Parsons Green B-string bender for TL

String bender for Telecaster, also known as a ‘B bender’. It allows you to bend the B-string by moving the strap button. With your guitar hanging on a strap, pulling your guitar down will raise the B string one note up. This adds a bending option very similar to using a pedal on a pedal steel guitar. The ‘B bender’ is still widely used in country and other related styles.

Hipshot has developed a modern version of this Bender in association with Gene Parsons himself. To fit and mount this bender the guitar body must be routed extensively. A routing template is available from Hipshot. We recommend to ask a guitar repair shop or luthier to install it.

Some background: Gene Parsons designed this B-bender in 1965 together with Clarence White, a distinguished country-style guitar player.

Gene: “One of Clarence’s innovative guitar techniques was to chime the high E or B string and bend it up a full tone by pulling the string down above the nut. This worked great in open position but on this particular tune he wanted to play the lick up the neck. He needed another hand to do it. I provided the third hand on that occasion. It was a great sounding lick although having both of us play one guitar wasn’t going to work for live performances. We were both intrigued by the musical possibilities of having a third hand to play guitar.

I knew there had to be a way for Clarence to bend the string himself. I offered to install pedals and cables like those used on pedal steel guitars. Clarence refused because he wanted something that would fit inside his guitar case.” Clarence and Gene joined The Byrds in 1968. On the ‘Sweetheart of the Rodeo” album the B-Bender is used often, especially on the song ‘You Ain’t Going Nowhere”.

In 1989, when demand overtook his production capacity, Parsons partnered with folk musician Meridian Green, hence the name change to the ‘Parsons/Green B-Bender.’

Weight: 593g. Accessories: instruction manual, drawings