Introduction
The invention of the electric guitar is arguably the most important development in musical instruments during the last century. With the possible exception of the synthesizer, no other musical instrument can claim to have had the impact on twentieth-century music—and society—that the electric guitar and its variants have. The electric guitar’s origins have been the subject of much heated debate and the source of much mythology. In addition, there is a significant prehistory of the electric guitar that remains largely unknown or unacknowledged. The roots of the electric guitar run deep—as far back as the mid-eighteenth century—and its development must be understood within the larger context of musical and technological history. Despite this, it is now generally acknowledged that the first commercially successful electric guitar was the Electro “Frying Pan,” invented by George Beauchamp and manufactured in collaboration and corporate partnership with Adolph Rickenbacher1 by the Ro-Pat-In Corporation (later known as Electro String Instrument Corporation and known today as Rickenbacker International Corporation). The technology that Beauchamp developed for the Frying Pan is the basis for the overwhelming majority of electric stringed instruments2 that have followed. Although others had key roles, especially with regard to commercial aspects, Beauchamp’s work is the nexus and watershed event in the development of the electric guitar. However, George Beauchamp is the forgotten man in this story—most likely because he left the musical instrument business in 1940, a little more than ten years after entering it, and died within months of doing so. Unlike some of the other important figures of twentieth-century guitar manufacturing, Beauchamp did not live to see the immense expansion in popularity of the electric guitar during the 1950s and 1960s, and thus claim a more prominent place in the public’s consciousness.
What Makes an Electric Guitar an Electric Guitar?
In order to fully examine the history of the development of the electric guitar, it is necessary to define the term: what makes a guitar “electric”? The mere application of electricity to a musical instrument, such as the addition of a blower motor to a pipe organ, does not necessarily make an instrument “electric.” It is also generally agreed that simply amplifying the strings of a guitar does not make it an “electric guitar.” If this were so, an acoustic guitar amplified by a microphone could be considered an electric guitar. What defines almost all electric stringed instruments is the particular way that the vibrations of its strings are amplified: an electromagnetic pickup.3 This is the heart of an electric guitar’s circuitry. As its name suggests, a pickup “picks up” the vibration of a guitar string, which is then amplified. Physically, an electromagnetic pickup consists of a magnet, in the form of either a single bar or individual slugs for each string, or a combination of both, surrounded by a coil wrapped in copper wire. Vibration from ferrous strings creates electrical impulses in the pickup; these are then transferred from the instrument to an amplified loudspeaker. Although the physical configuration of this setup can vary slightly, almost all modern electric guitar pickups work on this principle. While other methods of electromagnetically amplifying strings were developed and commercially produced during this nascent period, none ultimately proved as successful as Beauchamp’s design.
The Prehistory of the Electric Guitar
The Earliest Electrified Musical Instruments
It is not well recognized that the application of electricity to musical instruments dates back more than 250 years. The first electrified instrument is most often identified as the Denis d’or (“golden Dionysus”), a keyboard instrument constructed around 1748 by the Czech priest Václav Prokop Diviš (pronounced “Deevish”) (1698–1765). Diviš was an early electrical experimenter; in 1754, he erected an early type of lightning rod (possibly invented independently of Benjamin Franklin) on church property near his home in Přímětice, near Znojmo in the South Moravian region, close to the Austrian border of what is now the Czech Republic.4
