The Different Strummer

Back in the early 1990s I did a few “guitar shows” for my son’s primary school classes, basically a show-n-tell with half a dozen guitars in various shapes and colors.  I’d conclude with “Swamp Thing,” the then-popular TV show theme adaptation of the Troggs’ classic.

At the end, I’d ask the kids which was their favorite guitar.  The verdict would vary except one of the finalists always included the Bond Electraglide.  Dead cool black carbon graphite and LEDs.

Yeah, man, LEDs!  I confess I was probably drawn to the Bond for much the same reasons as those kids!  I mean, what’s not to like about a unibody molded carbon graphite guitar with pressure switches read on LED displays and without frets.

Rewind that.  “Without frets?”  Curiouser and curiouser.

The Bond Electraglide was one of those weird bursts of genius in guitar history that turned into a weird bust.  The Bond in question was a Scotsman named Andrew Bond.  Bond’s original idea was for the fretless fingerboard, which he dubbed a “pitchboard.”  In a Guitar Player product review at the time we learn that Bond originally put one on an acoustic guitar way back in 1972.  For me the pitchboard is the most troublesome feature of the Bond.  Instead of inlaid metal frets, the pitchboard consists of a succession of triangular structures where the angle point serves as the tonal point of contact with the string.  Or the “fret.”  The theory is that this greatly reduces friction and thereby increases your playing speed, I think.  The feel of this design is sort of like a scalloped fingerboard.  My problem when I try to play one of these is that for some reason I have trouble navigating.  I keep overshooting the note I’m aiming for because I don’t feel the metal fret.  Maybe it’s just me.

Well it probably wasn’t just me, because, as you probably know, the Bond Electraglide didn’t take the guitar world by storm.  But then there are those LEDs.  The electronic controls on the Electraglide were designed by one Dave Siddeley.  Basically, those three rocker switches are on-offs for the three pickups, color coded red, yellow and green.  The bridge and neck pickups are humbuckers, with the middle unit being a single-coil.  The top three push-buttons on that five-button assembly are for volume, bass, and treble.  To set the level you hold them down to set from 0 to 10.  The two lower buttons switch the humbuckers in and out of phase.  Now, let’s review.  There will be a test.

1. We may have uncovered another problem with the Bond. While the controls are not difficult, there’s a lot of button pushing to do.  While staring at an LED screen.  Sort of like driving and texting.  You end up kind of figuring out a sound you like and sticking to it.  But the LEDs sure do look cool.

One other person involved with the Bond was Dave Stewart, guitarist with the Scottish duo The Eurythmics.  The guitar does have a look that went with that band’s sort of disco-y, high-tech, New Wavey style.  The Bonds were made in Scotland and distributed in the U.S. by Unicord, the company that did the Univox brand back in the day.  The Bond Electraglide was introduced in 1984 and dropped by the wayside in 1986.  They were pretty pricey, with a list price of $1,195 for a stoptail, $1,295 for a vibrato version.  They came with a transformer box, locking strap, and hardshell case.

The Bond Electraglide provides a great example of how you can overthink things when it comes to guitars.  Guitar players are notoriously conservative blokes.  Give us a threeway switch and a couple knobs.  For the more adventuresome, make it a fiveway!

Then again, those primary school kids who rocked out to “Swamp Thing” are part of the generation that today walks around with its nose in a cell phone, texting and driving.  There was a reason they always picked it as one of their favorites.  Maybe the Bond Electraglide was just way ahead of its time.  Maybe if we added a detachable cell phone to work the controls the Bond Electraglide the next big thing, complete with a dead cool black carbon graphite unibody and brightly colored LEDs.  It’d make your heart sing, it’d make everything…groovy.

Fretless Wonder from MyRareGuitars.com

The Different Strummer

I never really warmed up to headless guitars.  Oh, they were really cool looking and there’s no denying Andy Summers had real style playing a Steinberger for The Police.  But I guess I’m old fashioned.  I need a head to keep me oriented.  Still, present me with something made out of airplane material like this Modulus Graphite Flight 6 Monocoque, and I’m interested, even with no head.

