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Who Invented the Guitar?

By Kevin | April 24, 2008

The Guitar doesnt really have one “inventor” as such - not that I’ve found anyway!

The Guitar seems to have evolved from the Lute family of instruments, and Guitar type instruments have been used for almost 5000 years.

To read more about who invented the guitar I recommend you check out the article in the Wikipedia on Guitar - as this has excellent references to the history of the classical guitar.

The Electric Guitar can be said to have an inventor, or at least a few people who were influential in its creation.

There were a few inventors messing around with amplifying guitars to make them louder in the 1920’s, however in around 1931 George Beauchamp, who worked with with Adolph Rickenbacker, created an the first electromagnetic pickup, which was the first real way of picking up the vibrations from the guitars strings. 

This was really the first commercial electric guitar - but it still had a hollow body.

It was guitar inventor Les Paul who created the first true solid body electric guitar, and in the 1940’s Paul Digsby and Leo Fender were also influential in creating the designs we know today.

There is a wealth of information on Guitar History on the internet, and as I am by no means an expert in this area I’ll simply leave you with a few links to read further on the subject:

 

 

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Topics: Guitar |

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