Around 1748, Diviš created the Denis d’or and named it after himself (the “Denis” in the name is the French equivalent of the Czech surname “Diviš,” both of which derive from the Greek god Dionysius). It was a stringed instrument operated by a keyboard, approximately 150 cm long by 90 cm wide by 120 cm high, roughly the size of a modern spinet-style upright piano. The mechanism was extremely complicated, with over 790 strings arranged into 14 stops or registers, and was said to be able to imitate the sounds of the harpsichord, harp, lute, and even wind instruments. However, the most unusual feature of the instrument was that it employed electricity, supplied by means of batteries or Leiden jars. The electricity was used for two purposes: the first was to somehow “energize” the iron strings of the instrument, which in turn enhanced the sound produced, and the second was to enable Diviš to give the unsuspecting player of the Denis d’or a jolt of electricity. This is not as “shocking” as it first might appear; some of the first practical applications of electricity5 were in the creation of novelties, which buzzed or shocked the unwary recipient. It is not clear how these electrical features functioned, but it is clear that the author of a 1753 description of the instrument considered the Denis d’or to be an “Electrisch-Musicalische Instrument,” that is, an “electric musical instrument,” the earliest known use of the term.6
The next known musical instrument to employ electricity was the clavecin électrique, invented by Jean-Baptiste Thillais Delaborde in 1759. Like Diviš, Delaborde was a priest. Played by means of a conventional keyboard, the instrument’s mechanism was activated electrostatically using a glass globe-type generator, which produced electricity by way of friction. The static electricity thus generated is simultaneously of low, continuous flowing current and high voltage. In essence, the clavecin électrique was an electrically activated carillon, using bells as the sound producers, with the main difference being that two bells were employed for each pitch. Both bells were electrically charged with a metal clapper suspended between them. When the key lever is depressed, one of the bells is grounded, which causes the metal clapper to violently swing back and forth between the earthed and unearthed bells, producing the pitch—sounding not unlike a mechanical alarm clock. Delaborde did not discover the electric principle used in the device’s mechanism, which was based on an existing alarm bell-type device. Delaborde published his description and account of the clavecin électrique in 1761,7 noting that the instrument was particularly effective when played in the dark due to the brilliant sparks produced by the instrument while it was played. Unlike the Denis d’or, which appears to have utilized electricity mostly as a novelty or gimmick that was adjunct to the instrument’s musical functions, the clavecin électrique’s utilization of electricity was an essential part of its mechanism, making Delaborde’s invention the first fully electrically powered musical instrument. Despite this, the clavecin électrique differed from typical modern electric instruments in that although it was electrically powered, its sound (like that of George Breed’s 1890 instrument described below) was created purely acoustically and was not in any way amplified.
George Breed and His Electrified Guitar of 1890
The first application of electricity to a fretted stringed instrument was by a United States Naval Officer named George Breed, who in 1890 was issued a patent that included a design for an electrified guitar. Like the modern electric guitar, Breed’s patent was based on a vibrating string in an electromagnetic field. However, Breed’s design worked on very different electrical and musical principles, resulting in a guitar with an unconventional playing technique that produced an exceptionally unusual (and un-guitar-like) continuously sustained sound.
George Breed was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on July 19, 1864. He came from a wealthy and locally prominent family. Breed’s early career was in the US Navy. Less than two months after leaving the Navy in 1890, Breed was granted US Patent No. 435679 for his “Method of and Apparatus for Producing Musical Sounds by Electricity.” Whether these two events are related is not known, but it is tempting to speculate that the reason George Breed left the Navy was to make and market his musical instrument designs.
Breed’s patent included a design for both electrified keyboard and electrified guitar, as well as a design for a multichannel signaling device. Breed’s instrument designs had several highly unusual characteristics, the most noteworthy of which is the use of an electromagnetic principle known as the Lorentz Force to set the string in motion. The Lorentz Force principle states that when an electrically charged particle moves through a magnetic field, there is a force on it that is perpendicular to its direction of movement and to the North–South axis of the magnetic field. Breed’s patent depicts a ferrous metal string stretched through a strong magnetic field provided by an electromagnet, which encircles the string. When current is applied, the string begins to sound. The electromagnet does not share the same circuitry as the string, each having independent circuits.
