Electric Guitar History

Electric guitar history is very rich and goes back more than 70 years now. Before the electric guitar was first developed, there were only acoustic guitars available. While the acoustic guitars have a wonderful melodic, mellow sound, often it was hard to hear these guitars, especially when they were played with other instruments that are loud, such as brass instruments.

If you take a look at electric guitar history, you’ll find that the electric guitar was first created back in the 1930’s and after it was created it had a significant impact on the music of the entire 20th century. While there are critics at first of the new electric guitar, soon its’ ability to play with other instruments and the great creativity that it afforded won many of those critics over to the new electric guitar.

The first electric guitars that were sold to people in the general public were developed by the Electro String Company, which was founded back in 1931 by Paul Barth, Adolph Rickenbacker, and George Beauchamp. The guitars were played in the lap of a person and made from aluminum, and they were played much the same way that a steel guitar is now played. When the Gibson company saw how successful these new guitars were, they built the ES-150, which was the first electric guitar that they made and today it is still a legend.

As electric guitars became more and more popular, soon people began to see that their construction was flawed. So, at this point in electric guitar history the first solid body guitar was created. The vibration of the other guitars caused problems, so the solid body was the solution to this problem, but it was quote controversial at first.

Les Paul created one of the first solid body guitars and it was known as The Log and was created in the 40s. It was made out of a wood post that had a neck that was attached and had hardware and pickups that were home made. About the same point in time, Merle Travis and Paul Bigsby came up with an electric guitar with a solid body that was very close to today’s solid body electric guitars that you can find.

Although electric guitar history shows us that there were several electric guitars before the 50’s, during the 1950’s the electric guitars to be mass produced were produced by the Fender Company, known as the Fender Broadcasters. Later Fended would come out with the Stratocaster, which became the guitar that is the most well known one of all time today. With the success of the Fender guitar company, there were other companies that began to make guitars as well. Gibson was one of the most well known companies and the teamed together with a man named Les Paul and created the Gibson Les Paul, which is an extremely famous electric guitar that is still well known today.

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