Les Paul and the Birth of Solid Body Electric Guitars
By Bryan Hillebrandt
It’s hard to adequately approximate the effect that the birth of the solid body electric guitar has had on popular music. This innovation, born of a few players’ desire for new sound possibilities, is the main catalyst that made possible everything from the lyrical solos of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour to the driving metal assault of Slayer, from Jimi’s wailing solos to the chicken pickin twang of James Burton. And if we look at the pioneers of the solid body electric–those who were responisble for its development–one name is inextricably linked: Les Paul.
The first electric guitars were nothing more than acoustic arch-top guitars with pickups on them. Popular with jazz players, these guitars would feed back if turned up too loud. Playing at lower volume was fine if you were playing a small club, but if you wanted to play larger venues—and be able to make more money per gig—you wouldn’t be able to turn your guitar up loud enough to be heard in the back of the room. Another problem was acoustic guitars rely on string vibration for volume. This decreases sustain, that is, the length of time that a note sounds.
These are the problems that Les Paul and others faced. The original Rickenbacker “Frying Pan” lap steel was built to deal with these same issues. And while the solution for the Rickenbacker was to cast the guitar in solid aluminum, Les Paul decided to stick with wood. Taking a 4×4 piece of railroad tie, Paul made what is now called “The Log.” He is famous for having said that you could pluck a note on it, go out to lunch, come back and the note would still be sounding.
Apparently audiences didn’t much like watching a guy play a piece of wood with strings on it. So Paul took an Epiphone archtop, sawed it down the middle and mounted the two halves on either side of the log. This made the instrument far more recognizable as a guitar and, one would imagine, a little more comfortable to play.
In the early fifties, Gibson Guitar Company produced a solid-body electric guitar based on suggestions that Paul had given. This guitar received his endorsement and became the guitar to bear his name. The Les Paul model has seen many changes since that time. When sales declined, Gibson redesigned the Les Paul (without Paul’s endorsement) into a thinner, double cutaway guitar. Paul didn’t want his name associated with it and it thereafter became known as the SG (get it, Solid Guitar?).
When the original Les Pauls gained more popularity due to being seen in the hands of several rock luminaries, Gibson started making them again, with the blessing of Les Paul, and it has been a consistent seller since then. It is an instantly recognizable shape that shows up in popular culture and art and seems to be a visual signifier linked forever to Rock and Roll.
So next time you pick up your Les Paul, whether it be a 52 Goldtop or a budget knockoff version you bought at a yard sale, be grateful for the guy whose name is on your guitar. Then turn it up, that’s what he made it for.
Site Update
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Hello Guitar Players!There’s a lot of great stuff to tell you about this week, but let’s start off with the winner of this month’s Sweetwater Giveaway. The winner of the Ebow electronic bow is, drum roll please, MiahMinister! Congratulations MiahMinister and thanks again to Sweetwater for making our monthly giveaway possible.Next month we’ll be giving away a Digitech HarmonyMan intelligent pitch shifter. It’s super easy to sign up for the Sweetwater giveaway so watch this space next week for more details.We’re also working on a special promo right now and while we can’t let you in on what it is just yet, we should be able to tell you about next week. Watch this space for more next week.We’ve got two new tutorials that we’d like to tell you about. Ben Lindholm has got a great tutorial on diatonic intervals. This is a great tutorial for beginners. It introduces several key terms and concepts that you’ll use as you continue to learn more. You can find Ben’s tutorial here.For you more advanced players, Hanspeter Kruesi has an excellent new tutorial on advanced rock improvisation concepts. The seven lessons will give you a good basis to get into creative improvisation work in a very easy way. If you’ve already worked through Hanspeter’s basic and advanced rock licks and have mastered his basic improvisation lessons, this is the next step. The tutorial will get you to the point where you can start to be creative with the minor pentatonic scale over the entire fretboard. Click here to start the tutorial.As always, thanks for reading and keep on pickin.
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The Rickenbacker Frying Pan
by Bryan Hillebrandt
It’s hard to imagine, when looking at the range of electric guitars available, that everything from the most fancy boutique custom guitar to the mass-produced Les Paul and Strat knockoffs owe their very existence to a small cast aluminum lap-steel guitar known as the Rickenbacker Frying Pan. This instrument, besmirched now with the patina of aged aluminum, was the first solid body electric guitar. It stands now as the beginning of a new epoch that made possible everything from Bo Diddley to the metal insanity of Yngwie Malmsteen and all points in between and beyond.
