Les Paul, Duane Eddy, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Slash, Van Halen and Yngwie Malmsteen. If you have a passion for the electric guitar, then you are sure to have heard about these epic legends who attracted legions of worshipful followers. But how did the actual instrument come to be?
As technology started advancing, more refined musical instruments became possible. Hitting the highest point in the 20th century, during the ‘60s and ‘70s, the electric guitar became a vehicle for musicians and an arena of competition amid great guitar players of the era. But many feel the need to ask an array of curious questions: What’s the story behind the electric guitar? Who invented it? How did it all start?
To properly answer such questions, it’s important to debunk one common misconception. Contrary to popular belief, Les Paul wasn’t the inventor of the electric guitar, credit for this instrument goes to George Beauchamp and Adolph Rickenbacker, a musician and an electrical engineer, respectively. These are rightfully considered to be the people who created the first commercially practical modern amplifiable electric guitar.
Beauchamp and Rickenbacker were the foremost to actually achieve the modern electrically amplified guitar with sound superiority good enough to use in a professional music setting. The want for an electric guitar came to be because the classic guitar was too quiet to complement the music a band produced in many backgrounds. This problem became manifest in the concert hall music of the 1880s. Eventually, the need for a modernisation of the guitar was palpable.
Beauchamp, who played Hawaiian guitar, designed the first ever crude electric guitar right in his own house. According to Richard Smith, a guitar historian, Hawaiian music as a genre was an influential factor in the creation of the electric guitar. Initially transformed to raised-string (“steel”) guitars from wooden Spanish-style hollow guitars, these Hawaiian steel guitars were placed across the knees and played horizontally, which gave rise to the term “lap guitars” or “lap steel guitars.” Eventually, some were made from brass, and were much louder than the wooden varieties. At the same time in history that lap steel guitars began to be made of metal, electrical amplification was becoming an actuality.
It so happened, Beauchamp bumped into Rickenbacker at the Dopyera Brothers, a guitar manufacturer in Los Angeles, and they agreed to work on an electric-guitar project together. As a man who loved to experiment and dare new to do new things, Rickenbacker was an innovator in his field, founding The Rickenbacker International Corporation, a company whose singular purpose was to craft and manufacture electric musical instruments.
After a lot of experimentation, Beauchamp and Rickenbacker finally invented an electromagnetic tool which picked up the vibrations of the guitar strings with great precision. Basically, the electromagnets translated these vibrations into an electrical signal, which then amplified and played through speakers. Pickups on a new model designed by Harry Watson- the aluminium lap steel guitar was installed in 1931, and was dubbed the “Frying Pan” due to its size and shape, and thus, the first commercial prototype finally became a reality.
In the summer of 1932 manufacturing got under way by the Ro-Pat-In Corporation, later rechristened the Rickenbacker Electro Stringed Instrument Company, with the “Frying Pan” the first commercially viable electric guitar: a modest beginning for an instrument that would quickly come to rule the world of pop music.
Music has always been an important part of the life of humans, it is the universal language. Some experts even speculate that music produced by humans may have come before language. If you want to enrich your life with the musicality of the electric guitar, we highly recommend you to take up music lessons in Guernsey, at the School of Popular Music. Our teachers endeavour to deliver a solid foundation of learning how to play the electric guitar. For more information, click here to get in touch today.
