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A Brief History of the Electric Guitar

The soft sound of the classic guitar evolved to the louder, brasher steel-strung flat and arched top guitars of the tw~nties and thirties. The invention of a metal resonator guitar-the Dobro and N ationaL-produced a more piercing sound. Even with Lloyd Loar's and Guy Hart's creation, the L-S, (its sound is referred to as "cutting power"), more was needed.

In the early days guitarists played into mikes, or put mikes on or in guitars. Feedback and unwanted noise was a continuing problem. A method was needed that could make loud music solely from the guitar's strings. As music became more professional, musicians' styles expanded. The desire to play quickly over the complete fret length led to the development of the neck being joined to the body at the 14th fret instead of the 12th like a classical guitar. This allowed for easier playing. But still more was needed.

One of the first companies to tackle the range of play challenges of the instrument commercially was Gibson. Gibson made the LRS Premier in the thirties with a cut-away to facilitate fingering, and an arched fretboard to help further. Some modern electrics virtually join neck and body at the last fret.

The earliest substantiated electric pick-up for a guitar is the electrostatic device made by a Gibson engineer by the name of Lloyd Loar around 1923. This device had two diaphragms with charged particles separated by an insulation material. The diaphragms were copper discs about the size of a half dollar. An electric current was induced in these discs and leads were taken off with a capacitor in series to the grid of the amp used. This assembly had a very high impedance, about 1 Meg Ohm. The unit was encased in bakelite, but it was never possible to seal against humidity, making it noisy and less sensitive.

In 1924, Loar developed an electric pickup for the viola and the string bass. In Loar's pickup design, the strings passed vibrations through the bridge to the magnet and coil, which registered those vibrations and passed the electric signal on to an amplifier. The first commercially advertised electric guitar, made by the Stromberg-Voisinet company in 1928, utilized a similar pickup, with vibrations being picked up from the soundboard.

Carl Countryman, the makers of a sophisticated phase-shifter, currently makes an electrostatic capacitance pickup for pianos. This type of pick-up is now technically possible with integrated circuits. Capacitance pick-ups cannot tolerate any length of cabling between the transducer and the necessary pre-amps. In 1923, before solid state electronics, this would have meant a tube amp inside a guitar.

In 1924, Lloyd Loar left Gibson to form his own company to manufacture electric instruments. It was about this time that he made an electric double bass. However, satisfactory consumer response and technical devolopment of electric instruments did not occur for another ten years.

In 1928, the Amperite Company, in conjunction with Benjamin Messner, made a contact microphone that was used on guitars.

In the late twenties and early thirties, inventive musicians adapted phonograph cartridges for guitar pick-up use. Alvino Rey and Les Paul are two of the musicians who have had a hand in this area of experimentation. Les Paul continued with his electric guitar experiments which in time culminated in the Gibson-Les Paul guitars.

Mr. De Armond was a musician who 'developed a pickup for "F" hole guitars in about 1931. He worked with Horace Rowe and together they made the Rowe-De Armond pick-up, style FH-C. The Rowe Company was one of the first suppliers of pick-ups to guitar makers. As far as I'm concerned, not enough credit is given to the Rowe Company for the development of the electric guitar.

Fred Tavares, who invented the Stratocaster, made an electric guitar in 1932 by using an RCA phonograph pick-up adapted for use on his guitar.

George Beauchamp and Paul Barth made an electric guitar in 1931. Beauchamp's guitar had a pick-up that was made with a coil-surrounded by horseshoe magnets. These magnets were tungsten steel that had been subjected to an intense prolonged electric current (thanks to the power company next door) to make them magnetic.

Since Western Electric made amps and held most of the patents, the Rickenbacker Company, for which Beauchamp worked, arranged for a co-use of patents between the companies. The production model Hawaiian guitar had a one-piece aluminum body with a hollow neck. The patent, No. 2,089,171, was not obtained until August I 0, 1937.

In 1932, the Dopyera Brothers (DOBRO) made a few of their resonator guitars with an electric pick-up in conjunction with guitarist Art Simpson. This guitar's pick-up had high impedance and was made with a bar magnet wound with copper wire. It is thought to be the first manufactured electric Spanish guitar. The Gibson Company started to make electric steel guitars and Electric Spanish guitars in the '30's. The E.S. series continues to the present. During this time John Moore joined Gibson, and 'together they developed the Gibson Electraharp. This was the first pedal steel.

Lyon and Healy was the firm that manufactured the amplifiers that Gibson used with its first electric guitar. This Hawaiian guitar was shaped similar to a Rickenbacker BD-6 and had a cast aluminum body like the earlier "frying pan." Though information is scarce, it is believed that this electric steel guitar was first made in 1935. The Gibson Co. made electric Hawaiian guitars (EH-150), electric Spanish guitars (ES-150), and electric tenor banjos (ETB-150) in the late thirties, all with similar wire wound bar magnet pick-ups.

In 1947, Paul Bigsby and Merle Travis worked together in Downey, California to develop the first solid body electric guitar to be used conventionally, that is, not a Hawaiian guitar. It is shaped like a Spanish guitar and fretted with fingers. It is similar in shape to a Les Paul. It has an alnico bar magnet high impedance pick-up. Ted McCarty who supplied me information believes it is made of maple.

Leo Fender and Doc Kaufman worked together to produce the K and F electric steel guitar in 1944. In 1946 Kaufman left. In 1948 Leo Fender with George Fullerton built the first solid wood-bodied electric guitar to achieve economic and musical success. Mr. Fender began developing this guitar himself in 1947. This guitar was the Broadcaster. It is similar to the Bigsby-Travis guitar. Very soon the name was changed to Telecaster, since Gretsch had used that name-Broadcaster-for the drums and banias they made. A later development of the K and F guitar made by Fender had many of the same features, but had a solid pearloid plastic body.

