The origin of this instrument is covered in a mystery that has been further confused in disagreement among music historians. The oldest closely recognizable ancestors of the guitar can be traced back as far as the 14th century. But how they evolved to this point, we can only guess. From archeological discoveries made over the centuries is that stringed instruments designed to be played either by strumming or plucking certainly existed before those times. The story is complicated since some of these instruments show only the most superficial resemblance to the guitar. Filling in the missing links is made that much harder, since we can't say with any certainty how these instruments were used or what they even sounded like. The earliest widely accepted evidence could be seen in Babylonian clay ruins discovered in Asia Minor. Dating back about 4,000 years, images describe group

Although Lloyd Loar had developed a basic magnetic pickup in 1924, the company failed to see its potential, leaving others to pave the way. In 1931 Paul Bigsby and George Beauchamp, who had been working on the same ideas for the California National Company, joined forces with Adolph Rickenbacker to form the Electro String Company (Don McLean). Together they produced a series of cast-aluminum lap-steel guitars were referred to as "frying pans" (Walter Carter), this instrument barely qualified as a guitar. They were the first commercially produced electric instruments.

One problem from novices of the electric guitar during the 1960s and 1970s was the cost of the famous-name guitars. to fill in the gap in the market Japan, Southeast Asia unleashed an enormous supply of cheap imitations. But although they may have looked a bit like the Telecaster, Stratocaster, Les Paul's, they were just too hard to play and sounded terrible.

At this point we can bring in the single most important name in the history of the solid-body electric guitars, Leo Fender. In 1950 a Californian radio repair shop owner created the first mass-produced production-line solid-body electric guitar the Fender Broadcaster. A year later when threatened with legal action, Fender was forced to rename his groundbreaking instrument so the Fender Telecaster was born (Bob Willocks). Following the success of the telecaster, the Gibson Company invited Les Paul to take part in the development of its own first solid-body electric guitar. The instrument launched in 1952 and was named in his honor (Walter Carter). Two years after the appearance of the Gibson Les Paul, Fender responded with the legendary Stratocaster, probably the most famous electric guitar of all. Since then the Telecaster and the Stratocaster have remained in permanent production.

Fitting pickups to an acoustic guitar may have revolutionized music but a number of serious problems resulted. If the sound coming out of the speakers were too loud, the body of the guitar would vibrate, creating a howling noise known as "feedback". A solution to this problem was to increase the body-mass of the guitar so that it would not vibrate so easily. So it was at the 1940s, the first solid-body electric guitars were developed. There is a considerable disagreement as to who actually invented the solid-body guitar, but there were clearly a number of like-minded individuals working on similar lines. One person is the well-known country-jazz guitarist Les Paul, who created his own "log guitar" using a Gibson neck attached to a solid piece of pine on which the pickups and the bridge were mounted. He tried to sell his idea to Gibson but they laughed at his "broomstick with pickups" (Walter Carter). Another pioneer was engineer Paul Bigsby, who designed an instrument with country guitarist Merle Travis. This was an important development since the shape of this instrument would influence future designs. Since only around a dozen were produced, it could just about lay claim to being the first production solid-body electric guitar.

s of musicians playing from which the guitar probably evolved. These instruments shared a number of important features with their modern guitars, such as a fingerboard, frets, the us

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