Probably you guitar aficionados know that but for me it was new that Brian May played an original Fender broadcaster in the Back Chat video. The guitar belonged to Roger Taylor as Peter Hince told in his photo show in Castelnuovo Rangone last week. It must have been an old instrument from the 50s. I hope I have it all correct because Peter spoke Italian:-)
I always assumed it was a regular Telecaster. But if it is from the early 50's, it could indeed be a Broadcaster.
It's basically the same though - the guitar that was initially called broadcaster, was later -somewhere in the later 50's- renamed Telecaster. It's basically the same model.
Funny detail: inbetween the 'broadcaster' and the 'telecaster' period, the same model went without a type-name for a short while: the NOcaster! ;-)
The Fender Broadcaster was introduced in '49 and was renamed Telecaster in '51 due to Gretsch owning the Broadcaster name.
Seems Roger has quite a nice and rare guitar.
Well, yes, it's true. Apparently, Roger owned (owns?) a rare early fender broadcaster and you can see it in the back chat video.There is a postcard of Brian with that guitar in the pH exhibition on sale.