In order to cope with the prdblem of acoustic feedback (the guitar body vibrating from amplifier speaker sound) in electric Spanish guitars, the fifties saw the creation of guitars with less body depth. These thin body guitars are less prone to feedback.

In 1954, Fred Tavares worked with Fender to invent the Stratocaster, which is probably the most popular electric guitar. And in the mid-fifties Rickenbacker came out with a guitar that had a built-in pre-amp. In ,order roM it inside. hearingaid tubes were used.

In 1973, the patent ran out on the humbucker and now nearly all guitar companies make one now. The humbucker was not the ultimate pick-up though. Much work has being done to develop pick-ups of strong response that are of high fidelity.

Several years ago, the quest of sound reproduction was in the direction of clear, faithful sound. In the 70s there was a demand for super powerful pick-ups that could overdrive an amp to produce distortion and many varieties of sound. Since artificial distortion and effects pedals have taken the place of overdriving tube amps this has become less of a priority.

The Gibson Super Humbucking with ceramic magnets encapsulated in epoxy and was made for this overdrivng amps. This pick-up was made by Bill Lawrence and Walter Fuller.

In the late sixties the Gibson Co. and Les Paul developed the Les Paul Recording guitar. A high and low impedance switch allows the guitar to be either low impedance for direct injection into a recording studio board or nornal high impedance performing amps for concert use.

Work is being done on pick-ups that are variable in impedance and have separate controls for picking-up each string.

Electric Transducer Pickups

Piezo-electric transducers have been around for a long time, but the technology required to produce acceptable sound is recent. There has not been very much enthusiasm for these devices in the past, but now with the very successful Ovation acoustic/ electric guitars, many guitar companies are interested.

A piezo-electric transducer contains a type of natural crystal Of manufactured ceramic material which generates an electro-mechanical force when subjected to mechanical stress. A Transducer is a device that is activated by power from one system and supplies power in a different fonm to another system. When a string is vibrating back and forth, it is causing changing pressures (mechanical stress) on the piezo-electric.transducer. It works by changes of pressure, not electromagnetic fields. Any type of strings can be used. Some of the natural crystals that can be used are rochelle salts, tourmaline, quartz, and even, though to a much lesser extent, cane sugar crystals. As early as 1880 Pierre and Jacques Curie discovered that some crystals when compressed in particular directions showed positive and negative charges on parts of their surfaces. (I) There are two basic types of piezo-electric elements. One type works by applied direct pressure, the other works when put under a beriding pressure. The former requires more force to drive. The Rowe Company makes a pick-up with a Lead Zirconate Titante crystal bonded to an acoustic diaphragm. This device is very efficient and does not require a pre-amp to boost its signal like most other piezo pick-ups.

Gibson has made a pick-up used on one of their guitars, model C 100E, that used a bending crystal. This pick-up had a silver plate pressure-formed coating on each side with leads from opposite sides of the crystal. There was a separate element for each string. It was made from 1964 to 1967. Other popular pick-ups are Barcus Berry and F.R.A.P. (flat response audio pick-up). I know someone who uses a Barcus Berry on their cello. The F.R.A.P. pick-up is the invention of Arnie Lazurus. He developed it in 1969 and states that it gets a virtually flat response (faithful sound reproduction) from 5 cycles per second to 100,000 cycles per second. That's a range from far below human hearing to far above. This unit, that requires four batteries for a portable pre-amp, is probably the most advanced piezo pick-up made.

The Barcus-Berry pick-up is the creation of Les Barcus and John Berry of Long Beach, California. The "Hot Dot" pick-up is a recent Barcus-Berry concept. Two dot-like piezo elements inserted into a guitar bridge (a nodal area) receive acoustic string energy and cancel ,finger noise.

The Ovation acoustic/electric guitars are the ones that showed what could be done. The pickup uses separate elements under each string-with a pre-amp built into the guitar with a volume knob on the outside "Lyrachord" bowl. The sound reproduction of these guitars is very accurate.

Ray Butts worked with Chet Atkins to develop the Gretsch Filtertron pick-up. The Filtertron has a double row of magnets with a separate coil for picking-up each string. Gretsch pioneered stereo guitars with a pick-up split in half. Three bass strings had their own lead and the three treble strings had theirs.

In about 1968 or 1969. the Gretsch Company made a guitar-the "Rally"-with a pre-amp. The Roc II likewise has solid state internal electronics. The HI-A Company makes a low impedance, high output pick-up that has separate outputs for each string. The pick-ups are encapsulated in epoxy resin. Gretsch makes their Supertron I with laminated iron cores which support the dual coils and extend to the magnet used in common. It is felt the laminated iron gives an edge to the sound. The Supertron II looks similar but has solid iron cores (bars).

Alembic makes some advanced electronic circuits, which are covered in the chapters, "Historically Significant Guitars" and "Electric Guitar Pickups.

The evolution of the acoustic guitar travels at the pace of craftspersons handworking wood and pa~ tiently listening to sound. The evolution of the electric guitar occurs at the speed of developments in the scientific/industrial electronics industry. The lag between developments in one branch of electronics and when those developments are used by the music industry is closing. One guitar in particular, the Rickenbacker 360, is a good example of the current rapid evolution. This guitar, brought out in about 1960, is now undergoing so many changes that it is hard to write about. A new two-octave neck and continual pick-up changes are currently a mark of this guitar.