The string, in addition to its conventional function as an acoustic source, is also an integral part of the design’s circuitry, as a direct current (DC) passes through it. This electric current is intermittently interrupted at rapid yet irregular intervals, producing a pulsed DC, which mimics some of the properties of (but is not the same as) alternating current (AC), which in 1890 was yet to be widely used. Breed created the rapid making and breaking of the electrical circuit by the use of a rotating wheel with randomly spaced contact points on its outer edge, which he called a “break wheel.” Breed recommended that this break wheel should either be turned by clockwork or, alternatively, powered by a small electric motor attached to the same battery as the electromagnet.
This instrument, although powered by electricity, is not an electric guitar in the way that the term is generally understood. With an electric guitar, sound is created by the interaction of a vibrating ferrous metal string with an electromagnetic pickup, which produces a signal that is then amplified through a loudspeaker.8 Although there is a superficial physical resemblance between the electromagnet in Breed’s design and an electromagnetic pickup,9 the employment of electromagnetism in the circuitry of Breed’s guitar is not to amplify its volume but rather to create its timbre. While the strings of Breed’s guitar are set into motion by an electromagnetic means, it is still an acoustic instrument. The sound of the instrument was a cross between a traditionally played Neapolitan-style mandolin and the scraping of a plectrum along a wound electric guitar string, in the manner of a rock guitarist.
Unlike later attempts at guitar electrification, Breed’s design was not aimed at making a louder instrument. Nowhere in the patent does he claim that his design produces greater volume. In fact, it is doubtful that Breed was able to make his instrument anywhere near as loud as a conventional guitar. What Breed had developed was a stringed instrument that was capable of sustaining notes indefinitely, a kind of electromagnetic hurdy-gurdy.10 Although generally not appreciated as such, George Breed’s guitar represents an important step toward the electric guitar, foreshadowing the technology that would be applied forty years later, although in a very different manner, to stringed instruments and especially the guitar.
The Context and Driving Forces Behind the Electric Guitar
All of the preceding instruments lack the one feature that, for most people today, would be the entire point of an electrical musical instrument: the ability to be louder than a nonelectric one. This change in the essential conception of electric musical instruments began around the turn of the twentieth century and, early on, was driven mostly by the invention and spread of telephone technology. In contrast to more modern times, during this nascent period, “amplified” was not synonymous with “louder.” Indeed, due to the low power of many early amplifiers, it could be questioned whether some of these early amplified instruments were even as loud as their fully acoustic counterparts.
The contention is typically made that in the quest for greater volume, the sound box of the guitar was gradually increased in size until it became physically impractical to play. Then, inventors turned to mechanical amplification to increase the volume of the instrument, before considering electrical amplification, which became the final and most widely used solution to this “problem.”11 There are a number of factors that determine the volume of a stringed instrument—such as string material, construction, instrument tessitura, playing technique—and none of these can be considered in isolation. This is not to suggest, however, that increased volume was not a concern and the goal of electrical experimenters and manufacturers of the time; contemporary magazine articles mention both recent advancements in sound reproduction and the need/desire for ever greater sound clarity and volume in radios and phonograph players.12 However, it is noteworthy that the same complaints are not made concerning stringed instruments. Although the banjo was one of the first stringed instruments to be amplified, previously no one seemed to be complaining that banjos could not be heard over other instruments. It is clear, then, that before the 1930s, the quest for greater volume in stringed instruments was driven by novelty and electrical experimentation (both of which can be considered a zeitgeist of the 1920s especially) rather than a perceived lack by musicians in the volume-producing capabilities of stringed instruments.
Electricity and Amplification
The electric guitar could not be invented until there was an amplifier through which to play it. In order to make an amplifier, three things are required: (1) an amplifier circuit, which makes the weak source signal stronger; (2) a loudspeaker, which translates that stronger signal into audible sound; and (3) electricity to power the system.
In 1906, Lee DeForest invented the precursor to the amplifying tube, the “Audion” tube,13 which was intended to efficiently detect (but was not capable of increasing the strength of) telegraph signals over long distances. A refinement of DeForest’s invention, the triode vacuum tube, allowed for the amplification of signals, including audio signals fed into it. By the early 1920s, the application of vacuum tube technology had paved the way for the first audio amplifiers. These were typically used for the amplification of radio broadcasts and phonographs. Large amplification systems could be used for public address.
