The FIRST viable Electric Guitar!

The electric guitar era began with this guitar - the very first electric "Spanish" guitar, made in 1932 by the company that would become Rickenbacker. Gage Brewer, a bandleader from Wichita, bought this guitar and one of Ro-Pat-In's new Hawaiian-style "Frying Pan" lap steels on a trip through Los Angeles. His hometown newspaper noted his use of this guitar at a dance on Halloween night, 1932

Ro-Pat-In's pickup was the first to feature a "string-driven" design - where the vibrations of the strings alter a magnetic field to produce a signal. Not only is this the same principle used in every magnetic pickup made today, the sound of this 1932 pickup rivals that of any pickup made today.

No single instrument represents a more important change in our culture than this guitar.
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