A Look Back: 6 Major Milestones in Guitar History [Infographic]

When you’re learning guitar it’s important to learn a little bit about the instrument’s origins. From the early designs to amplification and the story of rock “n” roll, here’s a look back at guitar history from Denver, CO instructor Kirk R…

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Guitar History: The First Guitar

The old origins of the guitar are rarely talked about. Many people believe that it’s a newly-invented instrument for folk and pop music, however, there were guitars and similar instruments long before familiar instruments like the piano or violin.

Most people believe the guitar evolved from the lute, which was used by troubadours during the renaissance. The lute had four strings which you had to pluck.  Though there were fretted and plucked instruments like the lute around much earlier, it’s safe to say that the guitar, in some fashion, was popular by 1500.

The big difference is that all of the strings were paired, much like on a modern 12-string guitar. Here’s an engraving from 1510 that shows us the existence of these instruments.

It probably sounded something like this:

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Single-String Guitars

The first major development in the guitar was moving from double-strung (and sometimes even triple- strung) instruments to guitars with only one string per note. It took hundreds of years of playing the double- and triple-strung guitars before the single strings caught on.

Even then, it was only the highest string that was a single at first. The previous tunings for multi-strung guitars were wildly inconsistent and wouldn’t always work for different pieces.

Imagine having to re-string your guitar mid-set! Because of this, the single-string trend caught on and quickly took over after the early 1800s.

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A New Design and Steel Strings

Sometime in the 1840s, now famous guitar maker Christian Martin (does Martin Guitars sound familiar?) invented a new way of bracing guitars. The X-brace was stronger and easier to produce than previous designs.

Some found the stiffly-braced tops overly quiet, which resulted in the first production of guitars with metal strings. This was previously next to impossible, as the older designs couldn’t stand up to the tension of metal strings.

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Guitar History: Electricity and Amplification

Despite the common misconception, Les Paul did not invent the first electric guitar. George Beauchamp and Adolph Rickenbacker (whose company still bears his name) invented what they called the “Frying Pan” in 1931, about a decade before Les Paul’s prototype.

While there were previous attempts to electrically amplify the guitar, it was not until Beauchamp and Rickenbacker created their magnetic pickup that it became a reality. Beauchamp was a Hawaiian Steel guitarist, which is the genre that truly prompted the creation of the electric guitar. The guitar was a more prominent melodic instrument in Hawaiian style guitar than in many other genres, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to hear over the growing bands.