As part of his 1876 patent for the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell included a design for a loudspeaker.14 Although there were incremental improvements, Bell’s horn-type speaker remained the standard design until the advent of the paper-coned speaker. In May 1921, Chester W. Rice of General Electric Corporation and Edward W. Kellogg of A.T. & T developed the first paper-coned speaker. The key feature of this design was not that it featured a paper cone but rather that it had a moving coil-type design, in which the electrical signal from the amplifier was converted to sound by means of a suspension-mounted wire coil within a magnet. Once commercially available, paper-cone loudspeakers quickly superseded the older horn type. Paper-cone loudspeakers had a greater range of frequency reproduction, which was necessary when dealing with the much-enhanced frequency range of early electric instruments in comparison to radio broadcasts and phonograph signals of the time.
The third aspect of amplification—the electrical power needed to run the device—is often overlooked. Before about 1927, most small electrical appliances in the United States would have been run on battery-supplied power. Even after that time, mains electricity tended to be found mostly in large cities on the east and west coasts. Mains power allowed for the more efficient and convenient use of electrical appliances such as radios and amplifiers.15 The combination of these three elements allowed the creation of the first portable public address (PA) systems. At this stage, and throughout the early 1930s, there was very little difference, if any, either physically or conceptually, between instrument amplifiers and PA systems.16 These portable amplifiers were simply electronic devices capable of amplifying any input—whether radio, phonograph, microphone, or musical instrument.
Radio, as both technology and medium, helped spur the development of the technologies that would enable the electric guitar. The 1920s were a time of mass entertainment—films, recordings, and radio broadcasts were being created in ever-increasing numbers to satisfy a voracious public. The public also had a keen hunger for novelty, and this meant that nascent broadcasters were always on the lookout for interesting content that would attract listeners. This, in turn, helped promote the development of experimental instruments. In a reciprocal manner, developments in microphone technology were driven by the need to accurately reproduce an ever-widening array of musical sounds.17
Novelty and Experimentation
Most of the popular writers on the history of the electric guitar have stated that a need for greater volume, especially to compete with louder brass and percussion instruments in the dance orchestras of the early twentieth century, was the primary impetus for the development of the electric guitar. While it is true that it was soon recognized and advertised that increased volume was a benefit available to players of the instrument, examination of the historical record does not bear out the suggestion that making the instrument louder was the primary motivation behind its invention.
Surprisingly, the most direct precursors to the electric guitar were violins. During the 1920s, there were a number of US patents relating to the electrical amplification of violins. Frederick W. Dierdorff’s 1924 patent for an amplified violin employed a membrane to better translate sound vibrations from the bridge to the instrument’s pickup, but did not specify the actual design of the microphone to be used.18 However, Dierdorff’s patent does give some insight into the novelty value that the inventors of such instruments must have felt their creations had: “An instrument of this kind can be used to give entertainments such as vaudeville acts wherein its tones are reproduced through a loudspeaker to emanate at any desired part of the hall or theater.”19
Early electric stringed instruments were mostly the province of experimenters, not working musicians. This was often reflected in their designs, which were commonly radical and minimalist compared to conventional musical instruments. Later electric string designs were typically based on traditional instruments—most likely to help in the appeal to musicians.20 These early experimental electric stringed instruments were much more likely to appear in the pages of Popular Science than The Music Trade Review; the main appeal of these instruments was their technological innovation and novelty rather than the actual music created by them, this being true for both the instrument’s inventors and the musical public.
