If you love rock and roll music then you most likely have some favourite guitar players from over the years. And even if you you're not a massive rock and roll fan, you could be familier with the names I am going to mention.

But I bet you didn't notice that you might not have heard about any of them without the invention of the electrical guitar. In fact , rock and roll might not even exist if guitars weren't invented that might play at the volume and with the sound that we've all come to grasp and love. The discovery of the electrical guitar was truly an invention that changed music forever. Here's how...

The Beginning of Electrical Guitar

The electric guitar as we understand it today hasn't really been around all that long. There were early designs in the 1920's and 30's, and Gibson offered a available electrical guitar in 1936. But none really caught on in any big way.

Even though you might find electrified guitars back then, they weren't that valuable in a big band setting because they were based on hollow-body arch top guitars. If you tried to turn them up they inclined to feed back and make a screaming noise. That's the reason why they were mostly used for rhythm and barely might be loud enough to take leads in a big band setting.

And early guitars had an uneven sound with some strings being louder than others. Generally, the electric guitar wasn't ready for prime time. And it actually was not prepared for Rock and Roll.

Leo Fender changed all that.

Leo Fender was the inventor of the first commercially available solid body electric guitar. With the solid body electric, players could actually turn the instrument up loud enough to cut through a whole band. Leo radically changed music, and the rock and roll of the 50's and 60's may not have happened without him. It certainly would have sounded very different.

And the 1st solid body electrical guitars were radically different than what had come before. They seemed like creatures from another planet compared against typical guitars of the time. Most guitars of the 30's and 40's looked like a normal acoustic guitar with a huge, hollow body and had a typical acoustic sound you'd expect. It is a lovely sound but only appropriate for particular types of music.

When Leo Fender invented the Broadcaster guitar in 1951, which would soon be called a Telecaster due to patent issues, it was totally different than anything around. It was angled with a totally new shape and only about 2 inches deep with two specially designed mikes, called pickups, that caught the sound of the strings. It was light but really compact yet still had a solid piece of wood that resonated with a very, well, solid sound. It is a complete perception shift from other guitars.

Inside a few years, Gibson Guitars popped up with their own solid-body guitar, the Les Paul. It was based totally on an invention by jazz guitarist Les Paul who also had been working on a solid body electric guitar himself. Some even say that he was the 1st inventor of a solid body electric, and that may be true, though it was not commercially popular until a bit later on.

Guitar Amplifiers Were A Big Factor Too

Although the guitar could now be played loudly it wanted to be amplified. Many of these early guitar amplifiers came from Fender as well , but Gibson and others offered them as well. Many of those early amps are prized by collectors and guitar players for their unique and pleasing sounds.

And the amplifier itself had a major impact on the sound also. You can actually say the sound of the electrical guitar was a wedding between the guitar and the amp used. The amp modified the sound that was produced and when turned up loudly created a distortion that was quite pleasant to guitarists. Early blues guitarists and later rock and roll guitarist sought that overdriven sound. This sound was something that was wholly new to music and spawned that early blues and rock and roll sound we came to enjoy in the 1950's.

Finally, players like Jimi Hendrix and Pete Townsend of The Who used this distortion to extreme levels to create the sound of the 60's and psychedelic music. Amps had gotten louder and the sound was more bombastic than ever. The 1960's truly was the decade when the electric guitar and amplification developed to the point at which it still is today.

And it commenced with Leo Fender and his invention, the solid-body electric guitar. Blues guitarists and rock and roll guitarists alike, owe it all to Leo.