The Electric Guitar: Pop Culture Icon

Essay by Peter Haight

The electric guitar is the epitome of an icon in multiple arenas. It's long been associated with

rock and roll, carrying the electric vibes of hard rock through the airwaves and into people's ears for

decades past, and hopefully decades to come. The guitar has also been associated as a form of art,

expressing oneself whether it be onstage, in the bedroom of teenage boys whose dreams are in the

concert arena, in the garage or on the walls of an art gallery; guitars are iconic pieces of work. Their

effect on pop culture is undoubtedly matched. The electric guitar has limitless potential and reinvents

itself every so often with players whose coherent yet unconventional approach to music set the standard

for ages to come. Electric guitars are sleek, sexy, loud and proud, like a finely tuned muscle car. Some

players have even taken the liberty to make their own instruments, in turn perfecting the right sound, feel

and look. Notable players of such deeds are Edward Van Halen (of the band Van Halen), Steve Vai

(Grammy award winning instrumental guitarist), the late Kurt Cobain (of the band Nirvana), as well as

thousands of other players who have fun doing what they love. It is also a sex icon, as anyone who

wields the guitar with prowess gives off masses of sex appeal. The electric guitar has come far from its

roots, and it will keep pressing on further in the coming years.

The roots of the solid body electric guitar can be traced back to a man named Lester William

Polsfuss.. He was the son of an immigrant family that moved to Wisconsin from Germany in the 1910s.

Lester's name was changed to Lester Paul, or, Les for short, when he got older, and although he was not

well known yet, he would be in a short amount of time. At a young age, Les showed a large interest in

musical instruments and inventions. He was rumored to be able to play every instrument in band class

but found guitar the most appealing. Les often played with friends, family members, and local musicians

in town, forming bands of his own and playing bars and dance clubs to make a living. Les played the

acoustic guitar in bands, and, more often than not, the acoustic guitar would be drowned out by other

instruments, such as the upright bass, saxophone, trumpet, piano, etcetera. At this point microphones

were either too expensive or not practical enough for use yet, and “electric” guitars existed, but were

very crude, comprising of an acoustic guitar with a mounted pickup (also crude) and had terrible

feedback, but that is a whole other story entirely. It fed Les up to the point where he almost quit playing,

until, one night after a show at a barbecue stand in Milwaukee, a man stopping by left him a note. It

read, “Your voice and your harmonica are fine, but your guitar's not loud enough!” This sparked an idea

in Les' head.

He went home to begin experimenting. First, he took a railroad tie, attached a string to it, and

then did the same with a piece of pine. He then took the earpiece to his mother's phone, mounted it under

the string, and plugged it into his stereo. What ensued was probably a very loud and obnoxious noise of

reverberating metal strings, no messages from God himself however. The results were sub par but it

fueled Les to keep on moving. Several years later, in 1949, Les filed for a guitar patent in Mahwah, New

Jersey. It was known as “The Log”, because the guitar was a piece of wood with a single pickup; bearing

more resemblance to a tree stump than to an actual guitar . Like his first invention, it was revolutionary

in its designs and concepts but impractical for proper usage. Regardless, he is still accredited with

inventing the first solid body electric guitar, meaning that the guitar is made out of a solid block of

wood, usually mahogany , maple, or ash. He tried to sell his ideas to both Danelectro and Gibson guitars,

who were both aware of his ideas, but to no avail.

Les was down on his luck for several more years, meanwhile several similar patents arose and

the Fender Musical Instrument corporation based in California, started producing their first solid body

electric guitars, called the “Esquire”, later to be known as the “Telecaster”. The Telecaster was a piece of

hard rock swamp ashwood with a maple neck and fingerboard, and one pickup. While Les had some

luck perfecting and pioneering the process of record engineering, his patents went unsold. Many of Les'

concepts were used in the making of the Fender Telecaster, without his credit. Several more years went

and passed, and in 1952 Gibson contacted Les Paul for the second time. They remembered him as the

“Funny guy with the broomstick guitar”. Gibson got in touch with Les because they wanted him to

design their first solid body electric guitar and boost their sales. Gibson was beat out by Fender at selling

the first solid body electrics, but Gibson was about to change the world of guitar forever.

After collaborations with Gibson, they released their guitar, called the Les Paul model. It

was made of solid mahogany, included a truss rod in the neck which kept it from bending or warping, a

pick guard on one side of each pickup and featured two (unheard of at the time!) P-90 single coil

magnetic pickups. It was revolutionary and sales skyrocketed, with Fender's Telecaster falling just short.

Then changes started to occur, and in 1954 Fender struck back at Gibson by releasing the Stratocaster,

arguably the most well known, well played, well loved guitar in the world. It in itself was aimed at being

the last guitar a player would need. It featured an all new patented tremolo “whammy bar” system,

which allowed players to drop the pitch of a string or multiple string by depressing the bar, as well as a

contoured body, extended scale neck and three single coil pickups. Guitar players were turned on their

head. More changes happened as well, and in 1957 Gibson released their new patent-applied-for pickup,

called the “humbucker”, designed by renowned innovator, Seth Lover. It was comprised of two single

coil pickups wound in phase together, eliminating the “buzz” or “icepick” sound that single coil pickups

usually featured, in turn “bucking” the “hum”. Humbucking pickups gave a fatter, more warm sound

than the normally punchy, bright sounding single coils. Some humbucking pickups left the factory with

slightly overwound coils, producing a hotter and louder noise signal. Several guitars were released in

the 1960s and the 1970s by both companies, most notably of which are the Gibson Flying V, the Gibson

Explorer, the Gibson SG, the Gibson Les Paul Custom, the Fender Jaguar, and the Fender Mustang.

