Some musicians refer to their guitar as an “axe.” I dislike that term because it implies a certain bluntness the instrument simply does not have. Sure, the guitar can produce some of the most ear-splitting riffs of any instrument out there. But unless you’re hacking away at a brain-dead, two-chord pop-punk song, bluntness just never factors in, whether we’re talking in terms of music or construction.
I could write reams about epic guitar solos—Eric Clapton in “White Room,” anyone?—but here I’ll concentrate on a less-pondered aspect of the most important rock instrument’s history: the construction of the solid-body electric guitar, less an axe and more a carefully conceived piece of engineering ingenuity.
The 1970s and ‘80s saw the proliferation of ill-conceived electric guitar designs, from ZZ Top’s pentagonal monstrosity, to Rhandy Rhodes’s Flying V. Despite such unnecessary indulgences in novelty hardware, however, several solid-body electric guitar models from the 1940s and ‘50s have endured the test of time, proving that sometimes people get it right the first time. Those models are the Les Paul, Gibson SG, Fender Stratocaster, and Fender Telecaster.
Working with famed electric guitar company Gibson in the late ‘40s, jazz musician Les Paul conceived one of the first-ever solid-body electric guitar models. He named his creation after himself, an act of self-aggrandizement so appealing that dozens of musicians would later follow suit. Eric Clapton would help make the Les Paul—and its cousin, the Gibson SG—famous, though his greatest contribution to electric guitar sales is his use of the Stratocaster.
Leo Fender might have been Greek, but he made two of the most prototypically American guitar models: the Telecaster of 1951 and the Stratocaster of 1954. Everyone from Jeff Beck to Eric Clapton to John Mayer has used a Strat, making it possibly the most famous electric guitar model ever.
None of the models discussed have experienced significant revisions since their conception. It’s not that electric guitar engineers are lazy—they’re just geniuses, plain and simple. So the next time you’re in the market for an electric guitar, put down that corny “axe” with more necks than a hydra, and invest in a Strat. There’s a reason why it hasn’t changed in 59 years.
