Blues maestro Joe Bonamassa has, once again, teamed up with Seymour Duncan on signature Broadcaster pickups that promise to add that extra vintage, 1950s-inspired flair to your Telecaster . Joe Bonamassa's 1950 Broadcaster Set takes inspiration from the Tele predecessor, of which only 250 were built between the fall of 1950 and the spring of 1951. Right after its introduction, a trademark war ensued with Gretsch, which owned the BroadKaster trademark.
This led Fender to change the name to Nocaster, and eventually, to the model we now know as the Telecaster. As you can imagine, these guitars are now extremely rare. However, as befits a bona fide vintage collector, Bonamassa is the owner of one of these scarce models.
“The Broadcaster will be turning 75 years old next year, and it's just an incredible invention of electric guitar ,” Bonamassa tells Seymour Duncan . “My original guitar has a nice bright front pickup, which is hard to find on early Telecasters because they tend to get a little bit muddy. They're either overwound, underwound, or generally just a little lower in volume.
So it's hard to get a really nice, punchy bright front pickup.” However, according to Bonamassa, Seymour Duncan managed to capture his Broadcaster's unique tone and present it to the masses. In fact, this 2024 replica is arguably so close to the real thing, that Bonamassa himself demos the set on an affordable Squier Tele and compares these pickups to his original.
“These are the prototype.