Turns out this guitar is a study in contradictions.  I actually interviewed the man responsible for designing and producing this guitar—I’m pretty sure it was Modulus Graphite founder Geoff Gould, but it was so long ago, I forget.  Modulus Graphite was, as I’m sure you know, basically known for making hollow carbon fiber necks for basses and, occasionally, guitars.  Gould, who worked as an engineer in California’s aerospace industry, got the brainstorm that he could build a stronger, more uniform and more stable by using the tough and strong carbon graphite, which was employed in making lightweight but highly stress resistant components for aircraft.  This was around 1977-78.

Of course, Kaman/Ovation had already had that idea a decade earlier, but for guitar bodies (and tops), not for necks.  And, about the same time Gould was working out his neck ideas, Ned Steinberger was developing his headless, graphite basses and guitars in New York.

Gould’s idea was pretty good and well-received by bassists.  The company had a good long run, only closing down in 2013.  Modulus Graphite’s heart was primarily set on basses, but they did make a number of guitar lines, including the Genesis series and some interesting Blackknife models.  These guitars all had heads.  As near as I can tell, Modulus Graphite’s guitars were never as popular as their basses.  But then, bassists have historically been much more receptive to innovative technology than guitarists, who tend to be stuck in the wooden mud, as it were.

Probably partially inspired by Steinberger’s creations, Modulus Graphite decided to try its hand at a graphite headless guitar.  This effort resulted in 1983 in the experimental Flight 6 Monocoque guitars.  The Flight 6 name is obvious because the carbon graphite that makes up the entire guitar is aircraft material (“flight”) and it’s a 6-string guitar!  Duh.  Monocoque is a term used primarily in the aerospace industry basically meaning surface bearing structure.  In other words, the object’s “skin” provides the structural strength, like an egg.  There is no “frame” or internal structural support.

Basically this is a self-enclosed “tube” of molded carbon graphite.  I don’t really know how they made this thing, but the neck and body are all one and hollow.  There’s a brass plate at the end of the neck, to hold the strings and no doubt to provide access for wiring this puppy.  According to Gould, since this was a “high-tech” guitar, and so as to not take away from the novelty of the guitar design itself, Modulus Graphite equipped the Flight 6 Monocoque with basic guitar electronics.  The pickups are standard Seymour Duncans, a Custom at the bridge and a Jazz at the neck, with a threeway select and simple volume and tone controls.  The tuners are Gotohs.

If it was me I’d have tricked this out like a B.C. Rich, with as much tricky electronics and I could squeeze into this melted Steinberger.  How about a phase switch and coil taps?  And a preamp circuit?  I’m fine with the simple volume and tone, though.  I never could get into fiddling with micro-adjusting each individual pickup’s tone, but that’s just me.  Oh well.  Everything is, after all, a matter of taste.  But this doesn’t mean that any of this makes this guitar inadequate in any way.

This guitar really is a work of art, questions about electronics preferences aside.  It is really comfortable and, assuming you’re going to pump it through some effects, gets the job done.  Gould told me approximately how many of these were made, and it wasn’t many.  I forget the figure after all these years, but it was in the neighborhood of 20 or so.  Enough to qualify as pretty rare.

As I said, most guitar players would rather play a Les Paul or a Strat than a headless carbon graphite monocoque thingy.  Tastes for headless guitars and other oddities come and go.  One thing to consider, though. It’s been more than 30 years since the Modulus Graphite Flight 6 Monocoque guitar appeared.  It’s ultra-light.  Don’t know about you but 30 years on from my prime, I appreciate anything that’s lighter rather than heavier to schlepp around these days.  Prepare for take-off!

Seat-backs straight. Prepare for Take-off. from MyRareGuitars.com

The Different Strummer

Blame it on disco.  I remember it well…as an observer, of course!  The excesses of early ‘70s hard rock inspired a vapid dance craze reaction toward the end of the decade with mirror balls and platform shoes and, well, you know, Studio 54, glitter spandex, and Donna Summer and all that.  The music was mostly played with keyboard synths and drum machines, fairly new technology at the time.  The guitar press predicted: It’s The End of guitars as we know it.  But was it really?  (Obviously, we all know the answer to that rhetorical question!)

