After further refinements, Dopyera applied for a patent on the so-called tri-cone guitar on April 9, 1927.
These efforts produced an instrument that so pleased Beauchamp that he told Dopyera that they should go into business to manufacture them. Their next collaboration involved experiments with mounting three conical aluminum resonators into the body of the guitar beneath the bridge.
He approached inventor and violin-maker John Dopyera, who made a prototype that was, by all accounts, a failure. He first conceived of a guitar fitted with a phonograph-like amplifying horn. George Beauchamp was a vaudeville performer, violinist, and steel guitarist who, like many acoustic guitarists in the pre-electric-guitar 1920s, was looking for some way to make his instrument cut through an orchestra. During the early 1940s, Rickenbacker amps were sometimes repaired by Leo Fender, whose repair shop evolved into the Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company. Lansing of the Lansing Manufacturing Company designed the speaker in the Rickenbacker professional model. Shortly thereafter, design engineer Ralph Robertson further developed the amplifiers, and by the 1940s at least four different Rickenbacker models were available. A Los Angeles radio manufacturer named Van Nest designed the first Electro String production-model amplifier. Įlectro String also sold amplifiers to go with their guitars. By the time they ceased producing the "frying pan" model in 1939, they had made several thousand units. They had a single pickup with two magnetized steel covers, shaped like horseshoes, that arched over the strings. They are the first known solid-bodied electric guitars, though they were a lap-steel type. The early instruments were nicknamed "frying-pans" because of their long necks and small circular bodies. Early examples bear the brand name 'Electro'. They chose the brand name 'Rickenbacher' (later changing the spelling to 'Rickenbacker'). Beauchamp had designed these instruments, assisted by Paul Barth and Harry Watson, at National String Instrument Corporation. History Founding Īdolph Rickenbacher and George Beauchamp founded the company in 1931 as the Ro-Pat-In Corporation (Elect Ro-Patent- Instruments) to sell electric Hawaiian guitars. The company is credited as the first known maker of electric guitars – a steel guitar in 1932 – and today produces a range of electric guitars and basses. Rickenbacker International Corporation is a string instrument manufacturer based in Santa Ana, California.
Electric, acoustic, lap and console steel guitars, basses, amplifiers, electric violins, electric mandolins, electric banjos
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