Some experts argue that the Rickenbacker Electro Spanish, introduced in 1935, was the first Spanish-style solid-body electric guitar, even though it did not actually have a solid body. Parts of it were hollow, but solely in the interest of reducing weight. In design and performance, it functioned as a solidbody guitar, virtually eliminating the acoustic feedback that plagued early hollow-body electrics. It was made of Bakelite, the first synthetic plastic, which, because of its weight, resonates less readily than wood. The Electro Spanish had stainless-steel cavity covers to hide the hollow parts of the guitar, a detachable neck, and horseshoe pickups. Because Bakelite is very heavy, it was smaller than other guitars of the period, and it must have been awkward to play.
However, since the Rickenbacker Electro Spanish was not intentionally conceived of as a solid-body guitar, the credit for inventing the solid-body goes to others, including Les Paul. In 1941 he made a solid-body guitar that he dubbed “The Log” by attaching a Gibson guitar neck to a four-by-four-inch pine board about a foot and a half long and fitting it with strings and two homemade pickups. Later he cut up and glued the body of a traditional acoustic guitar to the board to make it look slightly more conventional.
Then around 1947 Paul Bigsby, a Los Angeles machinist, teamed up with the country singer and guitarist Merle Travis to design a solid-body electric guitar that more closely resembled the ones we know today. Bigsby also developed a tremolo arm, sometimes known as a vibrato arm or whammy bar, that altered the pitch of notes by changing the tension on the strings when it was moved up and down.
But it was Leo Fender who first successfully mass-produced and sold a solid-body Spanish-style electric guitar. His simply constructed Fender Broadcaster of 1950 (renamed Telecaster in 1952 as the result of a trademark dispute), with its bolt-on neck, was initially derided by competitors as too simple and lacking in craftsmanship. Gibson’s president, Ted McCarty, dismissed it as a “plank guitar.” Yet everything about its patented, practical design was optimal for production in large quantities. The Broadcaster/Telecaster was immediately successful, spurring other guitar companies to follow Fender’s lead.
Some dispute remains about whether the Broadcaster’s design was adapted (or stolen, depending on one’s viewpoint) from the Bigsby/Travis guitar. We do know that Leo Fender was already familiar with the concept of solid-body construction, since he had made lap-steel guitars out of solid planks of wood in the 1930s and 1940s. In any event, Fender was the one who made the solid-body electric guitar cheap enough for the masses; people called him the Henry Ford of the Electric Guitar.
Fender revolutionized the music world again with his 1951 electric Precision Bass. Although there had already been electric standup basses, the “P Bass” was the first commercially successful model to be played like a guitar. (Paul Tutmarc, of Seattle, had built electric guitars, including basses, starting in the mid-1930s and sold them through his company, Audiovox Manufacturing, but they were never widely used.) The Fender Precision had frets like a guitar, making it easier for players to hit an exact note, hence the name Precision. Monk Montgomery, the bassist with Lionel Hampton’s band, is credited with making the instrument a musical sensation, and even today P Bass is often used generically for any electric bass guitar.
Not only was the Precision cheaper to buy and easier to learn than a standup bass, but by being much more portable, it helped the bass guitar develop into part of the standard lineup of a rock band. Some historians suggest that entire genres of music, such as reggae and funk, could not exist without the electric bass.
In 1952 Gibson became Fender’s first major competitor in the solid-body market. The Gibson Les Paul was created in direct response to the success of Fender’s Broadcaster/Telecaster model. It was primarily designed by Gibson’s Ted McCarty, but it was endorsed by Les Paul, who had been a popular guitarist since the mid-1930s. Paul’s design input to the Gibson apparently included the original trapeze-style combination bridge-tailpiece, which allowed him to damp the strings with his hand, and the gold finish, which inspired the instrument’s nickname, the Goldtop. The gold color was intended in part to disguise from competitors that the guitar had a maple cap on a solid mahogany body. According to a company history, the idea of using two kinds of wood was to “balance the bright attack of maple with the warmth and richness of mahogany.”
http://www.americanheritage.com/
MONICA M. SMITH is a historian and exhibit specialist at the Smithsonian Institution’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation.
