As successful as Fender’s Telecaster was, it soon became apparent that the design left plenty of room for improvement.

They abandoned the Telecaster’s “stab” body design for a sleek, double-cutaway shape with contours to fit the player’s body. They added a third pickup and upgrade the Tele’s three-piece adjustable saddle system to six pieces – one for each string.

They also introduced a new vibrato – which Fender erronously called “tremolo” – that offered players a truer return to pitch than the Bigsby design that had been the industry standard. They upgraded the blonde, whitewashed finish of the Tele with a two-tone sunburst finish.

Don Randall, Leo Fender’s partner in Fender’s sales and marketing division, named the new model Stratocaster.