They were hailed as great guitars for the then-rock revolution, but nothing prepared them for the guitar

attack that was about to strike from Southern California in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The next guitar revolution can be traced back to Amsterdam, Holland, where in 1955,

Edward Loedwijk van Halen was born. He came from a family of musicians, his father a professional

saxophonist, his brother an aspiring drummer, and his mother a reluctant pianist and accordionist. They

moved to Pasadena, California in the early 1960s when the van Halen brothers were still young, and

rumor has it they both played piano alongside their dad on the boat ride over to pay for the fare. At an

early age, the brothers had always received piano lessons, from age five to age twelve, and although they

hated it, it would inspire them more than they realized. Edward, or Eddie, as he likes to be called, got his

first guitar at age ten, and by the time he was in his late teens, he was playing backyard parties with his

brother Alex, a singer by the name of David Lee Roth, and a bass player named Michael Anthony, in a

band called Mammoth. They later changed their band name to Van Halen, and started playing big clubs

in the South California area. Eddie has always been chasing after his own personal tone, notably

destroying several guitars and amplifiers in the process. He liked to find his signature sound, even if it

meant certain death for his guitars or his amp's transformer. Eddie's goal in creating the perfect guitar

was to “cross-pollinate” the sound from a Gibson guitar with the feel of a Fender guitar. One day, Eddie

purchased a second-hand Charvel guitar body and a Charvel neck at a local guitar store, and began

working on his guitar. He affixed a brass nut on the guitar to help keep it in tune better when he used his

whammy bar, wired one Gibson Patent Applied For pickup at the bridge position (as he only knew how

to wire one pickup) and cut out a pick guard out of one of his old records. Eddie later painted the guitar

with black and white stripes, lovingly named it “Frankenstein” and the guitar we see on Van Halen's first

album cover was born. People started to imitate him by making striped guitars, or hot-rodding their own

guitars. Now the times changed, and instead of working on cars, all the cool guys in high school began

to work on souping up their guitars.

What Eddie did by making his own guitar was spark an ignition for the invention of

sometimes home made, sometimes not, “Super Strat” guitars. These style guitars were offered by

Charvel, Jackson, and on rare occasions Fender. Eddie brought business to new companies such as

Charvel and Jackson, and was the poster boy for the Super Strat, and the Super Player. Most Super Strats

had almost the exact same features as Eddie's guitar, which required constant maintenance and care.

Players of Super Strats would usually spend more time tinkering and tweaking their guitars than playing

it, and sooner or later, Eddie would come to realize this. In late 1979, while still on his band's World

Vacation Tour, Eddie met up with fellow guitar aficionado Floyd Rose and helped invent the Floyd Rose

locking whammy bar system. It was ingenious in its design, which allowed for endless altering of

pitches, both upwards AND downwards, without the guitars tuning being affected. This was a dream

come true to Ed and millions of other players, because finally they could play and do all of the

techniques that they wanted without having to worry about tuning problems. Later in the 1980s, Eddie

teamed up with Kramer guitars, based out of Neptune, New Jersey, to create his signature guitar. What

came to be known as the Kramer Pacer was invented with Eddie's help, and he endorsed the guitars,

calling them his muse. Kramer made him several custom made “Frankenstein” style Pacers, called the

Barretta. His own personal Kramer Barretta guitars would be known as the 5150 model, and in no time

flat more and more hard rock and “Shred” guitar players began to endorse Kramer and their guitars, also

igniting a revolution. Finally, he teamed up with pickup maker giant Seymour Duncan to help give his

pickups some credit, which in turn also inspired more players to go out and buy them. Although he did

not make himself or his guitars a household name with his efforts alone, his innovations to guitar playing

are almost as astounding as his contributions to the guitar itself. Debuting as a master showman on their

first album, “Van Halen”, Eddie changed the world of playing guitar, forever, indefinitely and without a

doubt with his two minute instrumental showcase piece, entitled “Eruption”. It featured the first

appearance on record of his two-handed tapping techniques of which he pioneered, flawlessly fluid

legato picking, minor pentatonic blues riffs, open power chords, flaunted harmonic whammy bar dive

bombs and speed picking straight from hell itself. For the first time, professionals wondered, “How did

he do that?” and while many to this day cannot play it right (even the man who wrote it cannot still play

it well!), some managed to figure it out exactly. These people began to imitate Eddie in every way

possible, and with the rise of the 1980s hard rock subculture, power metal and hair metal was born, later

followed by grunge, new metal following that, the hard-core metal, melodic metal, and death-core metal

trends, and currently the 7 and 8-string detuned guitar “djent-core” styles pioneered by Animals as

Leaders, Gojira, Periphery, Kevin Suter, Born of Osiris, Veil of Maya, and most famously Meshuggah.

It is because of most importantly Les Paul and Edward Van Halen that we now have practical,

gorgeous-looking and great sounding guitars, and while many many others were influential in the

process, Les' and Eddies' efforts rise above the rest. Their devotion to guitar itself has inspired millions

to keep playing, and doing what they love, even if dreams do not equate to reality. Along the way, there

have also been other innovators of the electric guitar, such as Ned Steinberger, who invented the

headless guitar, which incorporated a graphite neck, composite body and an equal-pitch bending tremolo

known as the Trans-Trem. Since then however, apart from a few minor inventions such as the

piezoelectric pickup, which produces acoustic like tones, the Robot/Dark Fire tuning system, which

automatically tunes guitars, built in guitar effects processors, “Coil-tap” pickup splitting sounds,

amongst other inventions, the electric guitar on the whole has remained the same, but, it will not stay

that way for much longer, as new rules are being written every day, and, they are constantly being

broken.