If you haven’t noticed by my page so far, I LOVE Guitars. I’ve been playing since I was a kid and I have a passion for the art. I can totally geek out on guitars and could probably tell you the exact guitar that most professionals play, along with the backgrounds of their guitars. I could likely get carried away with this blog post and write WAY too much about the evolution of guitars, but I’m going to try my best to keep it to the point, and interesting.
What makes an Electric Guitar an Electric Guitar?… Pickups.
Without pickups, an electric guitar would simply be an acoustic guitar. But what is a pickup? Simple! A pickup is an electromagnetic transducer that creates a flux field and converts the vibrations/frequencies of the guitar strings into an electric signal. That signal can then be put through an amplifier, converted back into sound waves, and cranked up to 11!
The electric guitar got its start in 1931 with The Rickenbacker “Frying Pan”. The Frying Pan, invented in 1931 by George Beauchamp, was the first electric guitar. It was a solid body guitar, which means it has no sound cavity like an acoustic guitar. The Guitar was a “lap-style” steel guitar, and was designed for the popular Hawaiian music. The guitar was not patented until 1937, which allowed other companies to tweak the design and produce their own electric guitars. The “Frying Pan” sounds like something you would hear in the music on Spongebob.
As Guitars Evolved over the years, so did music. Early country music, blues, jazz, and rock all have different impacts on the evolution of the electric guitar. All of these genres have different sounds that required different styles of guitars. Inventors and creators like Leo Fender, Les Paul, Orville Gibson, and Steve Vai all had huge impacts on the evolution of guitars, as they designed many guitars. Each guitar is designed to create a certain sound and used for a specific genre. Similarly to how the Rickenbacker was invented for Hawaiian music, the Gibson Les Paul was invented for Jazz music. The Fender Stratocaster, arguably the most iconic electric guitar ever, was intended to be a country music instrument… That was until it ended up in Jimi Hendrix’s hands and the guitar world exploded, but I wont get into that right now.
If you were to walk into a Guitar Center today, the vastness and overwhelming world of guitars displays itself on the walls. Thousands of guitars to choose from, and every one is just slightly different. Different neck shapes and lengths, number of frets, types of pickups, number of stings, solid bodies, hollow bodies, semi-hollow body, the combinations are endless. The engineering and detail that goes into the creation of a guitar is nothing short of incredible.
Every guitarist has an opinion on which company makes the best guitar, the most popular being Gibson and Fender. But no guitar is perfect. Guitars are like cars. There are ones made for soccer moms and there are ones made for race car drivers. Every Guitar has different qualities that are suited towards different types of players. Slash and Joan Jett were hard rockers and were tuned more toward the Gibson Les Paul, while BB King was a blues guitarists and played a Gibson ES-335.
The PRS John Mayer Silver Sky is a custom signature guitar designed by Paul Reed Smith and John Mayer. The Guitar has the body style of the iconic Fender Stratocaster, but has the modern components and build quality of a PRS guitar.
Rickenbacker Frying Pan: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/729575
How Pickups Work: https://www.seymourduncan.com/support-pickups-101/getting-started
Evolution of Electric Guitars: https://truefire.com/blog/inspiration/the-evolution-of-the-electric-guitar/
Michael Tilly's Blog 
WordPress is not cooperating very well so I apologize for the “Getting Started” links in the body and the double photo at the beginning. I’ve been trying to remove them but I can’t figure out how. The “edit page” looks completely different than the published page. Oh well.. Thanks WordPress
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What a detailed, analytical post on guitars! I actually didn’t realize that there is so much intricate engineering that goes behind guitar production, and that there are so many varieties to choose from. I especially find it interesting that you discuss the existence of pickups, as it is very relevant, and it would be hard to imagine the evolution of guitars without such devices. Your explanation of pickups does show that one can invoke physics concepts to describe devices that can help create and amplify sound. The creation and implementation of electric guitars shows that some people haven’t been afraid to think creatively and consider the potential for composing interesting music
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Your post was very detailed and showed your knowledge of guitars. When I think of electric guitars, my mind immediately goes to rock music, so it was interesting to learn they are made for hawaiian music. I found a slightly lengthy article about the evolution of the guitar in hawaiian music https://acousticguitar.com/how-hawaiian-music-helped-make-the-guitar-americas-instrument/
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I definitely agree that guitars are similar to cars because in my opinion the guitar has a variety of parts and each part depending on quality, in turn, has the ability to change the quality of the music. I also did not know that John Mayer had custom made a guitar, I think that’s a really cool component to your blog. With the video you posted about inventing the guitar I have heard about people getting bloody fingers from bearing too hard on the strings while playing. I have an older brother who plays and he’s pretty good but I do not think he has a specific preference on which guitar he uses.
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