The John Lennon Guitar

Every Guitar Has A Story posted a video featuring a 1952 Gibson CF100E. It was the original acoustic-electric guitar. The fully acoustic CF-100 came out the year before. Adding pickups in 1952, was a game changer.

The design is so amazing. Sitka spruce top with bound mahogany back and sides, a rosewood fingerboard made this a beautiful solid wood guitar complete with scalloped x-bracing. It was also the first acoustic to have a cutaway. The Florentine cutaway not only gave it a unique look, it made it easier to access those high frets.

How rare is this guitar? The CF-100E was produced between 1951 and 1959 with only 1257 shipped for the entire production run.

Controversy reared its predictable head with the statement, “it became the famous John Lennon Guitar." The owner brought a picture that was autographed by Paul McCartney and if you look closely, it is not the exact model. Nobody claimed this particular guitar was owned by John Lennon. Just watch the video to understand the evolution of this early acoustic electric.

The first version, which is the one in the video, had issues with feedback. Gibson substituted scalloped x-bracing with ladder-bracing and the solid wood with a laminate.  That one, with the dreadnaught shape was the one John Lennon used. They named that model the J-16E.

Here’s a little side story about that particular guitar. Yes, the guitar used on She Loves You, I Want To Hold Your Hand, All My Loving and those early Beatles classics. The guitar was missing for 50 years. A California man bought it from a friend for $175. He had no idea what he bought. It hung on his wall for decades. The end of that detective story was an auction price of $2.4 million.

Every Guitar Has A Story, that guitar has had a darn good story…so far.

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1952 Gibson CF100E Eddie Prather

The 1952 Gibson CF100E was the original acoustic-electric guitar.

It became the famous "John Lennon Guitar." Just to make the story more interesting, the owner brought a picture that was autographed by Paul McCartney.

1952 Gibson CF100E

Watch this episode of Every Guitar Has A Story

The First Electric Guitar

Most agree the first electric guitar was a Rickenbacker. The “Frying Pan” was made in 1931. It took the company five years to get the patent. That left the door open for many competitors in the new electric guitar market including Gibson in 1936. Gibson was the first to introduce serial numbers. That turned out to be a good idea. All those early guitars are very collectible.

Adolf Rickenbacker was Swiss, and his birth name was Adolf Adam Riggenbacher. His family came to the USA when he was 7. The name change matched the WWI flying Ace and helped in marketing.

The Rickenbacker company is still operating in California.

Here is the fun part, the inventor of the Rickenbacker Fry Pan was a Texan named George Beauchamp. He was a guitar player that didn’t like being drowned out by the rest of the band. His first solution was to build guitars with steel plates and speaker horns.

That became National Steel Guitars. He went to night school and studied electronics. He discovered that steel string vibrating in a magnetics field could translate into a sound that could be amplified through a speaker.

The original company that produced the Frying Pan was called Ro-Pat, then Electro String Instrument Corp and finally, Rickenbacker.

The Frying Pan Was The First Electric Guitar

We got to hold and hear one from the collection of Steve Scorfina, one of the founders of REO Speedwagon and Pavlov’s Dog.

Watch this episode of "Every Guitar Has A Story"