Stromberg-Voisinet “Electro”
The first commercially available electrically amplified fretted stringed instrument was the “Electro,” made by the Stromberg-Voisinet company around 1928/1929. While some have asserted that these were the first electric guitars,21 the Stromberg-Voisinet Electro does not meet the definition of an electric guitar in the way that is usually understood; while these instruments had electromagnetic pickup, they did not use the electromagnetic technology in the same fashion (that is, using the string as the armature) as George Beauchamp’s design. Simply put, the Stromberg-Voisinet Electro was ultimately amplifying the instrument’s bridge, while Beauchamp’s design directly amplified the string itself. The Stromberg-Voisinet instruments were prominently featured in a full-page advertisement within the section portraying the Stromberg-Voisinet company’s products in the 1929 Chicago Musical Instruments (CMI) catalog. The catalog advertisement shows the Electro’s amplifier along with four different models of Electro amplified instruments: a guitar, a tenor guitar, a tenor banjo, and a long-scale plectrum (four-stringed) banjo.22 The earliest known mention in print of the Stromberg-Voisinet Electro was in an article, “New Sales Avenue Opened with Tone Amplifier for Stringed Instruments” in the October 20, 1928, issue of The Music Trades.23 The article gives a brief and somewhat unclear description of how the pickup system works, and states that the new guitars would be valuable to orchestras due to their increased banjo-like volume.24 This reference reinforces the point made earlier that, while increased volume did not appear to be the major factor behind the development of electric stringed instruments, manufacturers readily used increased volume of the new instruments as a marketing point.
The new line of Stromberg-Voisinet Electro instruments appears to have been fairly well publicized; half-page articles on the instruments appeared in The Music Trades in both the October 20 and November 17 issues in 1928,25 while the November 24 issue of the Music Trade Review in the same year gives the Electro a prominent position in its “Musical Merchandise” section.26 The January 1929 issue of The Crescendo also has a short article on the Electro.27 The article on October 20, 1928, in The Music Trades states that the instruments were developed by Stromberg-Voisinet company secretary H. C. Kuhrmeyer and were currently in production. It further states that a prototype guitar and amplifier were being demonstrated in the Chicago banjo shop of Milton G. Wolf28 and that the instruments had been used by Guy Lombardo’s Orchestra at the Granada Café, and with “singular success” by Brunswick recording artists “The Vagabonds.”29
By the middle of 1929, the Stromberg-Voisinet Electro had essentially disappeared from the market; no further mention of it can be found in advertising or trade publications. It is possible that, due to the lead time for the publication of wholesaler/jobber catalogs, the Stromberg-Voisinet Electro was no longer actively being made or promoted by the time the advertisement for the instrument appeared in the CMI wholesale catalog in the spring of 1929.
Vega Electric Banjo 1928
A final and enigmatic footnote to the account of electric stringed instruments before 1931 is an “amplification unit” (pickup) for the banjo by the Vega company. No exemplars or photographs/drawings of the pickup or instrument are known to exist, and it is only known from a short article in the January 1929 issue of The Crescendo magazine.30 Interestingly, the same article also concisely describes the electric stringed instruments being made concurrently by Stromberg-Voisinet. Although there is nothing in the article that suggests how the Vega amplification unit actually worked, it is stated that the pickup was attached to the banjo’s head and that the unit had a separate amplifier and loudspeaker, the standard configuration of the time. The article states that, rather than being an organically conceived electric instrument, the unit was an add-on device designed to be retrofitted to an acoustic banjo.
Neo-Bechstein Electric Piano
All of the precursors of the electric guitar previously examined here, whether they worked electrostatically or electromagnetically, lack one of the defining features of Beauchamp’s pickup design: using a ferrous metal string as the armature that drives the pickup. However, there is one pre-1931 electric instrument that does so—the Neo-Bechstein piano of 1928.31
The Neo-Bechstein piano was designed by physicist and Nobel Prize winner Walter Nernst and manufactured as a collaboration between Siemens & Halske AG and the C. Bechstein Pianofortefabrik AG. Utilizing a conventional grand piano action, the piano had no soundboard but instead had the strings mounted over a series of electromagnetic pickups that were then amplified. The pickups consisted of a horseshoe magnet positioned over two coils of wire. The amplifier and speaker were housed in a separate unit, which could optionally contain a radio and phonograph player. Although the Neo-Bechstein pickup looked different to a modern electric guitar pickup, it appears to have functioned in an identical manner: a ferrous string acts as an armature that disturbs a magnetic field, which in turn generates an electrical signal within a coil wire.