The Frying Pan came into existence to fill a need. In the 1920s and 1930s Hawaiian music was enjoying considerable popularity in the US. The lead instrument in Hawaiian music was an acoustic guitar that was played much in the style of modern dobros, on one’s lap, with a steel (a bar of metal that works in the same way as a bottleneck or slide that blues players use).
The increased popularity of Hawaiian music created the opportunity to sell out larger venues. The only problem was that the acoustic instruments weren’t loud enough to be heard by the larger audiences.
George D. Beauchamp was a Hawaiian music enthusiast and musician. In an effort to amplify his acoustic guitar he mounted a magnetic pickup to the top of his guitar. While it did amplify the signal, it also produced copious amounts of feedback as a result of the guitar’s sympathetic vibration.
He resolved to deal with this problem by building a solid-body instrument. Beauchamp enlisted the help of a machinist by the name of Adolph Rickenbacker who Beauchamp had worked with while developing Dobro resonator guitars. Rickenbacker and Beauchamp together designed the guitar that came to be known as the Frying Pan.
The body and neck of the Frying Pan were cast of one piece of solid aluminum. The pickup consisted of two rather large horseshoe magnets wrapped with wire. These magnets surrounded the six strings and each string had a small iron pole piece to increase the pickup’s sensitivity. This was still a lap steel guitar, not meant to be held and played in the “Spanish style” like most modern guitars.
While the Frying Pan was only made between 1932 and 1939, its creation was one of the most catalyzing events in 20th century popular music. Other guitars which took advantage of the Frying Pad’s innovations were soon on the market. These guitars have shaped the sound of much of the popular music that has come after the Frying Pan’s creation.
So the next time you’re playing your electric guitar, whether that be a mint condition Fender Broadcaster or a $30 beater you found in a thrift store, take a moment to consider how we went from a lowly aluminum lap steel made for playing Hawaiian music to the axe you have in your hands now.
New Video: Ebow Giveaway
GuitarTricks.com has launched a new video on its YouTube page. The description of the video is below. Check it out on the blog, through the Guitar Tricks Channel: http://www.youtube.com/guitartricks, or go to the video directly on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ULiKX6Un-M.
Description:
Tune in as we give the Ebow away. Every month we have a prize to offer, this one might just be yours!
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V to tha J
Picking Up the Guitar
I completed Chapter 1: Correct Posture and Technique of Fundamentals 1, over the last few days. I quickly learned how to position the guitar, hold a pick and stroke the strings – But that was the easy part.
Without taking further lessons, I decided to search YouTube for my favorite tunes and copy guitarists playing them. That obviously didn’t work. I guess if it did, Guitar Tricks wouldn’t be in business. Learning the guitar isn’t like assembling Ikea furniture.
I don’t understand how people can move their fingers across strings so easily. I must have “two left hands” cuz every time I tried moving mine, I made awkward sounds. You watch people playing guitars like rock stars and you want to be one. At this point, the closest I’ll ever get to that is buying the drink!
Today I’m going to start Chapter 2: Basic Knowledge. It covers guitar parts and functions, tuning and reading tabs. Maybe – Just maybe – The next time I post a blog entry, I’ll be spitting jargon instead of saying things like “moving my hand across strings”. Is there even a term for that? Fill me in if you know.
And I’m Grindin’…
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V to tha J
GuitarTricks.com – Learning the Guitar
For those of you who don’t know me – I’m Vishal Jhaveri. A member of GuitarTricks.com, who doesn’t know anything about the guitar. It’s my job to make sure everyone is aware of the website and can use it as an outlet to learn.
But how can I possibly provide justice to my task if I don’t know the product or service. So I’ve taken it upon myself to learn the guitar (Using GuitarTricks.com) and blog about my experience. Feel free to read my notes and laugh, critique, respond, ignore, or share.
Before I get into guitar playing, remember – I don’t know ANYTHING about the guitar. There will be moments where you’ll want to strangle me (Assuming you’re an avid player), so feel free to do it virtually. I am certain that I’ll need your help while learning…So if I pose questions…Hopefully you’ll answer.
Let the playing begin…
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V to tha J
