Numerous American jazz and blues bands of the 1920s and 1930s used the acoustic guitar, but it was almost inaudible, so it ended up as a purely rhythm instrument. Yes, even there it was barely audible, despite the fact that since the end of the 19th century, many efforts have been made to increase the volume of this instrument, in particular, changing the shape of the resonator box and the invention of steel strings.
One way or another, the banjo was sometimes preferred to the guitar - for a brighter sound. The first known experiments with amplifying a guitar sound with electricity date back to 1923 - when a certain engineer and inventor Lloyd Loar (Lloyd Loar)
invented an electrostatic pickup that recorded the vibrations of the resonator box of stringed instruments. On the market, however, his invention failed.
and Adolph Rickenbacker
invented an electromagnetic pickup in which an electrical impulse ran through the winding of a magnet, creating an electromagnetic field in which the signal from the vibrating string was amplified.
Their tool, when it appeared, was immediately called a "frying pan" - and for a reason: firstly, the case was all-metal. Secondly, in its form, the instrument really outrageously resembled a frying pan with a disproportionately long "handle" - a neck.
But in the end it was the first viable and competitive electric guitar. Towards the end of the 1930s, numerous experimenters began to cross-breed the snake with the hedgehog, and to incorporate pickups into more traditional-looking hollow-body Spanish guitars. However, here they were in for a fair amount of trouble in the form of resonant pickups (feedback), distortion and other extraneous noise. In the end, they were dealt with with the help of a double counter winding - which extinguished the "excessive" signal. However, at first, musicians and engineers tried to solve this problem differently: all sorts of rags and scraps of newspapers were stuffed into the resonator box in order to get rid of unnecessary vibrations - and, consequently, interference.
Well, the most radical option was proposed by guitarist and engineer Les Paul (Les Paul)
— he just made the soundboard for the guitar monolithic. Unlike the frying pan, however, the deck of the Les Paul was made of wood. Pine, to be exact. And it was called - "Bar" (The Log). For the pickup, Les Paul used parts from a telephone and, most interestingly, a really ordinary wooden block as a body. Due to the fact that the sound was amplified by means of electronics, there was no need for an acoustic resonator. When he first appeared in public, his instrument was looked at like hell knows what. In the end, to reassure the audience, Les Paul attached to the bar - just for show - the body of the Spanish guitar. And after that, he was accepted with a bang. With a solid or almost solid piece, other engineers began to experiment.
In the 1940s, this was done by Mr. Paul Bigsby (Paul Bigsby)
and Mr. Leo Fender.
Familiar names, right? By 1950, the company founded by Fender was already churning out copies of the guitar under the name Esquire (squire, or squire), then the Broadcaster followed, followed by the Telecaster, and in 1954 the first Stratocaster saw the light. Since then, this guitar model has not changed much.
I must say that at that time musicians were rarely satisfied with the fate of a single particle of the immense pop conveyor: there were much more people who wanted to find something of their own. This was reflected in the instruments, guitars in particular. They also searched for their own sound, and many, especially pop music performers, sought to make the appearance and their instruments unique. The sound of the guitar does not particularly depend on the shape of the body, so the designers tried their best.
The ABBA guitarist had an instrument shaped like a star. The Scorpions guitarist has been playing dovetail guitar for many years. In general, guitars of such "extreme" forms were preferred by glam rock performers.
As for the manufacturers, in the field of perverted-extreme outlines of instruments, perhaps the most famous companies are Gibson and B.C. Rich. The same "dovetail", which is called the Flying V or V Factor, was invented by Gibson designers.
By the way, there is a whole gallery of photos of B.C. Rich guitars at this address, so you can see all these predatory angles with your own eyes. On Gibson guitars - a company that was for a long time the largest manufacturer of electric guitars in the United States.
For guitarists: be careful, there is a threat of a sharp activation of salivation. It happened that designers from the guitar industry wanted to show off so much that the sense of proportion and taste simply refused. For example, in one music salon at the All-Russian Exhibition Center, for many years a guitar hung on the wall, the soundboard of which was made in the form of a dragon twisted into a figure eight. The wood carver was skilled, but, God knows, serious musicians will not buy this guitar for anything. Firstly, it is inconvenient to hold such a jagged-scaly monster in your hands, and secondly, even from a distance it seems that this guitar rests on your word of honor: if you sneeze, it will crumble.