I didn’t really pay much personal attention to disco.  I didn’t dance and I didn’t hear too many guitar solos to make me interested in listening.  I was working at a commercial classical radio station at the time and my greatest exposure was a somewhat satirical—and as it turned out quite successful, I might add—disco party for key advertisers, for which I had to obtain the music.  I was mildly alarmed by the press predictions regarding the demise of guitars, but I needn’t have worried.

Anyhow, the response of the guitar industry was to try to turn guitars into synth controllers.  Keyboards are ideal synth controllers.  They are immediate and precise.  You hit a key and you get a clear electronic connection that is instantly, easily, and unequivocally recognized by the machine and its software.  They’re perfectly polyphonic.  And once you eliminate the need for anything but the keyboard—no strings, no soundboard, no pipes—they can become quite compact and portable.

Guitars…well, not so much.  A good clean note is obtained with good clean contact between the string and the fret, but you know how often that doesn’t happen!  We bend notes, even when we don’t intend to.  We move our fingers around to put “English” on the tones.  In short, despite the best efforts of brilliant engineers at Roland, Korg, Yamaha and elsewhere, guitars make lousy synth controllers at best.  To play guitar synth you’d best possess pretty darned good technique.

Don’t get me wrong.  I really admire the synth guitars that were created during the period from roughly 1977 to 1987 or so.  But if you want to play some disco, get a keyboard.

That said, there were some interesting attempts to create a hybrid solution, notably by Casio, like this nifty little 1987 DG-10 Digital Guitar. Okay, I hear you sniggering about this toy guitar.  You might say it doesn’t even look much like a guitar, although, if you recall guitars from the 1980s, you remember there was some weird stuff that was popular, from minimalist headless Steinbergers and Kramer Dukes to Prince’s elaborate guitar sculptures.  All right, I’ll give you that it looks more like a toy than a guitar.

But let’s not focus on what it isn’t, let’s concentrate on what it actually is.  This juicy little “toy” is actually a full-blown amp-in-guitar and MIDI controller.  The fingerboard is a rubber touch pad with, presumably, articulated “frets” with 6 contact points each.  The nylon strings are all like 3^rd strings.  Yamaha did this same thing on its synth controller, by the way.  I suspect that’s to equalize the contact using identical string mass.  There’s a built-in battery-powered amp with 4” speaker.

You can play this like a guitar, or guitars.  On top you can choose from 20 preset sounds.  You can add automatic percussion rhythms.  Pick the tempo.  Punch in sustain and reverb, and change the key.  On the front you have an on/off switch, master volume and rhythm volume.  You can mute your guitar, activate or turn off the rhythm sounds, add in some fill.  Oh yes, and there’s a manual drum machine pad if you’re dexterous, with a choice of cymbals, low tom, hi tom, and snare drum sounds.

And if that’s not enough, you can send the signal out to an external amp.  You can plug in headphones.  Pick two MIDI modes, omni or poly, to coordinate with whatever gear you use.  Plug in a MIDI DIN cable.  And use an AC plug, should you be so inclined.

Yeah, any kid can figure this toy out.  Well, maybe a kid could.  I never got past the amp in guitar with automated drum machine and I hope my life never depends on knowing the difference between omni and poly synths.  Not that I mastered even just playing guitar.  I think I played at a couple of my son’s baseball games, sitting in the bleachers doing “charge” sounds.  But the Casio DG-20, in the right hands, might just be the guitar you need to do disco!

For the record, as it were, I did continue to peruse disco record bins for a few years—disco was LP music, before CDs—and found, to my great surprise and delight, that there actually were some disco disks that featured hot guitar licks!  Metal guitar disco.  Numerous disco-flamenco fusions.  Rasgueado goes great with the turn-around pump of “unh-uhh, unh-uhh, unh-uhh.”  They were never too popular, though.  Blame it on disco.

1987 Casio DG-20 Digital Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com

I never really thought much about Japanese guitars back in the day.  By the time they started showing up, I fancied myself a “folksinger” and was plunking on Harmony and Guild acoustics.  I didn’t pick up an electric again until late in the decade and Japanese guitars still weren’t on the menu.  But I kind of shared the standard opinion.

