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The Birth Of The Electric Guitar
Electric guitars are very young instruments, the first electrically amplified guitar being built in 1931. Since then the instrument itself and the different side it brought to music grew in popularity, especially amongst the younger generations.
Commercial production started in 1932 by a company called Ro-Pat-In Corporation (Electro-Patent-Instrument Company Los Angeles), just two years later being renamed Rickenbacker Electro Stringed Instrument Company.
A major difference between the acoustic and electric guitar is that the later lacks the resonating chamber as it uses electromagnetic induction to convert the vibrations of the strings into electric audio signals. Such a guitar was characterized as a solid body electric guitar and its sound was completely dependent on the electric devices to pick up and amplify it.
Other electric guitar brands soon appeared: Dobro in 1933, Audio-Vox and National in 1934, one of the most notorious electric guitar brands, Gibson, a year later and many more starting with 1936.
The pioneers of electric guitars, a company most of us know simply as Rickenbacker built the first cast aluminum electric steel guitar in 1932, until then wood being the primary building material for any kind of guitars and most other musical instruments. This new type of guitar sounded very modern and quite aggressive.
Another one of the oldest electric guitar brands started as a radio service in 1938 and in 1946 it became Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company. Although it started later, Fender is now one of the most renowned guitar producers and it comes down to its impact on the market.
It brought out the first mass-produced solid-body Spanish-type electric guitar, the first mass-produces electric bass and last, but not least the Stratocaster guitar, also known as ‘Strat’ and one of the most popular and long lived guitar models, its production starting in 1954 and continuing to this day.
The Fender Company definitely became famous because its guitars’ quality made great names in the business choose to play their products: Jimi Hendrix, Ritchie Blackmore, Kurt Cobain, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, David Gilmour and many others.
Yamaha is another world wide known musical instruments producers with a great history behind it and even though it produced its first electric guitar in 1967, it proved its versatility by creating multiple series with different features, sometimes combining tradition with the latest technology. For an electric guitar passionate probably all series would sound familiar: AE, AES, CV, EG, ERG, EX, GX, Pacifica, RGX, SA, SC, Session and others.
If you feel overwhelmed by all the technical details, there are electric guitar brands that put emphasis on feeling no time was more relevant to ‘feeling’ than the 70’s, the time when a company called Jackson began to produce electric guitars. Rock was hitting a peak and everyone wanted to be a rock star. No amount of guitars would have been too many.
As a music lover and especially as a performer the guitar you choose can help or hinder you, but between all the amazing electric guitar brands no matter what you are looking for, there will be at least one to have produced it.