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Early years
Sketch of Rickenbacker "frying pan" lap steel from 1934 patent application.Electric guitars were originally designed by an assortment of luthiers, guitar makers, electronics enthusiasts, and instrument manufacturers. Guitar innovator Les Paul experimented with microphones attached to guitars.[2] Some of the earliest electric guitars adapted hollow bodied acoustic instruments and used tungsten pickups. This type of guitar was manufactured beginning in 1932 by Electro String Instrument Corporation in Los Santos under the direction of Adolph Rickenbacher and George Beauchamp. Their first design was built by Harry Watson, a craftsman who worked for the Electro String Company. This new guitar which the company called "Rickenbacker" would be the first of its kind.[3]
The earliest documented performance with an electrically amplified guitar was in 1932, by guitarist and bandleader Gage Brewer. The Wichita, Kansas-based musician had obtained two guitars, an Electric Hawaiian A-25 (Fry-pan, lap-steel) and a standard Electric Spanish from his friend George Beauchamp of Los Angeles, California. Brewer publicized his new instruments in an article in the Wichita Beacon, October 2, 1932 and through performances that month.
The first recordings using the electric guitar were made by Hawaiian Style players such as Andy Iona as early as 1933. Bob Dunn of Milton Brown's Musical Brownies introduced the electric Hawaiian guitar to Western Swing with his January 1935 Decca recordings, departing almost entirely from Hawaiian musical influence and heading towards Jazz and Blues. Alvino Rey was an artist who took this instrument to a wide audience in a large orchestral setting and later developed the pedal steel guitar for Gibson. An early proponent of the electric Spanish guitar was jazz guitarist George Barnes who used the instrument in two songs recorded in Chicago on March 1st, 1938, Sweetheart Land and It's a Low-Down Dirty Shame. Some historians incorrectly attribute the first recording to Eddie Durham, but his recording with the Kansas City Five was not until 15 days later.[4] Durham introduced the instrument to a young Charlie Christian, who made the instrument famous in his brief life and is generally known as the first electric guitarist and a major influence on jazz guitarists for decades thereafter.
The first recording of an electric Spanish guitar, west of the Mississippi was in Dallas, in September 1935, during a session with Roy Newman and His Boys, an early Western swing dance band. Their guitarist, Jim Boyd, used his electrically amplified guitar during the recording of three songs, "Hot Dog Stomp" (DAL 178-Vo 03371), "Shine On, Harvest Moon" (DAL 180-Vo 03272), and "Corrine, Corrina" (DAL 181-Vo/OK 03117).[5][6][7] An even earlier Chicago recording of an electrically amplified guitar—albeit an amplified lap steel guitar—was during a series of session by Milton Brown and His Brownies (another early Western swing band) that took place January 27-28, 1935, wherein Bob Dunn played his amplified Hawaiian guitar.[8]
Early proponents of the electric guitar on record include: Jack Miller (Orville Knapp Orch.), Alvino Rey (Phil Spitalney Orch.), Les Paul (Fred Warring Orch.), Danny Stewart (Andy Iona Orchestra), George Barnes (under many alias), Floyd Smith, Bill Broonzy, T-Bone Walker, George Van Eps, Charlie Christian (Benny Goodman Orch.) Tampa Red, Memphis Minnie, and Arthur Cruddup.
Early electric guitar manufacturers include: Rickenbacker (first called Ro-Pat-In) in 1932, Dobro in 1933, National, AudioVox and Volu-tone in 1934,Vega, Epiphone (Electrophone and Electar), and Gibson in 1935 and many others by 1936.
The version of the instrument that is best known today is the solid body electric guitar, a guitar made of solid wood, without resonating airspaces within it. Rickenbacher, later spelled Rickenbacker, did, however, offer a cast aluminum electric steel guitar, nicknamed The Frying Pan or The Pancake Guitar, developed in 1931 with production beginning in the summer of 1932. This guitar sounds quite modern and aggressive as tested by vintage guitar researcher John Teagle. The company Audiovox built and may have offered an electric solid-body as early as the mid-1930s.
Another early solid body electric guitar was designed and built by musician and inventor Les Paul in the early 1940s, working after hours in the Epiphone Guitar factory. His log guitar (so called because it consisted of a simple 4x4 wood post with a neck attached to it and homemade pickups and hardware, with two detachable Swedish hollow body halves attached to the sides for appearance only) was patented and is often considered to be the first of its kind, although it shares nothing in design or hardware with the solid body "Les Paul" model sold by Gibson. In 1945, Richard D. Bourgerie made an electric guitar pickup and amplifier for professional guitar player George Barnes. Bourgerie worked through World War II at Howard Radio Company making electronic equipment for the American military. Mr. Barnes showed the result to Les Paul, who then arranged for Mr. Bourgerie to have one made for him.
[edit] Fender
Main article: Fender Musical Instruments Corporation
Sketch of Fender lap steel guitar from 1944 patent application.In 1946, radio repairman and instrument amplifier maker Clarence Leonidas Fender—better known as Leo Fender—through his eponymous company, designed the first commercially successful solid-body electric guitar with a single magnetic pickup, which was initially named the "Esquire". This was a departure from the typically hollow-bodied Jazz-oriented instruments of the time and immediately found favor with Country-Western artists in California. The two-pickup version of the Esquire was called the "Broadcaster". However, Gretsch had a drumset marketed with a similar name (Broadkaster), so Fender changed the name to "Telecaster".
Features of the Telecaster included: an ash body; a maple 25½" scale, 21-fret or 22-fret neck attached to the body with four-bolts reinforced by a steel neckplate; two single-coil, 6-pole pickups (bridge and neck positions) with tone and volume knobs, pickup selector switch; and an output jack mounted on the side of the body. A black bakelite pickguard concealed body routings for pickups and wiring. The bolt-on neck was consistent with Leo Fender's belief that the instrument design should be modular to allow cost-effective and consistent manufacture and assembly, as well as simple repair or replacement. Due to the earlier mentioned trademark issue, some of the first production Telecasters were delivered with headstock decals with the Fender logo but no model identification. These are today very much sought after, and commonly referred to by collectors as "Nocasters".
In 1954, Fender introduced the Fender Stratocaster, or "Strat." The Stratocaster was seen as a deluxe model and offered various product improvements and innovations over the Telecaster. These innovations included a well dried ash or alder double-cutaway body design for bridge assembly with an integrated spring vibrato mechanism (called a synchronized tremolo by Fender, thus beginning a confusion of the terms that still continues), three single-coil pickups, and body comfort contours. Leo Fender is also credited with developing the first commercially successful electric bass guitar called the Fender Precision Bass, introduced in 1951.
[edit] Vox
In 1962 Vox introduced the pentagonal Phantom guitar, originally made in England but soon after made by Alter EKO of Italy. It was followed a year later by the teardrop-shaped Mark VI, the prototype of which was used by Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones, and later Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls. Vox guitars also experimented with onboard effects and electronics. In the mid 1960s, as the sound of electric 12-string guitars became popular, Vox introduced the Phantom XII and Mark XII electric 12-string guitars as well as the Tempest XII which employed a more conventional Fender style body and thus is often overlooked as a Vox classic from the Sixties. The few that were manufactured also came from Italy. Vox also produced other traditional styles of 6- and 12-string electric guitars in both England and Italy, The 12-string electric guitars had a much larger neck and body and averaged at the weight of 26.4 pounds(11.9kg), they were also played on tables such as a piano or other sit down instrument.
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