The truth is, of course, that Japanese guitar designers probably could have made copies of Fender Jazzmasters—and, indeed, except for a smaller size and certain details, they did with some early guitars—but they weren’t really trying to.  The Japanese weren’t really thinking about “copies” yet, like they would a decade later.  But they did have their eyes on guitars being made in England by Jim Burns!  As is obvious the moment you ogle those big pointy horns and the nifty multi-part pickguard on this Montclair.

Later, when I became interested in these strange beasts, my opinion began to change quickly.  While these guitars looked a little goofy at times, I began to learn that they weren’t so poorly made, after all.   As Jack Westheimer use to tell his associates about their role, they were there to sell guitars, not set them up.  Make sure the neck angle’s right, set the saddle intonation, adjust the action, optimize pickup height, and these guitars often turn into mean playing machines.  And they don’t sound like a Strat.  That’s the whole point!

Anyhow, I’d seen other Montclairs and really didn’t have a clue about them.  Who made them?  And for whom?  That is, until I started to look into it recently.  I still don’t know who imported/sold Montclairs.   They’re actually fairly plentiful, relatively speaking, so it must have been someone kind of significant.  But now we know a bit more about who actually built this guitar.

This Montclair is basically identical to an Ibanez Model 3904.  Montclair was just one of the labels produced by Hoshino at its Tama factory beginning in 1962.  In addition to Ibanez, other brands made by Tama included Continental, Goldentone, Tulio, Jason, and others.

According to internet sources—notoriously unreliable—Hoshino/Tama began producing guitars inspired by Burns London—especially the Burns Bison—almost from the beginning.  For sure by 1963, they produced the Models 994, 1802, 1803, 3902, and 3903, the final digit signifying the number of pickup units.  These same sources suggest that these Burns-style guitars were produced at least into 1966.  The Tama factory was closed down in 1967, so that would be the outside limit in any case.  There’s really no way to tell when this guitar was made.  I’ve assigned 1964 to it because I’m pretty certain the 3904 was in production by then.

The Burns Bison was famous for introducing the “Wild Dog” effect. I actually bought a Burns just to experience that sound.  Which was a bit underwhelming.  Actually, it was just two pickups out of phase.  I guess “wild” was a little milder in the early 1960s than today!  Oh well.  The Tama-made Montclair didn’t feature the Wild Dog effect.  But it was relatively sophisticated.  Four sliders activated each pickup, though, as was often the case in the ‘60s, the differences were more subtle than distinctive.  The two other switches let each pair of pickups alternate between solo and rhythm modes, basically toning things down with a capacitor for chording behind your lead singer.  The rollers are tone controls, the knobs volumes.  The 2-piece maple neck is reinforced with a generous piece of mahogany, an idea borrowed from classical guitars.  Plus there’s an adequate truss rod.  The body’s a big chunk of premium mahogany.

In retrospect these Montclairs were pretty decent guitars, available amazingly early, given the old prejudice against Japanese guitars.  No, it’s not a Strat or a Jazzmaster.  But if you have a yen to light up a rave on Apache or Little Deuce Coup, you could do a heckuva lot worse than plugging in a well set-up Montclair Burns Bison copy.  And you’d sure look clean and cool, Fender guitars notwithstanding.

Vintage Surf n’ Turf from MyRareGuitars.com

     Forgive me if I’ve told this autobiographical story before (age isn’t kind to short-term memory), but it’s pertinent to this guitar. I didn’t really become interested in electric guitars until the mid-1980s, even though I’d been playing for 30 years by then.
My first electric was a used Gibson ES-225T in the late 1950s that I used to learn Chet
Atkins licks. I switched over to acoustics when folk music was big, playing electrics
again in the late ‘60s in a blues/r’n’b band. Our best number was a spirited version of
the Box Top’s “The Letter.” Still like that song. Then I became a classical guitarist.
And a writer. These are not, fyi, aerobic activities. And I don’t descend from a line of
skinny people.

