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The electric guitar may be the most important and popular instrument of the last half-century in American Music. Certainly its introduction brought a major change to American musical technology. While shunned as a novelty during its first appearances in the 1920s, the electric guitar today is at home in classrooms, concert halls, garages (heh heh heh), and even in marching bands(given a long enough extension cord)! The electric guitar has shaped the sound and direction of modern musical styles, especially blues, rock and roll, country, and rhythm and blues. The silhouettes of popular electric models have become icons around the world. Once seen as an unremarkable example of American manufacturing technology, electric guitars are now valued as much for the artistry of their craftsmanship as for the sounds they make. Musicians and avid collectors prize certain vintage models, and many guitars made in the years before World War II up through the 1960's sell for many times their original price.

The guitar's history comprises a legacy of invention and innovation that takes in not only key individuals and businesses, but also thousands of players, tinkerers, enthusiasts, and listeners who secured its place in American life. The electric guitar came to prominence through the desire of musicians and inventors for a louder, better, and different sound. Because the electric guitar helped musicians to create in new ways, they and their listeners heard new things and imagined new possibilities about their music and, ultimately, about themselves and the world.

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Invention

Since the introduction of the modern Spanish-style guitar in the mid-19th century, players and makers have searched for ways to amplify the instrument's sound; bracing the back and top, installing sound posts similar to those in violins, introducing metal resonators (Dobro still makes them!), and experimenting with sizes and styles of bodies, all led to increases in volume. In the 1890s, Orville Gibson's carved-body guitar not only increased the volume, it also set standards for instrument makers in the early 20th century and blazed the trail for the archtop guitar.

In the 1920s, the focus turned to the principles ofelectricity as a possible aid. One of the pioneers experimenting with electronics was engineer Lloyd Loar, who as early as 1923 developed an electrostatic pickup system that sensed vibrations in the soundboard of stringed instruments.

In 1932, Adolph Rickenbacker marketed an Hawaiian or lap-steel guitar, known as the Frying Pan, with an electromagnetic pickup system that sensed vibrations in the strings. Others tried to adapt this idea to Spanish hollow-body wooden instruments, but were troubled with feedback in the amplification of vibrations in the body of the guitar as well as in the strings.

In the 1940s, Leo Fender, Les Paul , and Paul Bigsby began building guitars with solid wooden bodies, which circumvented the feedback problem. It also led to new designs and new sounds.

Sensors aka Pickups

Today, pickups are electromagnets mounted under the guitar strings that sense the strings vibrations and convert them into an electrical signal.There are two basic kinds of pickups: single-coil and double-coil, or humbucking; the latter gives a fuller sound, and less noise, as its name suggests.

Rickenbacker Electro Hawaiian Guitar, the Frying Pan Electro String Instrument Corporation Los Angeles, California, about 1931

This lap-steel instrument is not the first electric guitar. But it did feature a horseshoe-shaped pickup in which the strings travel over a coil and through two electromagnets, essentially the technology used on all electric guitars today. Constructed from a single piece of wood, this guitar was the prototype for a cast-aluminum model nicknamed the "Frying Pan."

Working for Rickenbacker, George Beauchamp applied for a U.S. patent on this instrument in 1932, but by the time the issue of its operativeness was settled in 1937, other inventors had developed electric guitars of their own.

During the 1930s, inventive individuals experimented with guitar bodies made from a solid piece of wood rather than with soundboards over a hollow chamber, partly for ease of fabrication, partly to prevent feedback. One of the most prominent was Les Paul, who, in 1940 made his first instrument by dismembering a hollow-body guitar and gluing the halves to a solid block of pine fitted with two electronic pickups. This instrument, dubbed The Log, was presented to Gibson around 1946. Although the company did not use his design as a prototype, it did exploit his name to promote its first line of solid-body guitars in the 1950s.

Gibson Model ES-150 Gibson Inc., Kalamazoo, Michigan, around 1937

Introduced in 1936, this was the first Spanish-style electric guitar to achieve commercial significance, thanks in part to Charlie Christian, an inventive jazz soloist who gained prominence with the Benny Goodman Sextet. Christian took what had been considered a novelty and brought it to the forefront as a lead instrument.

The ES-150s design featured a one-piece steel bar surrounded by the pickup coil and two magnets below the strings, rather than the horseshoe configuration, with magnets surrounding the strings, as per Rickenbacker's design.

