It is not possible to grant this merit to a single person. The instrument was the result of a long evolution and mutual collaboration between musicians and technicians in electronics and carpentry, in a history that even had the participation of Brazilians.
The fundamental part of the guitar is the pickup. This device, invented in 1923 by the American musician and acoustic engineer Lloyd Loar, transforms the vibration of steel strings into electrical signals, sent to an amplifier and then to a loudspeaker. Loar’s invention allowed the Swiss immigrant who settled in the United States, Adolf Rickenbacker, to build and patent an instrument with a long neck and round body, with a solid aluminum plate. Rickenbacker’s model, developed in 1932, is considered by some historians to be the first guitar equipped with electric pickups. Gradually, models made of wood with a hollow body also appeared, which caused feedback problems.
Solid wood guitars only appeared in earnest in the 1940s. In that decade, several Americans worked in parallel on perfecting the instrument. A technician specialized in repairing radios named Leo Fender was the first to produce solid body guitars on a commercial scale, which he named Broadcaster – a name that would be changed to Telecaster. To compete with Fender, the Gibson instrument factory, which already produced electric guitars with pickups, invited musician Les Paul to redesign a prototype developed by him.
In 1947, Paul Bigsby, another manufacturer, teamed up with country music singer Merle Travis to design his own solid-body electric guitar, considered the closest model to what we know today. Oblivious to all this, in Brazil, the Bahian electrotechnician and musician Adolfo Nascimento, better known as Dodô, had been looking since 1938 for a way to use a pickup to amplify the sound of his cavaquinho.
He discussed the idea with fellow musician and friend Osmar Macedo, with whom he would found the famous Trio Elétrico Dodô e Osmar. Around 1944, Osmar developed an instrument that didn’t even have a body, it was just a cavaquinho neck with a pickup, called an “electric stick”.
The invention attracted the attention of American sailors passing through Bahia. Nobody knows for sure, but there are those who say that these contraptions reached the hands of American inventors, also influencing the development of the guitar.
Double neck guitars became famous in the 70’s when Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin used a Gibson EDS-1275 to play his biggest hit, «Stairway to Heaven». It wasn’t a stage trick: he had to quickly switch between 6 and 12 string sounds during shows.
musical evolution
Instrument was born from a primitive model and became increasingly sophisticated
Rickenbacker Electro Hawaiian
Great-grandmother of current guitars, it was inspired by the Hawaiian guitar, played on the musician’s lap, with a metallic or glass cylinder that slid over the strings. The shape and aluminum plate on the body earned it the nickname «frying pan»
electric stick
Inspired by the exhibition of a classical guitarist who performed in Salvador with an electric guitar, musician Osmar Macedo created this primitive guitar, using a pickup placed in a piece of jacaranda.
Les Paul
It was Gibson’s first mass-produced solid-body model. Designed by the American musician Les Paul, its main feature is the ability to sustain notes for a long time.
Fender Stratocaster
One of instrument maker Leo Fender’s most famous creations, the Stratocaster, released in 1953, was the favorite model of Jimi Hendrix, one of the greatest guitarists of all time.
Gibson FlyingV
It looked too futuristic for the time it was released (1958), putting off buyers. Poor sales caused production to be suspended two years after release. However, it returned to production in the late 1960s.
Roland GS500
With the GS-500 model, from 1977, the Japanese company Roland pioneered the creation of the synthesizer guitar. The instrument commands a separate module, with all the electronic resources of a synthesizer to create and manipulate all kinds of sounds.