“It began as a sharp abdominal pain. A decade later I received the shock diagnosis – I had ‘Telecaster Rib’”: I spent thousands trying to identify the source of my pain – it turned out to be my Fender Telecaster

It began as a sharp abdominal pain that I dismissed as heartburn. Almost a decade later I received the shock diagnosis that I had “Telecaster Rib” – a little-known condition that’s whispered about on guitar forums but barely acknowledged by Fender.

The cause of my agony emerged after a parade of GPs, masseuses, osteopaths, personal trainers and yoga instructors failed to get to the bottom of it, until one astute chiropractor recently identified the culprit: the Fender Telecaster.

I’ve never been a particularly accomplished guitarist. My high school music teacher told me I had no ability whatsoever after a ham-fisted attempt at 12-bar blues. But I found my form when my dad restrung his old acoustic upside down. I realized I was among the ranks of Hendrix, Cobain, Iommi and McCartney as a lefty.

That limited my choice of instruments to the dusty southpaw corner of music stores – and my range was already pretty limited by my budget. I worked my way through some pseudo-Stratocaster and faux-Les Paul cheapies before raising the bar to a beautiful blonde Epiphone Sheraton II in my late teens.

That guitar took my bedroom band into to the studio, where we recorded two tracks, the Mike Oldfield- and Johnny Marr-inspired Searching Souls and the bluesy Another Day. The producer impounded Another Day unless we gave him more money than we could afford, so we never got the recording. Searching Souls sounded great, but it was a little thin in the guitar part, so I went looking for a dirtier Graham Coxon sound.

The only Blur song the Epiphone excelled at was the haunting This Is A Low and I wanted the Pixie-like crunch-and-chime of Chemical World. When I sold the Sheraton in 2015 and bought a Telecaster I said goodbye to an old friend – and hello to a decade of pain.

I was playing for several hours a day, preparing demos for another prospective trip to the recording studio, which never materialised after our drummer moved to London and the rest of us simply gave up.

Telecaster Rib began almost imperceptibly. I began to notice my suit’s left sleeve apparently receding up my arm, revealing over an inch of shirt cuff. I thought it was poor off-the-peg tailoring, but every suit was the same. I couldn’t afford tailor-made suits, so I just dealt with it.

That winter I faceplanted in the snow on a snowboard in Austria, but it didn’t seem to do any permanent damage. The pain beneath my left ribs first became apparent on a trip to Thailand the following autumn. I thought it was the local food, but it lasted several days.

I went for a massage and the pain receded, but returned when I got home. Pretty soon I was spending hundreds of pounds going for massages every six weeks. I became convinced my pancreas was trying to crawl out of my abdomen to escape my poundshop rock ’n’ roll lifestyle – but blood tests revealed my organs were still functioning.

My doctor began playing my ribs like a piano. “Tell me where it hurts,” he said. “Nope. Nope. Nope. Ouch!” I was diagnosed with a loose floating rib – one of the ones near the abdomen that aren’t connected to the sternum – which, according to the doctor, was probably acquired during my Austrian faceplant.

He referred me to an osteopath which, inconveniently, wasn’t available on the UK’s National Health Service; so I had to spend even more money on the rib. She confirmed my posture was tilted to the left. That explained the receding sleeves: the suits weren’t getting shorter but my arm was appearing longer.

She compared my ribcage to a half-pulled row of Venetian blinds, all bunched up on the left, and prescribed the treatment no ageing bedroom rock god wants to hear: exercise. A personal trainer took more of my money, guiding me through core-strengthening routines like twists and crunches. It felt like a knife piercing was my internal organs. I migrated to yoga but found some of the bends equally excruciating.

So I told a chiropractor about the diagnosis of a rib was dislocated in a snowboarding incident – but he wasn’t satisfied. He believed it shouldn’t be causing an acute stabbing pain localised in a single rib. He asked if I did any repetitive work with my left hand like painting and decorating. The only thing I could think of was strumming the guitar.

He urged me to focus on my posture the next time I played. And there it was: the sharp corner of the Tele was poking right into the offending rib. I’d failed to notice it in the past because, before I took up yoga and meditation, guitar was my meditation. We all know the transcendental experience of getting lost in our favourite solo.

I found some online discussions about Telecaster Rib, and realised it’s not a new condition. Country picker Rex Gallion and Fender’s go-to test pilot Bill Carson were among the guitar’s early critics; Carson complained, “Its square edges really dug into my ribs and it got to be unbearable.” Preach!

Carson ordered a guitar that fit “like a custom-made shirt,” and in doing so, provided the feedback that quite literally shaped Fender’s next guitar design, the Stratocaster. Fender then patented its signature contour body, or “belly cut” in roadie-speak.

The company went on to make Telecasters with a belly cut as a feature of its Deluxe, Ultra and Ultra II ranges, not to mention signature models from the Foo Fighters’ Chris Shiflett and The Winery Dogs’ Richie Kotzen. The Telecaster Thinline may also be easier on the ribs.

It’s also worth noting that the list of guitarists having difficult conversations with chiropractors is not limited to Tele players. And that Telecaster Rib is not terminal.

It can probably be avoided by raising the strap like a Merseybeat pop group, or wearing it lower down the abdomen – as long as you don’t strain your neck. Or, as one amusing forum user noted: “‘Telecaster Rib’ may be easily alleviated by ‘Beer Gut.’”

I found my expanding waistline offered little defence against those sharp edges. I did try raising the strap to plough on with the Telecaster – but, by that point, my heart was no longer in it. I’d never really been in love with it anyway – not like the Sheraton.

It could crunch like Coxon and did a mean approximation of the ’70s Stones standards, but it wouldn’t comfortably accommodate my other favorites. David Gilmour’s bends weren’t quite so bendy; Mark Knopfler’s swing didn’t, well, swing. All their iconic tunes were done on a Strat.

I could do a pitch-perfect rendition of the Telecaster-driven This Charming Man, especially when I could be bothered tuning up to the original F# key. But I missed the mark on other Smiths classics, including, ironically, The Boy With The Thorn In His Side – the first song Johnny Marr wrote on a Stratocaster.

The Tele had to go. With all the money I’d spent on medical interventions, I could have afforded a white vintage 1962 Strat like Marr’s; but in the end I settled for the very reasonable modern Player II Series.

I haven’t been disappointed. My new white Strat looks the part. The Telecaster Rib is gone. My posture is still readjusting from years of abuse, but the yoga is sorting that out – now I can do a painless padottanasana.

Shine On You Crazy Diamond sparkles, Waterfall flows, Sultans of Swing does its thing; and, crucially, I can now play The Boy With The Thorn In His Side without a thorn in my side.