Saturday, August 21, 2010

History

History
The acoustic properties of a guitar and its potential as a polyphonic solo instrument made it a good candidate for amplification. The need for the amplified guitar became apparent during the big band era as orchestras increased in size, particularly when guitars had to compete with large brass sections. The first electric guitars used in jazz were hollow archtop acoustic guitar bodies with electromagnetic transducers. By 1932 an electrically amplified guitar was commercially available. Gibson's first production electric guitar, marketed in 1936, was the ES-150 model ("ES" for "Electric Spanish"; and "150" reflecting the $150 price of the instrument, along with a matching amplifier). The ES-150 guitar featured a single-coil, hexagonally shaped "bar" pickup, which was designed by Walt Fuller. It became known as the "Charlie Christian" pickup (named for the great jazz guitarist who was among the first to perform with the ES-150 guitar). An early commercially successful solid-body electric guitar was the Fender Esquire in 1950.
Electric guitars were originally designed by luthiers, guitar makers, electronics enthusiasts, and instrument manufacturers. Guitar innovator Les Paul experimented with microphones attached to guitars. Some of the earliest electric guitars adapted hollow bodied acoustic instruments and used tungsten pickups. An electrically amplified guitar was developed by George Beauchamp in 1931. Commercial production began in late summer of 1932 by Electro-Patent-Instrument Company Los Angeles, a partnership of Adolph Rickenbacker, Paul Barth and George Beauchamp, the inventor. The wooden body of the prototype was built by Harry Watson, a craftsman who had worked for the National Resophonic Guitar Company (where the men met). By 1934 the company was renamed Rickenbacker Electro Stringed Instrument Company.
Steel guitarist Bob Dunn from Beggs, Oklahoma is often credited as the first to electrify his guitar. A possibly apocryphal story relates that Dunn hooked his guitar up to a car battery during an outdoor dance in order to be heard. However, historian Kevin Reed Coffey indicates that Dunn wanted to accomplish more than volume with electrification. He writes, “Not content with just being louder, Dunn experimented with ways to capture the brassy resonance of jazz horns. According to surviving contemporaries, he emulated musicians such as Texas trombonist Jack Teagarden and the great trumpeter Louis Armstrong, and his approach to the steel was based on their styles, their tone, their phrasing and attack.” [1] Bill C. Malone in Country Music USA writes, “Dunn converted a standard round-hole Martin guitar into an electric instrument by magnetizing the strings and raising them high off the box. He then attached an electric pickup to the guitar, which in turn was connected to a Vol-U-Tone amplifier.” Dunn’s first use of electric guitar on a recording was in 1935.
The earliest documented performance with an electrically amplified guitar was in 1932, by Gage Brewer.[2] The Wichita, Kansas-based musician had an Electric Hawaiian A-25 (Fry-pan, lap-steel) and a standard Electric Spanish from George Beauchamp of Los Angeles, California. Brewer publicized his new instruments in an article in the Wichita Beacon, October 2, 1932 and through performances that month. Brewer's original 1932 Ro-Pat-In Electro Spanish guitar can currently be viewed at the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum.
The first recordings using the electric guitar were by Hawaiian style players, including Andy Iona in 1933. Bob Dunn of Milton Brown's Musical Brownies introduced the electric Hawaiian guitar to Western Swing with his January 1935 Decca recordings, departing almost entirely from Hawaiian musical influence and heading towards Jazz and Blues. Alvino Rey was an artist who took this instrument to a wide audience in a large orchestral setting and later developed the pedal steel guitar for Gibson. An early proponent of the electric Spanish guitar was jazz guitarist George Barnes who used the instrument in two songs recorded in Chicago on March 1, 1938, Sweetheart Land and It's a Low-Down Dirty Shame. Some incorrectly attribute the first recording to Eddie Durham, but his recording with the Kansas City Five was 15 days later.[3] Durham introduced the instrument to a young Charlie Christian, who made the instrument famous in his brief life and would be a major influence on jazz guitarists for decades thereafter.[citation needed]
The first recording of an electric Spanish guitar, west of the Mississippi was in Dallas, in September 1935, during a session with Roy Newman and His Boys, an early Western swing dance band. Their guitarist, Jim Boyd, used his electrically amplified guitar during the recording of three songs, "Hot Dog Stomp" (DAL 178-Vo 03371), "Shine On, Harvest Moon" (DAL 180-Vo 03272), and "Corrine, Corrina" (DAL 181-Vo/OK 03117).[4][5][6] An even earlier Chicago recording of an electrically amplified guitar—albeit an amplified lap steel guitar—was during a series of session by Milton Brown and His Brownies (another early Western swing band) that took place January 27–28, 1935, wherein Bob Dunn played his amplified Hawaiian guitar.[7]
Early proponents of the electric guitar on record include: Jack Miller (Orville Knapp Orch.), Alvino Rey (Phil Spitalney Orch.), Les Paul (Fred Warring Orch.), Danny Stewart (Andy Iona Orchestra), George Barnes (under many alias), Floyd Smith, Bill Broonzy, T-Bone Walker, George Van Eps, Charlie Christian (Benny Goodman Orch.) Tampa Red, Memphis Minnie, and Arthur Cruddup.
Early electric guitar manufacturers include: Rickenbacker (first called Ro-Pat-In) in 1932, Dobro in 1933, National, AudioVox and Volu-tone in 1934,Vega, Epiphone (Electrophone and Electar), and Gibson in 1935 and many others by 1936.
The solid body electric guitar is made of solid wood, without functionally resonating air spaces. Rickenbacher, later spelled Rickenbacker, offered a cast aluminum electric steel guitar, nicknamed The Frying Pan or The Pancake Guitar, developed in 1931 with production beginning in the summer of 1932. This guitar sounds quite modern and aggressive as tested by vintage guitar researcher John Teagle. The company Audiovox built and may have offered an electric solid-body as early as the mid-1930s.
The first solid body "Spanish" standard guitar was offered by Vivi-Tone no later than 1934. An example of this model, featuring a guitar-shaped body of a single sheet of plywood affixed to a wood frame, can be seen in the Experience Music Project.[8] Another early, substantially solid Spanish electric guitar was marketed by the "Rickenbacker" guitar company in 1935 and made of an early cast plastic called Bakelite. By 1936 the Slingerland company introduced a solid body electric model made of solid wood.
A functionally solid body electric guitar was designed and built by Les Paul from an Epiphone acoustic archtop. His log guitar (so called because it consisted of a simple 4x4 wood post with a neck attached to it and homemade pickups and hardware, with two detachable Swedish hollow body halves attached to the sides for appearance only) shares nothing in design or hardware with the solid body "Les Paul" model sold by Gibson. However, the feedback problem associated with hollow-bodied electric guitars was understood long before Paul's "log" was created in 1940; Gage Brewer's Ro-Pat-In of 1932 had a top so heavily reinforced that it essentially functioned as a solid-body instrument.
In 1945, Richard D. Bourgerie made an electric guitar pickup and amplifier for professional guitar player George Barnes. Bourgerie worked through World War II at Howard Radio Company making electronic equipment for the American military. Mr. Barnes showed the result to Les Paul, who then arranged for Mr. Bourgerie to have one made for him.

