Electric guitar

Electric guitar is a guitar using pickups to convert its metal string vibration into electricity. This is amplified with an instrument amplifier. The output is altered with guitar effects such as reverb or distortion. The earliest electric guitars were hollow bodied acoustic instruments with tungsten steel pickups made by Rickenbacker in 1931.

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There has always been a quest for louder instruments. The guitar was a good candidate for amplification due to its acoustic properties and for its potential as a polyphonic solo instrument. The need for an amplified guitar became apparent during the big band era, as orchestras increased in size: particularly when guitars had to compete with large brass sections.
The first electric guitars used in jazz were hollow archtop acoustic guitar bodies with electromagnetic transducers. By 1932 an electrically amplified guitar was commercially available. An early commercially successful solid-body electric guitar was the Fender Esquire in 1950.
Electric guitars were originally designed by luthiers, guitar makers, electronics enthusiasts, and instrument manufacturers. Guitar innovator Les Paul experimented with microphones attached to guitars. Some of the earliest electric guitars adapted hollow bodied acoustic instruments and used tungsten pickups. An electrically amplified guitar was developed by George Beauchamp in 1931.
Commercial production began in late summer of 1932 by Electro-Patent-Instrument Company Los Angeles, a partnership of Adolph Rickenbacker, Paul Barth and George Beauchamp, the inventor. The wooden body of the prototype was built by Harry Watson, a craftsman who had worked for the National Resophonic Guitar Company (where the men met). By 1934 the company was renamed Rickenbacker Electro Stringed Instrument Company.

The earliest documented performance with an electrically amplified guitar was in 1932, by Gage Brewer. The Wichita, Kansas-based musician had an Electric Hawaiian A-25 (Fry-pan, lap-steel) and a standard Electric Spanish from 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. Brewer's original 1932 Ro-Pat-In Electro Spanish guitar can currently be viewed at the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum.

The first recordings using the electric guitar were by Hawaiian style players, including Andy Iona in 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 1, 1938, Sweetheart Land and It's a Low-Down Dirty Shame. Some incorrectly attribute the first recording to Eddie Durham, but his recording with the Kansas City Five was 15 days later.

The solid body electric guitar is made of solid wood, without functionally resonating air spaces. Rickenbacher, later spelled Rickenbacker, offered 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.

The first solid body "Spanish" standard guitar was offered by Vivi-Tone no later than 1934. An example of this model, featuring a guitar-shaped body of a single sheet of plywood affixed to a wood frame, can be seen in the Experience Music Project. Another early, substantially solid Spanish electric guitar was marketed by the "Rickenbacker" guitar company in 1935 and made of an early cast plastic called Bakelite. By 1936 the Slingerland company introduced a solid body electric model made of solid wood.

A functionally solid body electric guitar was designed and built by Les Paul from an Epiphone acoustic archtop. His log guitar, shares nothing in design or hardware with the solid body "Les Paul" model sold by Gibson. However, the feedback problem associated with hollow-bodied electric guitars was understood long before Paul's "log" was created in 1940; Gage Brewer's Ro-Pat-In of 1932 had a top so heavily reinforced that it essentially functioned as a solid-body instrument.

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.