It is not clear whether George Beauchamp was aware of the Neo-Bechstein piano, but it is certainly possible; several articles about the Neo-Bechstein appeared in the New York Times, particularly during the summer and autumn of 1931.32 Since the mention of the Neo-Bechstein in the American press was somewhat light on technical details, it seems likely that even if Beauchamp was aware of or inspired by the Neo-Bechstein piano, he invented his electric guitar pickup independently.
The “Mysterious Mr. Beauchamp”
Although now generally acknowledged as the inventor of the electric guitar, the name of George Beauchamp is not as well known as others important to the history of the American guitar, such as C.F. Martin, Leo Fender, or Orville Gibson. Even the “Frying Pan” electric guitar he designed is much more associated with the name of Adolph Rickenbacker, the man primarily responsible for its commercial manufacture, than with Beauchamp, its inventor. Add to this the fact that the two principal accounts of Beauchamp’s life, written more than forty-five years after his death, are primarily based on interviews marked by strong partisanship—both for and against Beauchamp33—and it is easy to see why National String Instrument Corporation employee Al Frost once described him as “the mysterious Mr. Beauchamp.”34
George Delmetia Beauchamp was born in Texas on March 18, 1899. In the Rickenbacker archives, there exists a short and somewhat ‘folksy’ account of Beauchamp’s life and inventions written by Adolph Rickenbacker around 1960, some twenty years after Beauchamp’s death. In his account, Rickenbacker says that Beauchamp told him, “his pappy gave him a mule and an old wagon and told him to ‘git,’ and that is about all he had with the exception of an old guitar.” Although it has usually been assumed that Beauchamp was a full-time professional musician during the mid 1920s, the Los Angeles city directories for both 1923 and 1926 listed his profession as a house painter.
Collaboration with John Dopyera and the Creation of the Resonator Guitar
The resonator guitar is often seen as a direct antecedent of the electric guitar, with the reasoning that the instrument was developed to fill the same volume-increasing function that the electric guitar would later fulfill more effectively. The fact that one of the major participants in the resonator guitar’s creation, Beauchamp, would later invent the electric guitar also seems to support this contention. While this line of thinking does have some validity, it oversimplifies and conflates the actual story.35 However, Beauchamp’s development of the electric guitar is probably best understood within the context of his helping to develop the resonator guitar.
In early 1926, George Beauchamp went to the Dopyera brothers’ repair shop in Los Angeles and commissioned an instrument from John Dopyera. The instrument used a Victrola-like cone to amplify the sound in a manner similar to the British-made Stroh violin. According to the generally accepted story, Beauchamp felt the need for a louder instrument that could compete in volume with the instruments of the dance and vaudeville bands of his day. Although there is probably an element of truth to this version of events, this reasoning has been unquestioningly accepted by later writers on the subject, most likely since it is viewed within the context of the generally much louder music of the subsequent decades; it is equally likely that Beauchamp was looking for a visually striking novelty instrument that would make him stand out on the vaudeville circuit.
Soon after the completion of his first instrument for Beauchamp, Dopyera constructed a second instrument for him. This instrument was almost certainly very similar, if not identical, to the instrument shown in US patent 1,741,453. Although there would be slight modifications, notably to the shape of the bridge and the shape and number of the sound holes, this is the guitar that would be made, in both Spanish and Hawaiian variants, by the National Stringed Instrument Corporation. While it is not known exactly to what extent Beauchamp influenced the design of the resonator guitar, it appears that most of the practical aspects of the final instrument were Dopyera’s rather than Beauchamp’s. However, it is unlikely that Dopyera would have created the resonator guitar without the instigation and influence of George Beauchamp.