By the early 1980s I felt I needed some physical activity. I went to Sears and
bought a primitive exercycle. I got a good set of Koss headphones to hook up to my
KLH. But I needed some juice. Despite playing Bach, Sor and Giuliani for nearly a
decade, I’d kept up with my Guitar Player magazine subscription. In its pages I’d been
reading about Ozzie Osbourne (whoever the hell he was) and his rave new guitarist
Randy Rhoads. So I went out and bought a copy of his record (when a record was a
record, an actual vinyl artifact with 12” cover artwork), Blizzard of Oz.

Indelibly imprinted on my brain is that first bike ride. I set the needle at the very
outside of the lead-in groove and hopped on the bike.
DuddleyDuddelyDAHdadaDuddleyDuddelyDAHdada. To quote a current Hyundai
commercial, “Holy [bleep].” As a guitarist, I hate song lyrics on principle, but when the
singer croons “What’s the future of mankind, don’t ask me ‘cause I got left behind; Don’t
ask me, I don’t know,” well, I’m hooked. Better than “The Letter.” Randy Rhoads? I’d
never heard guitar playing like that. Bach for rock n’ roll.

What followed was a descent into Heavy Metal. I’d missed all popular music
after 1972 or ‘73. Three Dog Night and Jethro Tull were the last things I’d listened to
before switching to Julian Bream and John Williams. By total coincidence I found
myself at the beginning of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, affectionately dubbed
by critics at the time NWOBHM. Hmm…

I bought magazines. I devoured records. I began to notice the guitars. The
tastes of the NWOBHM and the nascent American correlatives, which would eventually
become known as neo-classical metal, liked Flying Vees and Explorers and other
non-Spanish-shaped guitars, often with custom graphic finishes.

It would be a few years before I started collecting electric guitars, by which time
the guitars of the NWOBHM were becoming passé. But my interest had been piqued
and I began picking up some of the more noble examples. Like this 1983 Aria Pro II XX
Deluxe, part of their XX Series.

Basically, it’s a mini-Vee with graphics. I’m not sure
what the body is, but it’s lightweight, maybe poplar or alder. I don’t know who made it.
Aria was/is a trading company. Trading companies did the marketing and distribution,
working with a family of factories to provide whatever product they needed. Many of
Aria’s better models were produced by the legendary Matsumoku in Japan, but these
XXs do not have that vibe. Instead, these remind me more of the Ibanez Axstars of
1986 which were made not at FujiGen but at Chushin, also in Japan. To quote Randy
Newman’s theme for Monk, I could be wrong now, but I don’t think so.

If you’re going to hop around on-stage in Spandex—which I, needing an
exercycle, sure as hell would never do—you could do a lot worse than this Aria. The
neck is lacquered black, which increases speed. The two Protomatic V humbuckers
(probably Gotohs) are decently hot. In 1983, when this was made, locking vibratos had
yet to conquer the world, so we still have a traditional style. This particular guitar was
found as new old stock, never having been previously sold or played. Pretty neat.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since these heavy metal guitars were
popular. Not least of which is being able to buy inexpensive Japanese guitars for sale
in the U.S. Nevermind whatever is the latest iteration of Heavy Metal, which is eons
away from NWOBHM. And my exercycle rides hooked up to my KLH. (Not to mention
even KLH.) For the record (history, not vinyl), I try to walk 3 miles every day, plugged
into an iPod with SkullCandy earbuds listening to…sorry, the latest Solomon Silber or
Ana Vidovic classical guitar CD. But, I confess, every once in a while on my walks I dial
down to Ozzie and Randy wailing on “Don’t ask me, I don’t know (know, know, know).”

Don’t Ask Me, I Don’t Know! from MyRareGuitars.com

The first wheel ever invented to be used for transportation would be obsolete by todays standards. It was probably made out of a chunk of heavy stone, and while it may have made life easier thousands of years ago, to use one today would make you that much more thankful for rubber and spokes. Inventions go through different iterations, and with each one new problems arise that lead to the necessity of improvements.

After “the Frying Pan”, guitarists and guitar manufacturers alike began to electrify their instruments so that they could be heard at new levels. At the time, hollow-body archtops were the guitar of choice – and if you’ve ever plugged in a big jazz box and tried to really crank it, then you know why this could lead to problems. A huge, open, resonant chamber combined with pickups that are mounted rather loosely is a recipe for two electrified problems; a small amount of amplified sustain, and worse, feedback. Guitarists were overjoyed that they could turn up and be heard within a band, but the design of the guitar at the time forced them to stay within a limitation.