K&F Lap Steel with Amplifier K&F Manufacturing Corporation Anaheim, California, around 1945

The K&F lap steel was radio repairman Leo Fender's initial electric guitar design. He created it in partnership with Doc Kauffman, who had worked for Adolph Rickenbackers Electro String Instrument Corporation. Completed around 1943, the instrument had a solid oak body and mail-ordered fingerboard, and was designed to be played like a Spanish guitar. But Fender's Direct String Pickup, based on early phonograph pickups that had a needle suspended through a coil, proved better suited to the Hawaiian style.

Kauffman and Fender applied for a patent on their pickup in 1944 and received it four years later, after Kauffman had left the company(way to go US Patent Office!).

Design

Today, makers of electric guitars often emphasize materials, finishes, and overall design as much as the technological aspects of their instruments. Style and craftsmanship are important to the marketing success of electric guitars, and solid-body designs provide greater freedom to reflect and influence cultural values, since amplification of sound does not depend on the shape of the body. However, ask any guitarist and they will tell you what they think is good and what's not; to each their own.

Commercial Success

As with many inventions, the electric guitar initially met with skepticism from traditionalists, performers, as well as manufacturers. But country and blues players and jazz instrumentalists soon took to the variety of new tones and sounds that could be produced. This was an unanticipated feature of the electric guitar that allowed musicians to explore innovative ways to alter, bend, and sustain notes.

The instruments volume and tones proved particularly appealing to the enthusiasts of rock and roll, which emerged in the mid-1950s. While it was important to other genres, the electric guitar was utterly central to rock and roll, and its keening, biting, and wailing sounds were at the heart of the cultural revolution that rock and roll symbolized. The media capitalized on the image of the rock and roller with his slicked-back hair, leather jacket, motorcycle and electric guitar. And with the mass production of highly desirable instruments such as Fender's Stratocaster and Gibson's Les Paul model, teenagers across the country could reinvent themselves in terms of a vision of musical rebellion and independence.

Gibson Les Paul Standard, or Sunburst Gibson Inc., Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1959

After its introduction in 1952, Gibson's Les Paul model went through a variety of modifications that culminated in the classic Standard, or Sunburst, in 1958. Its maple cap on a solid mahogany body and twin-coil humbucking pickups make it highly suitable for rock music. Famous players like Eric Clapton helped this guitar become one of the most popular ever.

The electric guitar's development reflects the broadest changes in American culture over the century. The instrument comprised a hybrid of craft and industrial processes, a bridge between radically new and comfortably established traditions. Its detractors often centered on the instrument's strangeness and difference, claiming it was not in keeping with pure, "authentic" musical sound. Many defenders pointed to its infinite tonal possibilities, in effect declaring that the strange and the new were as authentic as the time-honored.

The guitar's history also mirrors the cultural values and trends in the United States over time. The clean lines, elegant ornamentation, and smooth, sleek surfaces of 1930's and 1940's electrics such as the Gibson ES-150 and the K&F lap steel reflect the high tide of American industrial modernism, reaffirming faith in mass production despite the Great Depression.

During the post-World War II era, seemingly radical guitars like the Fender Stratocaster and the Gibson Flying V echoed the popular cultural focus on space-age modernity. The Strat recalled the modern tail fins and imaginative colors of Detroit's cars, while the Flying V literally appeared ready for takeoff. These instruments reflected American faith in consumer culture and in the future.

Fender Stratocaster, Fender Electric Instrument Company Fullerton, California, 1954

The Stratocaster is arguably the most successful electric guitar ever produced. It is easily identified by its double cutaways, contoured body, and three pickups. It also featured Fender's vibrato system that allowed players to raise or lower the pitch of the strings. In the hands of Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt, and many others, the Strat has become an American icon.

Fender Broadcaster, Fender Electric Instrument Company Fullerton, California, 1950

The Broadcaster, Fender's first mass-produced solid-body guitar, initially was derided by competitors as too simple and lacking in craftsmanship. Yet everything about its patented practical design was optimal for production in large quantities.

The model's name was changed to Telecaster in 1951 due to accusations of trademark infringement. The many famous artists who have played the Telecaster, such as Jeff Beck and Bruce Springsteen, propelled it to the status of a classic.

Bass

Fender invented the electric bass in 1951 in response to requests from musicians for a louder, easier-to-handle bass. Although there were earlier stand-up electric basses, none could compare. This new instrument was named the Precision Bass. Unlike its predecessor, the P-Bass had frets, which allowed bassists to play with precision. And since it was built on the standard Fender solid body, the P-Bass was played like a standard electic. Needless to say, a new era was born and the sound of popular music changed forever. Being the most famous and popular electric bass ever made, its name is often used generically for any electric bass.

Fender Precision Bass, Fender Electric Instrument Company Fullerton, California, 1957