Beauchamp was able to place some prototypes into the hands of prominent Hawaiian musicians (notably famous Hawaiian-born guitarist Sol Hoopii), and the new instrument was very favorably received. In 1927, Beauchamp, John Dopyera, his brother Rudy (later, the two other brothers would join the company), and a few others formed the National String Instrument Corporation and began producing their famous metal-bodied resonator instruments. Beauchamp’s future electric guitar partner, Adolph Rickenbacker, stamped the metal bodies for the instruments at his machine shop, which was located around the corner from the National factory. Although National’s product output was based on John Dopyera’s instrument designs, George Beauchamp seems to have been the driving force behind the company from the business and commercial aspects.
Although things started off well at National, evidence suggests that they quickly turned sour. Internal problems were caused by the conflicting and contrasting personalities—and the various business decisions and complications arising from them—of John Dopyera (and later, the other Dopyera brothers) and George Beauchamp. Dopyera left the company abruptly in January 1929, and Beauchamp was forced out by the remaining brothers in November 1931, soon after Beauchamp and Rickenbacker incorporated the Ro-Pat-In Corporation to make their electric instruments. Much has been made of Adolph Rickenbacker’s involvement with National String Instrument Corporation. Although Rickenbacker is featured on the back page of the 1930 National catalog and given the title of “engineer,” his main contribution to National was through his tool and die company, as a supplier of the stamped metal bodies for instruments.
The Development of the “Frying Pan”
It is not clear to what extent Beauchamp had any training, formal or otherwise, in electronics. It has been stated that he took night classes in electronics, but it is unknown where this took place or whether Beauchamp ever earned a credential or degree.36 Like many of the would-be inventors of the electric guitar, Beauchamp’s first attempts involved phonograph technology. Beauchamp took apart a record player and attached the pickup to a 2 × 4, which had a tensioned ferrous metal string installed on it.37 The phonograph’s pickup was electromagnetic38 (that is, it had a coil of wire and a small magnet), and thus would have picked up some of the sound vibrating through the solid wood.
Sometime during the summer of 1931, Beauchamp had his friend, Harry Watson (who had been the shop foreman for National until the previous year), create the body of what would become the wood-bodied Frying Pan prototype. The body was carved from a single piece of wood, either maple or hemlock, which company lore says came from a fencepost behind the factory. After unsuccessfully trying to interest his partners at National in the Frying Pan, Beauchamp approached Adolph Rickenbacker to form a company to manufacture Beauchamp’s invention. In October 1931, the Ro-Pat-In Corporation (the origin and meaning of the name are now lost) was incorporated to make an aluminum-bodied version of the Frying Pan, known as the Rickenbacker “Electro.” The instruments were marketed under the name of “Rickenbacker,” supposedly because it was easier to pronounce than “Beauchamp.”
By general agreement, Beauchamp’s design is the electric guitar that we know today: an instrument in which the acoustic properties of the instrument are irrelevant to its functionality as an electrically amplified instrument. The defining feature of Beauchamp’s design is that it used the instrument’s strings rather than its bridge or soundboard as the immediate source of the electrical signal. Beauchamp’s bypassing of all of the acoustic structures after the vibrating string made for a more efficient and powerful design. The importance of Beauchamp’s use of the instrument’s strings as the armature for his electromagnetic pickup cannot be overstated, as it is this characteristic that has since become the defining feature of the electric guitar. Beauchamp’s design is commonly referred to as a “horseshoe” pickup, after the two horseshoe-shaped magnets placed end to end through which the instrument’s strings pass.