A few great minds recognized this, and over the years sought to bring a solution to the commercial world. It’s not fair to give the credit to just one person, so lets go over three of the main contributors, whose efforts led to the success of the solid body electric guitar of the modern world.

1. Les Paul and “The Log”

Les Paul was a tinkerer from a young age. In the 1920’s, he discovered that he could amplify his guitar by using the mouthpiece from a telephone. He also discovered that this method created an unbearable amount of feedback, so he reduced the sound by filling the guitar’s body with plaster. An effective plan, but also effective at making the guitar weigh far too much! He kept experimenting with different builds and ideas,  (including one that involved a body made of steel from a railroad yard) but returned t his hollow-body builds having not yet struck gold.

Some 10 years later, he decided to return to the solid build idea. Les installed a homemade tremolo unit to a 4×4 piece of pine, added a neck and some pickups, and then attached two pieces from a sawn-in-half Epiphone archtop to make it look appealing. He brought his creation to Gibson in the early 1940’s, but in the words of Marty McFly, “I guess they just weren’t ready for it yet.”

The company rejected the instrument, thinking that it looked ridiculous. You wouldn’t think it to look at it, but this 4×4 is what laid the groundwork for what would later become one of the most iconic electric guitars in the industry.

When the 1950’s rolled around, and Fender came out with their “Broadcaster”, Gibson worked fast to come up with their own single-cut solidbody. Les Paul worked alongside Gibson’s Ted McCarty to build the very first “Gibson Les Paul”. It’s been more than 60 years now, and take a look – not much has changed! That’s the sign of a truly great invention.

2. Leo Fender and the Esquire/Broadcaster/Telecaster

Seeing all the same problems that Beauchamp, Rickenbacker, and Paul saw with the state of the electric guitar at the time, Leo Fender wanted to join in the electric solid body fun. There were, however, a few additional issues that Leo wanted to address in his design. For example, players were looking for a guitar neck that made for “faster” play and better intonation to allow them to play impressive lead guitar more accurately.

1950 saw the release of the Fender Esquire, a single-pickup solidbody guitar that did not have the same feedback issues that hollow body electrics had. In addition to this, the Esquire featured adjustable saddles for the strings, so players could raise and lower their guitar’s “action”, as well as fix intonation issues that made them sound out of tune. Instead of gluing the neck into the body, Fender decided to use screws to bolt it on. This made it far easier for manufacturing and future repairs.

Later that year, Fender released a two-pickup version of the instrument and named it the Broadcaster. It was during the production of this model that they implemented a truss rod into both models, giving the ability to compensate for any bowing and buckling the neck experienced. The “Esquire” name was dropped, and the single pickup version adopted the “Broadcaster” name. This didn’t last long, however, as Gretsch had a drum-kit named the “Broadkaster” and wasn’t too thrilled with Fender. It wasn’t long before Fender had to drop this name too, and coin the iconic name the “Telecaster” we know today.

3. Paul Bigsby and the “Travis” guitar

Though the name is most widely associated today with a high-quality tremolo unit, Paul Bigsby has been previously referred to as “the an who could build anything”. In fact, around the same time Les Paul was trying to convince Gibson to take his invention, Mr. Bigsby was working on lap steel, followed by pedal steel builds. Paul wasn’t concerned with mass producing commercially successful instruments – instead, he worked with respected artists of the day and built instruments specifically for their needs. Earl “Joaquin” Murphey and Wesley Webb West are perhaps the two earliest examples, having built lap and pedal steels for both of them. As Paul kept building, he kept coming up with new ideas and inspirations. H began to make pickups, and it was due to these that he caught the attention of Merle Travis.

