Master Aficionados At Playing The Electric Guitar

What do Carlos Santana, Kieth Richards, Jimmy Page, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Jimi Hendrix have in common? They were all master aficionados at playing the electric guitar; the instrument that has probably the largest impact on modern day society’s culture. So much so, that it is odd to think that barely anyone knows its history, its affect on music and society, and much less on how it actually works.
Before its history can be discussed, how it works should be understood first. The technology behind its functioning is rather simple. It begins with the magnetic pickup located under the strings on the body of the guitar (howstuffworks.com). A typical guitar usually has two to three of them (howstuffworks.com). There are several different kinds of pickups, all functioning relatively the same way (howstuffworks.com). The main two are either pickups that have a single magnetic bar that stretches under all six strings or pickups that are made up of six individual magnetic polepieces, or sometimes screws, located under each string

He was the individual who introduced the “first solid-body electric guitar to be mass-produced” (rockhall.com). He was born on the tenth of August, 1909, somewhere near Anaheim, California (rockhall.com). He found a deep interest in electronics, hence his former occupation as a radio repairman, and became interested in guitars due to the fact that many of his customer brought him external pickups to repair (rockhall.com). Prior to the invention of the electric guitar, guitarist would attach external pickups to their hollow-bodied acoustic guitars so that they could amplify them (rockhall.com). In the year 1948, he successfully designed the first solid-bodies electric guitar to be marketed and mass produced; it was named the Broadcaster (rockhall.com). That name was later changed to the Telecaster in 1950