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History of the Electric Guitar


People have always tried to find instruments that are louder than the ones they had before them.  Years ago, before the era of amplifiers and guitars that could make a person go deaf guitarists struggled to make their sound heard in large musical ensembles.  Electric guitars with hollow archtop acoustic guitar bodies and electric transducers were the first used in jazz. The electric guitar didn’t become available commercially until 1932.  The first commercially successful electric guitar was the Fender Esquire in 1950.
In the time between when the first electric guitar became available on the market and electric guitars started to earn money, musicians blazed a lot of trails on their way to giving electric guitars a prominent presence in recorded music.  Since that time, many different brands of electric guitars have come and gone.  The ratio of brands that have faded into the darkness to those that have remained after all these years is about 10 to 1. 
The two brands that are still prominent in the industry that were present years ago are Fender and Gibson.  They might not be the best brands or the most popular, but they have somehow maintained a certain level of popularity over the years.  That’s probably the reason why guitars from these brands are the most valuable out there. 
Now it’s difficult to imagine most music without some sort of electric guitar in it, especially rock music.  Guitarists don’t have to worry about fading into the background because their instrument isn’t loud enough.  With the invention of the electric guitar, some people are saying “Turn it down!”  It’s only going to keep getting louder.

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