FENDER ‘MICAWBER’ TELECASTER
Everyone would like to and many have tried but nobody plays the Telecaster like Keith Richards. He made the blackguard Tele the coolest guitar on the planet. No question. If the Telecaster is the ultimate rock ’n’ roll guitar, perhaps it was inevitable that it would find its way into Richards’ hands.
It was the late 60s when he discovered the Telecaster. “Around the same time I was getting into Telecasters I was experimenting with open tunings,” he told Guitarworld in 2002. “I don’t know why. Maybe it was because around that time, ’67, we started having time off that we didn’t know what to do with. So I started to experiment with tunings. Most people used open tuning basically just for slide. Nobody used it for anything else. But I wanted to use it for rhythm guitar... Of all the guitars, the Telecaster really lent itself well to a dry, rhythm, five-string drone thing. In a way that tuning kept me developing as a guitarist.”
Micawber is his most-famous Telecaster. A 1950s Tele in Butterscotch Blonde, it was a 27th birthday present from Eric Clapton and soon found itself decamped to Nellcôte as the Stones took shelter from the UK taxman under the hot sun in the South of France. Exileonmainst. was brewing, and Micawber was there from the ground up. That’s when the toolbox came out. The low E string was removed as Richards continued his exploration into open G tunings. Further modifications changed the menu. A Gibson PAF humbucker was installed at the neck, a pedal-steel pickup at the bridge. Fundamentally, it a ’54 Tele with a ’52 Esquire neck, Micawber (which takes its name from Dickens’ Davidcopperfield) is a triumph of Richards’ whatever works ethos, but it arguably kick-started the aftermarket for Fender modifications. In the 80s, Richards’ tech Alan Morgan sourced a brass bridge plate and saddles to make it more roadworthy. With no saddle for the sixth string, Richards’ number one Telecaster is a specialist instrument, a Frankenstein beast tuned G D G B D for songs such as Brownsugar, Honky-tonkwoman and Can’tyouhearmeknocking.