Wall decoration, nothing more.
Any champion of acoustic instruments will tell you that an electric guitar is not a guitar at all, but only a completely different instrument that looks like it, which retained its old name by inertia. That it is a different instrument, the proponents will be right. As for inertia
- then something has been preserved for too long: for more than 70 years. Moreover, on the booklets of all kinds of rockers, the word guitar sometimes denotes an electric guitar, and an acoustic guitar has to be designated separately. The trouble with the electric guitar is that without the processing aids—that is, an amplifier and speakers—it is, unlike its acoustic ancestor, useless.
Now they surprise with their shapes and variety of all sorts of lotions and bells and whistles!
What is a guitar? What is the history of the invention of this musical instrument? What is the classification of guitars? What elements does the tool consist of? The answers to these and other questions can be found in our publication.
The first written mention of a stringed instrument, which was the progenitor of the modern guitar, dates back to the 2nd millennium BC. The corresponding images were found during the excavation of clay bas-reliefs in the area where ancient Mesopotamia was located.
At the turn of the 3rd and 4th centuries AD, Chinese craftsmen invented an instrument called ruan. It consisted of a lower and upper deck, as well as a wooden case.
In the Middle Ages, the instrument was widely used in Spain. The guitar was brought here from ancient Rome. The Spanish masters made several improvements. In particular, they increased the number of strings to 5. At the end of the 18th century, the instrument received another string, as a result of which the repertoire of performers expanded significantly.
In domestic open spaces, they learned quite late about what a guitar is. This happened around the beginning of the 18th century. when Italian musicians and composers began to visit us en masse. The first Russian master who mastered the instrument perfectly was a certain Nikolai Petrovich Makarov. It was thanks to his efforts that the guitar became extremely popular among the people. In the future, the composer and virtuoso musician Andrei Sikhry developed interest in the instrument. The latter wrote over a thousand corresponding games.
Where did the name guitar come from? This concept probably comes from the ancient Greek word sitra or the Indian sitar. In ancient Rome, the instrument began to be called a cithara, in its own way.
Today, the guitar is called roughly the same in different languages. From the above names come the modern concepts of guitar, uitarra, guitare.
Structurally, the guitar is presented in the form of a body with an elongated neck, the front side of which is flat or has a slight bulge. Strings are stretched along such a neck. The latter are fixed on one side on the stand of the body, and on the other side they are attached to the lambs on the fingerboard.
The presence of special pegs makes it possible to adjust the tension of such strings. The strings lie on several saddles. The top one is at the head of the neck. The lower one is located near the stand on the tool body.
The guitar is an instrument traditionally made from wood. The cheapest, simplest models are made of plywood. The body of the most expensive guitars is made of mahogany, maple or rosewood. Some modern electric guitars are made of plastic and graphite composites.
As for the necks, they are made from a wide variety of woods and their combinations. At the same time, the main emphasis is on creating the most durable structural element that can withstand increased loads.
The American engineer George Bisham is considered the author of the modification of the classic version. In the 1930s, this man was fired from a large stringed instrument company. Subsequently, he decided to conduct his own work to find new methods to increase the volume of the guitar. The engineer came up with a variant with the creation of sound vibrations around magnets with a winding in the form of a metal wire. A similar principle has already been used in the production of acoustic speakers, as well as phonograph needles.
After several setbacks, Bisham finally succeeded in creating a working pickup. Each string of an electric guitar passed over a separate magnet. The current that flowed through the metal winding of the pickup allowed the signal to be transmitted to the speakers. Convinced that the device was working, the inventor enlisted the help of woodworker Harry Watson. Within a few hours, the first ever electric guitar body was cut.
In the 1950s, famed performer Les Paul modified the instrument with a solid wood body instead of a hollow one. The solution made it possible to reproduce the widest variety of sounds and gave rise to a whole host of new genres in music.
According to the method of amplifying sound vibrations, the following types of guitars are distinguished:
In fact, there are many more varieties of guitars. In hybrid models, there is often an increase in the number of strings, their doubling, the use of several necks. Such solutions make it possible to add variety to the sound of the instrument, and also facilitate the solo performance of complex works. With the advent of rock music, bass guitars arose, which have extremely thick strings and make it possible to reproduce sounds of the lowest frequency.
