A Brief History of the Electric Guitar
The Electric guitar is relatively new to the music scene compared to the classical guitar which has been around for thousands of years. Electric guitars only recently appeared on the music scene around 80 years ago. Since then, the electric guitar has continually evolved to become one of the most popular instruments today.
The original classical guitar’s soft and melodic tone often made it difficult to play with other musicians since the guitar sound would just be drowned out by the other instruments. So during the big band era of the 1930’s the electric guitar was invented in order to artificially amplify the sound of the guitar. The first electric guitars were manufactured by the Electro String Instrument Corporation. The earliest known recording that made use of an electric guitar was in 1938 and was made by George Barnes who was a jazz guitarist. However the electric had already been used in live performances as early as 1932.
Since the sound was now amplified by pickups, there was no need for sound holes in electric guitars anymore, so the solid body electric guitar was born and thus became the standard by which electric guitars are made. Solid body guitars are the most prevalent form of electric guitar today, and they were first invented by Les Paul in 1941. The first solid body guitar invented by Les Paul was nothing more than a rectangular block of wood connected to a neck that had 6 metal strings attached to it. This design slowly evolved and was introduced by Gibson in the 1950’s. The Gibson Les Paul quickly became a popular electric guitar has remained so for the last 50 years.
Around the same time another inventor by the name of Leo Fender came up with his own version of a solid body guitar. Originally this guitar was called the Broadcaster but was later changed to the Stratocaster and was introduced to the public in 1954. The Strat and the Les Paul are vastly different in that they used different material and different hardware. The Strat is also significantly lighter than the Les Paul. Fender’s Stratocaster also became popular and was made famous by guitarists like Jimi Hendrix who totally re-invented the way the guitar could be played.
Today, Gibson and Fender are still producing some of the best electric guitars on the market but with the introduction of other brand’s such Ibanez, Yamaha, Paul Reed Smith and ESP, the market has become crowded. With new and better technology available, manufacturers are now incorporating better technologies in the electric guitar that are produced in order to improve the sound. Modern day electric guitars today have built in software allowing them to sound like other types of guitar and even have fitted pickups to synthesize the sound of different instruments.
The electric guitar has come a long way since its humble beginnings in the 1930’s and has gone on to change the way music is produced completely. Anyone who has ever picked up an electric guitar also knows that it has an even brighter future ahead of it.