Construction

Legend:
1. Headstock:
1.1 machine heads
1.2 truss rod cover
1.3 string guide
1.4 nut
2. Neck:
2.1 fretboard
2.2 inlay fret markers
2.3 frets
2.4 neck joint
3. Body
3.1 "neck" pickup
3.2 "bridge" pickup
3.3 saddles
3.4 bridge
3.5 fine tuners
3.6 tremolo arm (whammy bar)
3.7 pickup selector switch
3.8 volume and tone control knobs
3.9 output connector (input jack)
3.10 strap buttons
4. Strings:
4.1 bass strings
4.2 treble strings






While guitar construction has many variations, in terms of the materials used for the body, the shape of the body, and the configuration of the neck, bridge, and pickups, there are features which are found in almost every guitar. The photo below shows the different parts of an electric guitar. The headstock (1) contains the metal machine heads, which are used for tuning ; the nut (1.4), a thin fret-like strip of metal, plastic, graphite or bone which the strings pass over as they first go onto the fingerboard; the machine heads (1.1), which are worm gears which the player turns to change the string tension and thus adjust the tuning; the frets (2.3), which are thin metal strips which stop the string at the correct pitch when a string is pressed down against the fingerboard; the truss rod (1.2), a metal cylinder used for adjusting the tension on the neck (not found on all instruments); decorative inlay (2.2), a feature not found on lower-cost instruments.
The neck and the fretboard (2.1) extend from the body; at the neck joint (2.4), the neck is either glued or bolted to the body; the body (3) of this instrument is made of wood which is painted and lacquered, but some guitar bodies are also made of polycarbonate or other materials; pickups (3.1, 3.2), which are usually magnetic pickups, but which may also be piezoelectric transducer pickups; the control knobs (3.8) for the volume and tone potentiometers; a fixed bridge (3.4) -on some guitars, a spring-loaded hinged bridge called a "tremolo system" is used instead, which allows players to "bend" notes or chords down in pitch or perform a vibrato embellishment; and a plastic pickguard, a feature not found on all guitars, which is used to protect the body from scratches or cover the control cavity which holds most of the electric guitar's wiring.
The wood that the body (3) is made of is a very disputed subject considered by some to largely determine the sonic qualities of the guitar, while others believe that the sonic difference in a solid body guitar is very subtle between woods. In acoustic and archtop guitars there is a more pronounced sonic definition caused by the type of wood used. Typical woods include alder (brighter, but well rounded), swamp ash (similar to alder, but with more pronounced highs and lows), mahogany (dark, bassy, warm), poplar (similar to alder) and basswood (very neutral). Maple, a very bright tonewood, is also a popular body wood, but is very heavy. For this reason it is often placed as a 'cap' on a guitar made of primarily of another wood. Cheaper guitars are often made of cheaper woods, such as plywood, pine or agathis, not true hardwoods, which can affect the durability and tone of the guitar.Although most guitars are made from wood, any material may be used in the construction of a guitar. Materials such as plastic or cardboard are examples of unusual but possible materials that affect the overall sound of the guitar.

1 comment:

andre said...

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