Frying Pan: The curious tale of the first electric guitar
Rock and roll might have changed the world forever, but it wouldn’t have gotten very far without its weapon of choice, the electric guitar.
From Chuck Berry to Prince, countless different artists have revolutionised the musical realm armed with a trusty six-string, but the strikingly sleek and colourful guitars coveted by rock devotees are a far cry from the humble origins of the instrument.
Take a stroll down Denmark Street, or revisit that one scene from This Is Spinal Tap, and you’ll find guitars of all different shapes and sizes, each with their own unique specialities. After all, the instrument has lent itself to an unimaginable range of different musical styles, genres, and generations over the decades, each demanding their own unique take on the instrument – whether it’s the hollow-bodied Gibsons of the rockabilly age, or the unending presence of Ibanez within the heavy metal sphere.
In most cases, though, your choice of guitar comes down to two main titans: Fender and Gibson, the companies that supposedly started it all. Although Gibson does hold the accolade of being among the very first manufacturers of the electric guitar, and the Fender Stratocaster being the most popular model of all time, neither company actually invented the electric guitar. Instead, the origins of the instrument lay with Victorian patents, lap guitars, and frying pans.
It was back in 1890 that the first real stride towards the creation of the electric guitar was made, when George Breed, a US Naval Officer, used his downtime to create the first – albeit incredibly primitive – electrified guitar. With a sound and look that is unrecognisable from what we now recognise as being an electric guitar, Breed pumped electricity directly through the metal strings of the instrument with the aid of an electromagnet.
Breed did submit a patent for his design, but it was horrendously impractical for musicians, being both too heavy and sounding too strange to ever command the respect of the musical mainstream. Like many world-changing inventions, it required some tweaking, and it wasn’t until some four decades later that a Texan named George Beauchamp decided to rethink Breed’s ideas.
Beauchamp’s contribution to the invention was less about the instrument itself and more about the electric pickup – the main reason Breed’s idea had been far too heavy and impractical. With the technological advances of the early 20th century and the help of a man named Adolph Rickenbacker, though, the Texan was able to create a new take on the primitive electric guitar that was far more usable as a steel lap guitar.
The only problem was that it looked like a frying pan, albeit one of those weird, long frying pans that you see as decoration on pub walls. Nevertheless, the pioneering frying pan guitar went into production back in 1932 – a full three years before Gibson got there – by the Ro-Pat-In Corporation, which soon sensibly chose to change its name to Rickenbacker.
From there, designs and technologies accelerated rapidly, and the company sidelined lap guitars in favour of upright instruments, culminating in the creation of the Rickenbacker range, which amplified everybody from John Lennon to Paul Weller, but it all started with the invention of those electric pick-ups and that plucky little frying pan.
