.

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Notable Starcaster users

• Rubén Albarrán of Café Tacvba^[2]
• Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead (first used on the album OK Computer, it can be also heard extensively on Kid A and Amnesiac)^[3]
• Steve Mazur of Our Lady Peace^[4]
• Jesse Tobias of Morrissey^[5]
• Bob Weir of The Grateful Dead
• Wayne Hussey of The Mission and The Invisible Girls
• Jamie Cook of Arctic Monkeys (clearly seen in the video for Crying Lightning)
• Chris Walla of Death Cab for Cutie^[6]
• Dave Keuning of The Killers (in the video for For Reasons Unknown)
• Martin Gore of Depeche Mode
• Wes Borland of Limp Bizkit^[7]
• Mert Caner of The Flue
• Taylor York of Paramore^[8]
• Leo Nocentelli of The Meters^[9]

Notes

External links

• Photograph of original Starcaster
• A number of reviews from owners, some refer to the new stratocaster replic.