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"