Speaking of modern guitar music, it is impossible to ignore one of the varieties of guitars - the electric guitar. It is safe to say that this is, if not the most popular tool, then one of the most common. The tool is unique in that it is a synthesis of art and the achievements of human progress. But few people know that the history of the instrument began almost 100 years ago. In the 1920s, a new innovative musical trend, jazz, was born in America. Jazz orchestras appear, consisting of a brass section, piano, drums and double bass. By this time, the guitar had established itself as an instrument with rich possibilities - the names of the virtuosos Giuliani, Sor, Pujol, Tarrega and Carcassi entered guitar history forever. Not bypassed the guitar and a new trend. However, integrating it into the orchestra proved to be a difficult task. The guitar did not have sufficient volume and was lost in the orchestra. Then the idea came up to add volume to the guitar in an electric way. In 1924, Gibson guitar factory engineer Lloyd Loar, who in particular designed guitars with cutouts in the shape of the Latin letter f, began experimenting with a sensor that converts body vibrations into electrical signals. But this method did not find practical application, since the result was far from perfect. According to another version, Loer at that time was no longer a Gibson employee, therefore, he could not introduce his developments into mass production. Therefore, the first electric guitars that appeared on the market in 1931 are guitars manufactured by the Electro String Company, formed by Paul Bart, George Beucham and Adolf Rickenbacker, later called Rickenbacker after one of the creators. Rickenbacker guitars were used in particular by the legendary Beatles. However, the first guitar they released had nothing to do with later models. She had a round body made of aluminum (it is also claimed that the first models were wooden), and she looked like a banjo. Musicians jokingly called her "frying pan" (frying pan).
Rickenbacker frying pan Today it is a collectible rarity.
Despite the growing popularity, the new instrument was patented only in 1937, since the patent office doubted the advisability of using pickups. By the time the patent was received, electric guitars from other manufacturers had appeared on the market. However, the Rickenbacker guitar used a pickup, the principle of which is used to this day. A coil of copper wire is wound around the magnet. Getting into a magnetic field, the oscillating strings generate an induction current in the coil, which can be applied to the input of a sound amplifier. Pickups use steel or nickel strings to work. The popularity of electric guitars in the 30s is growing. Gibson instruments are in the greatest demand: Gibson L-5, Gibson ES-150 and Gibson Super 400 (so named because of its high price of $400).
Guitars popular in the 1930s, some are still produced today.
Some modern guitars have the same construction as the guitars of the 30s, with minor changes. The guitar becomes audible in the orchestra, gradually it is transferred from accompanying to solo instruments. Muddy Waters revolutionized the power of the electric guitar in the blues in the early 1940s. But with amplified sound, there are also feedback problems. Surely, many people know the characteristic unpleasant whistle, if you bring the microphone to the speaker, which receives an amplified signal from the same microphone. The same effect is observed with guitars. In addition, the body of the guitar resonated with the sound of other instruments, which, when amplified, created unwanted overtones. Several methods are used to remedy this. The first is to cover the cutout in the deck with a plastic panel to reduce the influence of outside sounds. The second is to make the resonant body smaller (in particular, the Gibson ES-335 guitar released in 1958 has a body about 4 cm wide).
