Today’s electrical guitars produce tones varying between futuristic music or quasi-acoustic sounds
Friday, April 29th, 2011References to the guitar roughly in its modern form date back to the 14th century. In its youth it had 4 courses of double strings and a rounded body like a gourd or a pumpkin.
Its mummy wouldn’t recognise it today! Round the sixteenth century the guitar was a preferred musical instrument among the middle and lower classes of Europe, and as it increased in renown it started to endure a change of shape. Luthiers started making instruments with single strings rather than courses and experimented with its form till, by the 19th century, the body of the guitar was made broader, and flattened out. In the 20th century the wooden tuning pegs which altered the stress of the strings were replaced by metal machine heads. Now we’ve got the shape the modern electrical guitar is based upon.
The key issue with these electric guitars was that feedback was coming thru the amplifier from the vibration of the guitar’s body. This challenge commenced the evolutionary process of the solid body electrical guitar. The early electrical guitars had sound holes in the body that were smaller in comparison to the sound holes of standard guitars. Now it was feasible to build guitars that didn’t possess sound holes but may be heard obviously thru an amplifier.
Greenhorn guitar players managed to get their hands on electrical guitars thru the attempts of Paul Barth, George Beauchamp and Adolph Rickenbacker who set up the Electro String Company in 1931. Modern electrical guitars are made from many thin layers of wood fastened together. The top layer is usually an interesting wood to give the guitar a nice appearance, and the other layers are of a wood which gives a good tone like poplar or ash. The utilization of laminates endows the instrument with the strong body and tonal quality that will be most unlikely in one piece of wood.
The first solid body guitar was but made of one piece of wood. In 1941 Les Paul turned a train line sleeper into an increased string instrument. He called it ‘The Log’. When production of his instrument commenced he stayed with the conventional guitar shape to give his market a widely known image to relate to. Les Paul’s invention promoted as the Gibson Les Paul is still highly popular. In the 1940’s, the Fender Broadcaster Electrical guitar came into the world. No-one actually spotted till Arthur Smith exploited a Broadcaster to record ‘Guitar Boogie’ in 1949. After being renamed the Telecaster, it was put on the market in 1950. Another Fender model, the Stratocaster, caught guitar players ‘ attention with its special tone and light weight. It’s still the 2nd most well liked guitar in the world.
Source: Cheryl Cole