The Ro-Pat-In company began producing the cast aluminum versions of the Frying Pan in late 1932, and soon after changed its name to the Electro String Instrument Corporation. In the mid 1930s, the company began making Hawaiian-style instruments using the early plastic Bakelite, and other models from stamped sheet metal, producing these well into the 1950s. During the 1930s, Electro String also produced conventional Spanish-style electric guitars; however, the bodies to these were not produced in-house but sourced from one of the Chicago-based musical instrument manufacturers.
The Emerging Electric Guitar Market of the 1930s
Other Early Makers of Electric Guitars
The Rickenbacker/Electro String electric guitar did not commercially develop in a vacuum; the company had many competitors in the nascent electric guitar market of the 1930s. From a technological perspective, the instruments marketed by Rickenbacker’s competitors ranged from extremely close technological knock-offs of George Beauchamp’s design to pickup systems that worked on very different principles to Beauchamp’s. By 1935, Dobro (formed by John Dopyera with his brother after leaving National), the Seattle-based Audiovox company, Epiphone, and Gibson all had instruments on the market with pickups based on Beauchamp’s model. Companies marketing non-Beauchamp-based pickups included Lloyd Loar’s Vivi-Tone and the Los Angeles-based Volu-Tone. Volu-Tone’s pickup was particularly interesting because, although it was electromagnetic, the pickup did not actually have a magnet; instead, the guitar’s strings were magnetized by plugging the instrument into 400 volts of direct current.39
The “Miessner Matter”
One of the most notable figures in the history of electric instruments before the Second World War was Benjamin Franklin Miessner, who, in 1930, founded a company, Miessner Inventions, Inc., to develop and license electronic musical instruments of Miessner’s and others’ design.40 Almost forgotten today, Miessner was a pivotal figure in the development and propagation of electrical musical instruments during this time—not always for positive reasons. Miessner Inventions produced no actual instruments themselves but instead developed musical instrument technologies that they then licensed to others. Beginning with a design for an electric piano, Miessner and his company created and attempted to license a number of different musical instrument technologies. Although the company appears to have had some success with its musical instrument designs, Miessner Inventions became as noted for its litigation as its innovation, waging an aggressive campaign to intimidate companies making electric instruments into purchasing licensing agreements, despite frequent lack of clarity that Miessner’s patents directly covered the technologies being used by the makers. Among the electric guitar manufacturers that Miessner threatened during the late 1930s were Electro String/Rickenbacker and Epiphone. Rickenbacker successfully resisted Miessner’s litigious advances, while Epiphone caved in and purchased a license. All Epiphone electric instruments made during this time have a small plaque on them stating they are made under license by Miessner Inventions. By the end of the decade, almost all of the manufacturers threatened by Miessner had called his bluff and rebuffed his litigation. Miessner’s efforts may have had a temporary dampening effect on development but ultimately failed to have a significant impact on the rise of the electric guitar. One of the unintended consequences of the failure of Miessner’s litigiousness was an opening of the floodgates of electric guitar manufacturing. This also had a knock-on effect on the nascent instrument; when more companies made them, more people began to play them. A vibrant electric guitar market helped to drive the popularity of the new instrument.
The Shape and Sound of Things to Come
The electric guitar has a much longer and more convoluted history than is generally realized. Its development is best examined within the greater context of the advancement of nascent electrical technology, rather than developments in stringed instruments. This has not always been well understood or recognized because many of the milestones of the electric guitar’s journey have been based on electrification rather than amplification. The period from around 1936 to the beginning of the Second World War saw a great acceleration in the manufacturing and marketing of electric musical instruments; during this time, amplified instruments of all kinds were no longer the exclusive province of the inventor and the experimenter but began to be utilized by working musicians. Electric instruments, whether they amplified an acoustically produced tone or had their sound wholly generated by electrical means, would give musicians new-found creative freedom by controlling timbre, volume, and expression to a degree, and in a manner, previously impossible. Al Frost, president of National-Dobro Corporation, in a letter to the Dopyera brothers dated December 22, 1939, probably said it best: “The electric guitar is here to stay.”