These two methods were widely practiced until the 1950s. In the fifties, a new era of electric guitars came - the era of the "board". It is difficult to unequivocally answer who owns the authorship of making electric guitars from a single piece of wood, that is, to exclude the resonating body altogether. The first candidate is Lester William Polfuss, better known as Les Paul. In his youth, Les Paul was fond of electronics, worked at a radio station and studied music. He built his first solid body guitar in 1941. According to one version, he suggested that Gibson start mass production of his model, but the company's management had more conservative views on the design of the guitar. During the Second World War, Les Paul was called to serve as a radio operator, so he retired from music for a while. In 1948, he began experimenting with overlaying sound on a previously recorded soundtrack, giving a definite impetus to the field of sound engineering. In the early 1950s, Gibson asked him to help build a guitar from a single piece of wood. The fact is that in 1950 a new name appeared on the market - Fender. Fender has been around since 1946. Its creator, Leo Fender, was an electrical engineer designing guitar amplifiers. In 1950, his company released the first guitar, called the Esquire, which, after a series of renamings (in particular, due to the patented name behind the legendary drum model manufactured by Gretsch), became known as the Telecaster. Leo Fender abandoned the idea of producing semi-acoustic guitars - as electric guitars with a resonating body were called at that time. Today, this wording is not entirely accurate, since acoustic guitars with a pickup have appeared on the market. The most accurate English wording sounds like Hollow body electric guitar - an electric guitar with a hollow body. In everyday life, it is called a jazz model. Being a pragmatic man, Leo Fender decided to concentrate exclusively on the "electric" sound of guitars. Firstly, the feedback problem was partially solved, and secondly, solid wood guitars had a harder sound attack and better sustain. Initially, the English word sustain with the development of electric guitars entered almost all languages. In everyday life, under this word, guitarists mean the time of the sound of a note (sound or string) from the moment the sound is produced to the moment of complete decay. In solid body guitars, the sustain is much higher, since the rigid construction dampens string vibrations to a lesser extent than a resonant body, which takes a significant part of their mechanical energy. In the fifties there were both supporters and opponents of such guitars, but, undoubtedly, interest was shown in the new instrument. Leo Fender decided not to stop there. His next steps were truly revolutionary. First, his brainchild was the most successful and often copied electric guitar in history - the Stratocaster. Secondly, he created a fundamentally new instrument - the bass guitar. In both cases, Fender tried to create more modern instruments that would eliminate the shortcomings of previous models. If the stratocaster was like a continuation of the history of electric guitars, then the bass guitar had no analogues before. Leo Fender went to meet new trends in music. The era of jazz bands was waning, the era of rock and roll was coming. Often, numerous rhythm and blues quartets had a sharp question - what instrument to fill the lower register. Often one of the guitarists had to pick up a double bass, which required certain skills, and was also heavy and bulky. This is how the idea of creating a lightweight compact tool that fits easily in the back seat of a car was born. The Stratocaster, in turn, was a model of comfort - it had an unusual shape. The cutout on the bottom allowed the fingers to reach the highest frets, the cutout on the top was just a way to balance the center of gravity so that when standing up, the neck would not be outweighed. The corners of the guitar were sharpened and did not dig into the ribs. The Stratocaster had another innovation, referred to by Leo Fender as "synchronized tremolo", which will be discussed later.
Classic solid body guitars are still very popular today.
However, for the first 10 years, the Stratocaster did not enjoy the triumphant popularity that it gained in the 70s. There may be several reasons for this. Firstly, musicians who have long been famous for their conservatism often preferred "jazz" guitars in the fifties. The era of British music began in the 60s. The first half of the sixties belongs to the legendary Beatles (The Beatles), Rolling Stones (Rolling Stones) and Animals (Animals). The music that originated in America reached Europe, and above all Great Britain. American records came with sailors to port cities (Liverpool and Hamburg were one of them) and gave rise to the Big Beat epidemic in them. English musicians introduced a certain academicism into the new trend; music, which had previously been considered cheap entertainment for young people, began to be perceived by the older generation. However, the market for electric guitars in Britain was different from the American one. Large firms like Gibson and Rickenbacker were able to supply instruments to Europe, Fender was unable to gain a foothold in this market. In addition, European guitar companies could not ignore the hype around electric guitars. Many firms tried to produce their own models, in particular, the early Beatles used instruments from the German Hofner factory, and Paul McCartney still plays the Hofner violin bass, bought in the early 60s in Hamburg. English musician Chris Rea immortalized the significance of the factory's instruments for British blues on the albums Hofner Blue Notes and Return Of The Fabulous Hofner Bluenotes (despite this fact, the company was unable to maintain its leading position in the market).