In 1944, Paul had begun experimenting with the idea of a solid body electric guitar. Merle had contacted Paul around the same time, and expressed his interest in a solid body, noting that he believed such a build would allow for more sustain than a hollowbody electric. Travis planned out a design, and commissioned Paul to bring it to life. The resulting build was dubbed the “Travis” guitar, and featured a hollowed-out bird’s eye maple body, and a headstock with 6-in-line tuners. In looking at pictures, it’s hard to deny the similarities between this guitar’s features and the designs of a couple others that actually came after it:

In fact, it is said that Paul Bigsby, Leo Fender, and Les Paul had meetings to discuss guitar building and design. It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that these three got ideas from each other, whether they gave it willingly or not. The fact that Fender’s 6-in line headstock on the Stratocaster with such a similar shape was bothersome to Bigsby (so much so that it eventually led to an unsuccessful lawsuit), but not so much that it would slow him down. He maintained his “artist” approach – building instruments by himself for individual clients. While this approach ultimately led to a 2-year waiting list, it may very well be the reason that Bigsby was responsible for revolutionizing so many key elements in guitars – when an artist asked for a customization, he would figure out a way to incorporate it. A guitar built for Jimmy Bryant (purchased by Billy Byrd) for example may have been the first solid body electric to feature a double cutaway:

Another example would be when Merle Travis asked Paul to come up with a tremolo unit that worked well and kept the guitar in tune. That’s what led to the earliest form of what we know today as a “Bigsby” unit. The original featured a fixed arm and a bridge that rocked back and forth, allowing the strings to return to pitch. Guitarists flocked in to get a unit installed, and it wasn’t long before Gibson struck a deal with Bigsby to use his invention (though, slightly modified) on their instruments. Once again, Paul Bigsby had revolutionized the electric guitar.

If it weren’t for these and other tinkerers and inventors, we’d all be playing Hawaiian folk music with frying pans. Not that there’s anything wrong with that… but I think we can all agree and be thankful for the existence of the modern solid body electric guitar, and its contributions to the music world today.

The Origins of the Electric Guitar: Part 3 from MyRareGuitars.com

Most people shop at grocery stores and go to restaurants to stay fed rather than hunt and grow their own crops. We send e-mails instead of writing letters. Rather than go to a shopping mall to buy everyone’s Christmas gifts, more and more people are opting to sit at their computer and buy everything from an online store. These are all fantastic inventions that are successful for really just one reason: they make things more convenient.

In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, there was an inconvenience in the music world that led to the invention of what would eventually become one of the most popular instruments in the world. The problem at the time was that classical, jazz, and blues guitarists were struggling to be heard. Guitar soloists in large groups were almost non-existent, as horns and brass instruments would just blow them away. The guitar was seen as a background rhythm instrument, despite players being more than capable of playing impressive lead melody lines and being heard in smaller groups.

Some musicians tried to amplify their guitars by attaching different resonant materials to the body, while others experimented with carbon microphones. Their efforts worked to some degree, but the quality of sound suffered drastically. There was a pressing need to accurately make the guitar louder, but the most practical solution to this problem didn’t arrive until 1931.

Many people believe that the first electric guitar was built by Les Paul and dubbed “The Log.” While this was a landmark achievement, it was actually not the first time a guitar was accurately amplified. That credit belongs to George Beauchamp and Adolph Rickenbacker, who worked together to create the first usable electric guitar. They worked with an already known phenomena known as  “electromagnetism”, and perfected the use of a device that we all know today as a “pickup”. The device basically works by converting string vibrations into an electrical signal through the use of electromagnets. The signal is then amplified, and released through a speaker as audible sound.

Around the same time the jazz and classical guitarists were having difficulty being heard, lap-steel musicians were facing a similar problem. This instrument was to be played as a lead, focusing on the melody of a song, and was therefore imperative for it to be heard above everything else. For this reason, the first instrument to get the Beauchamp and Rickenbacker treatment was a lap steel guitar designed by Harry Watson nicknamed the “Frying Pan” for obvious reasons:

These electrically enhanced guitars began to be manufactured under the newly named “Rickenbacker Electro Stringed Instrument Company”, and received an official model name of the “Rickenbacker Electro A-22.” Along with these, Rickenbacker created another guitar (the Electric Spanish) to begin production at the same time. Below you can see the first known public appearance of both models, in a 1932 issue of the Wichita Beacon.

And so, the electric guitar was born. From here, the instrument was adopted and improved upon by various different companies as it began its rise in popularity across the globe.

The Origins of The Electric Guitar: Part One from MyRareGuitars.com