Electric Guitar history for the music enthusiast! Here’s a look at the history of the electric Guitar and how it has evolved over the years.
Electric Guitar History: Evolution of Electric Guitar over the Years
Though Guitars and other similar stringed instruments have been around for hundreds of years, the electric guitar comparatively has a much younger history when you compare it with the Classical / Acoustic guitars.
Before the modern solid-body electric guitars, guitar makers experimented with the sound of the acoustic guitar by amplifying it using microphones or tungsten pickups. Tungsten pickups were usually placed in the sound hole below the strings, to amplify the sound of the acoustic instruments.
Origins of the Electric Guitar
Going back to the origin of the electric guitar, it was first manufactured somewhere in the 1930s by Rickenbacker.
And what was the need for it? It was because during those times, it was very difficult for a guitar to be heard in orchestras, because of the loudness of other music instruments, especially the brass sections.
Electric guitars, because of their ability to be plugged into amplifiers, perfectly filled this gap and as a result its popularity began to increase during the Big Band era of the ’30s and 40s.
The concept used in the earliest electric guitars was not very different from what it is today. In the sense that pickups were used to convert the vibration of the strings into electrical current, which was then fed to an amplifier to produce the sound.
The earlier electric guitars used tungsten pickups!
Evolution of Electric Guitars
The very earliest Electric guitars had smaller sound-holes in the body. However, with the use of pickups, it was possible to create guitars without soundholes that had the ability to be heard, if plugged into amplifiers. Both these types of electric guitars are popular even today.
Gibson Les Paul Electric Guitars
The Gibson Les Paul is one of the most popular electric guitars and this is how it came into existence.
Musician Les Paul in 1941, invented the solid body electric guitar which was made of solid wood with no soundholes. His original guitar had a rectangular block of wood which was connected to a neck with six steel strings. Over the years the rectangular shape changed to the more rounded shape which Les Paul guitars have today. And that’s how Gibson Les Paul electric guitars came into existence.
Fender Electric Guitars
Gibson and Les Paul were not the only ones try to invent an electric guitar. Another inventor named Leo Fender also came up with a solid body Electric guitar of his own pretty much around the same time.
And these two continue to be the most popular electric guitars even today!
Fender introduced the Fender Broadcaster Electric guitar in the late 1940s, which was renamed to Stratocaster after being officially launched in 1954.
The Strat, as it is now known, had a different shape, different hardware and was significantly lighter than the Les Paul.
Over the years, several other companies, such as Paul Reed Smith, ESP, Ibanez, Jackson, and Yamaha have also started producing solid body Electric guitars of their own. However, most Electric guitars still feature the familiar shape of a Les Paul or Strat guitar. In fact Fender’s Stratocaster Electric guitar is the second most popular guitar in the world, second only to the Les Paul guitars.
KeytarHQ editorial team includes musicians who write and review products for pianists, keyboardists, guitarists & other musicians. KeytarHQ is the best online resource for information on keyboards, pianos, synths, keytars, guitars and music gear for musicians of all abilities, ages and interests.
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