Sir Paul McCartney and his famous Hofner Bass Violin
The second half of the 60s passed under the banner of experiments in the field of sound. Many distortions that were previously considered interference have now become an artistic element, the electric sound began to be transformed with the help of effects beyond recognition. First of all, the musicians began to apply overdrive, which gives a characteristic "buzzing" sound. This, in particular, can also explain the little interest in stratocasters. The fact is that they had three single-coils as pickups, which gave a weaker signal compared to the humbuckers that were on many other guitars (we will talk about the types of pickups later). The more powerful output of the humbuckers behaved more interestingly on an overdriven sound. This led to the birth of a new style - hard rock. Bright representatives of the "new sound" of the late 60s is the Yardbirds (Yardbirds), which managed to play Eric Clapton (Eric Clapton), Jeff Beck (Jeff Beck) and Jimmy Page (Jimmy Page). The legendary virtuoso guitarist Jimi Hendrix contributed to the great popularity of the stratocaster, changing the idea of the possibilities of the guitar in rock music. After his performance at the Woodstock festival, there was an increased interest in stratocasters. Many guitarists have switched to this model. It is pointless to list all the musicians who use a stratocaster - the list will be very long. Suffice it to name the brightest of them – Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Richie Blackmore, Rory Gallagher, David Gilmore, Mark Knopfler and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Each of these guitarists is a master of his craft, each has an individual style of playing and each worked in his own genre. Apparently this gave birth to the legend of the versatility of stratocasters, guitars that can play any kind of music, from jazz to heavy metal. On this, perhaps, we can finish the history of the development of electric guitars. As an instrument, the electric guitar was finally formed in the 70s. In the eighties, several new guitar corporations appeared in the USA - Jackson, Hamer, Kramer, B C Rich. At these factories, the tools proposed at one time by older firms were taken as a basis and improved. So, for example, a “superstrat” appeared on the market - a guitar shaped like a stratocaster, but often with more convenient access to the last frets, the number of frets on guitars increased to 24 (in some cases, up to 30, for example, Ulrich Roth, a former participant Scorpions), various pickup configurations were used.
The Ibanez SA guitar can easily be classified as an advanced Superstrat stratocaster.
Sometimes the guitars were given a peculiar shape that did not affect the sound in any way, but looked spectacular on stage - for example, the Gibson Explorer or the Gibson Flying V. Sometimes the guitars were made to order, with a body in the form of an American flag, a dragon, or a Viking axe. The convenience of playing such guitars was not always taken into account and was a subjective concept.
The shape of the guitar has become an artistic element for the concert show.
Jay Turser "SHARK" guitar bought by Vladimir Holstinin (Aria) for the collection as a joke.
Often there are seven and eight-string guitars. At the same time, Japanese enterprises entered the world market. Jack Bruce, who worked with Eric Clapton in the Trio Cream, recalls picking up a Japanese bass for the first time in the late 60s: "It was the worst instrument that didn't sound at all." Today, professional musicians use the products of Japanese companies ESP and Ibanez with pleasure. It is difficult to imagine the development trend of the instrument in the near future, but in the present, the electric guitar has already become quite a classic instrument.
Sometimes guitarists lack range. Ibanez RG Prestige seven and eight string guitars.
The article was prepared by Leonid Reinhardt (Germany)
Guitar is a unique instrument. It is used in almost all styles of music. This stringed instrument also has many types - electric guitar, acoustic guitar. A person who plays the guitar is called a guitarist.
So, history of the origin of the modern guitar, which we see at the moment, dates back to the deepest antiquity. Its progenitors are considered to be instruments that were known in the countries of the Near and Middle East several 1000 years ago. One of the main representatives of which are the kinnora, Egyptian guitar, veena, nabla and many other ancient instruments with a resonating body and neck. These devices had a hollow, rounded body, which in turn was traditionally made from dried gourds, tortoise shells, or whole pieces of wood. The appearance of the lower, upper deck and shell was fixed much later.
At the very beginning of the modern era, the lute, a close relative of the guitar, was more famous. The very name of the lute comes from the Arabic el-dau wooden, and the word guitar itself comes from the merger of 2 words: Sanskrit 
the words sangita, which means music in translation, and the ancient Persian tar string Until the sixteenth century, the guitar was 4-ex and three-stringed. They played on it with fingers and a plectrum with a bone plate something similar to a plectrum. And only in the seventeenth century in Spain the first five-string guitar appeared, which was called the Spanish guitar. Double strings were placed on it, and the first page on the singer was often single.
The appearance of a six-string guitar is usually attributed to the 2nd half of the eighteenth century, maybe also in Spain. With the advent of the 6th string, all doubles were changed to singles, in fact, in this guise the guitar appears before us at the moment. During this period, the triumphal journey of the guitar across countries and continents begins. And due to her own qualities and musical abilities, she gains worldwide recognition.
