Who made the first ever electric guitar?
If Johann Sebastian Bach had laid his eyes upon the electric guitar, he would have likely called it something along the lines of “fraudulent”.
It’s hard to pinpoint when Romanticism began as an artistic movement within music, but most people are happy to admit that Bach was one of the first writers to champion it. The whole idea was that composing music moved away from the ideology of “Let me show you what I can do,” and morphed into “Let me show you how I’m feeling.”
Music was a way for people to flex their artistic muscles, and that meant putting together complicated and elongated pieces that left audiences in shock. When romanticism came into effect, the mindset changed, and people focused instead on the idea of making music that reflected a certain feeling. Love songs facilitated love, sad songs sadness, and so on and so on.
Bach put it best in his Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments (1753, 1762), where he talks about how music should both impact the listener and the artist. “A musician cannot move others unless he too is moved,” he wrote, “In languishing, sad passages, the performer must languish and grow sad… Similarly, in lively, joyous passages, the executant must again put himself into the appropriate mood.”
This is a mindset shared by a number of musicians, even in the modern age; however, it was this mindset that frustrated people when the electric guitar was first invented. While it was created for practical reasons, there were a lot of artists who felt that it allowed for what was basically cheating in creativity. People didn’t need to write moving pieces of music because they could just manipulate their instruments in order to convey that emotion.
Of course, with the power of hindsight, we now know that the electric guitar didn’t spoil creativity within music, but enhanced it. It gave rise to the birth of rock ‘n’ roll and guitar solos that can reduce the driest of eyes to floods of tears. It was one of the greatest inventions in the history of music. So, who do we owe such a treasured invention to?
When we think of legends who have made great strides in the technology surrounding the creation of the electric guitar, when we think about the progression of the instrument, we immediately think of names such as Gibson and Fender. While they are certainly very important in the instrument’s development, they weren’t the original inventors of the instrument.
So, who made the first electric guitar?
Many people in jazz ensembles tried to use electricity to amplify the sound of their guitars so they could be heard above the band. The issue was that these designs were done by acoustic guitar makers, and placing that sound on a hollow body (or sometimes a banjo) resulted in a weak signal.
The first electric guitar that was sold and marketed as an electric guitar was known as “The Frying Pan,” which was a steel guitar that the player used on their lap. George Beauchamp invented this model, and while it didn’t become the design we all know and love today, it did provide proof of concept. A well-known name who assisted with this design was Adolph Rickenbacker, and the company that initially made “The Frying Pan” was rebranded as Rickenbacker in 1934.
This original design of the electric guitar was the foundation that Rickenbacker, along with other companies such as Gibson and Fender, would build on. While “The Frying Pan” might not be the model that people use en masse today, Beachamp was certainly cooking something up when he made it.
