Bigsby Guitars
Bigsby Guitars is an American company that specializes in the production of guitar accessories , especially vibratos . The company was founded in the 1940s by Paul Bigsby Adelburt (1899 to 1968) in Downey ( Los Angeles County ), California for the production of electric guitars and Lapsteels . With his early instruments, founder Paul Bigsby was one of the pioneers of electric guitar making and influenced a lot with his ideas. a. Leo Fender .
history
The company "Bigsby Guitars" goes back to the " Crocker Motorcycle Company " , a motorcycle manufacturer in which Paul Bigsby worked as a mechanic and developer since the 1930s. Bigsby, who boasted that he could fix anything, came into contact with musician Merle Travis , a customer of Crocker , as a fan of country music in the 1940s . Travis told Bigsby of problems with the worn out vibrato system on his Gibson L-10 guitar, whereupon Bigsby developed a new vibrato for the guitar. The heart of the vibrato was a rotatable steel shaft around which the strings were wound. This new vibrato enabled even pitch fluctuations in both directions and could be installed in place of the tailpiece on almost all archtop guitars of the time. From the 1950s, Bigsby vibratos were offered as standard equipment on their guitars by companies such as Gretsch and Gibson , and Bigsby as a retrofit set for guitars without vibrato.
In 1946, Travis Bigsby reported on the idea of making a new type of electric guitar . The guitar should have a flat, sometimes massive body in order to avoid unwanted feedback. The electric guitars in use up to that point still had the hollow body of the acoustic guitar , which is why they very easily picked up the sound waves from the amplifiers and produced interference. In addition, the guitar should have an asymmetrical headstock on which the six tuning machines should be placed in a line. Travis hoped for more comfortable tuning and greater tuning stability compared to the traditionally symmetrical "3-left-3-right" arrangement. The body should also have a cutaway to improve the playability of the high frets . Bigsby made a first copy of this design, the first Bigsby / Travis guitar , in mid-1948 based on a sketch by Travis. Bigsby quickly received orders for additional instruments, after which Travis regularly used the guitar at live concerts and radio appearances. In the period that followed, Bigsby produced electric guitars, electric mandolins , lap steels and various double neck guitars that combined guitar and mandolin in addition to the vibratos . Bigsby also reworked the headstock of conventional acoustic guitars to the new asymmetrical shape to order.
In 1965 Paul Bigsby's health deteriorated rapidly, which is why he gave up the production of instruments and concentrated on making vibratos. In 1966 Bigsby sold his company to former Gibson President Ted McCarty , who ran the company until his death in 2001. Paul Bigsby died in 1968. In 1999, the Fred Gretsch Company Inc. took over Bigsby, which in turn is part of the Fender Group. The production of the vibratos takes place mainly in the USA , although external companies in other countries are now also producing Bigsby vibratos. The distinguishing feature is often the patent number on the American originals, which is replaced on the replicas by the word "Licensed by" in the same font.
Merle Travis guitar
→ Main article: Bigsby / Travis guitar
The Merle Travis guitar , built in 1948 by Paul Bigsby for Merle Travis as a one-off production with a largely solid body, was largely made of maple and had a continuous neck with an inlaid steel rod. Two partially hollow wings were attached to the sides to house the electronics. The guitar had a single coil pickup as well as a rotary control and a switch to change the sound. The fingerboard was made of rosewood and had mother-of-pearl inlays in the form of playing card symbols as markings . The large asymmetrical headstock had six machine heads mounted in a row and a metal saddle. It is not known how many instruments of this type were made. It can be assumed, however, that Bigsby, who made the instruments by hand to order, had built no more than 100 instruments including e-mandolins and lap steels by 1965. The original from 1948 is now in the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville , Tennessee .
The Bigsby Merle Travis guitar is today considered to be one of the first modern electric guitars, as it anticipated many of the design details of the later solid body instruments. It is widely believed that Leo Fender in particular , whose radio shop was just a few miles away in Fullerton , was influenced by the design of the Merle-Travis guitar. Although Leo Fender denied any connection throughout his life, it is now considered certain that he knew Bigsby's instruments. Fender, who was already successfully manufacturing and repairing music amplifiers in the 1940s, was present as a technician at many concerts in California. There were also meetings with Merle Travis. Travis even claimed that he loaned the Bigsby guitar to Leo Fender for a few days after a concert at his request. In exchange, he is said to have received an early prototype of the Fender Telecaster for viewing. In fact, the first Telecaster prototypes had a symmetrical headstock with a 3-left-3-right arrangement of the machine heads, which Fender rejected shortly before production began in 1950 in favor of an asymmetrical 6-in-line arrangement similar to the Bigsby guitar.
Bigsby vibrato
The Bigsby Vibrato was one of the first tremolo systems to be widely used to this day. The Bigsby vibrato was offered as standard on guitars from the Gretsch company, but also on instruments from Gibson, Fender , Rickenbacker and others, or was subsequently installed. The vibrato itself consists of a base plate made of solid aluminum, in which a steel shaft is rotatably mounted. The strings are wound around the steel shaft to which the vibrato lever is attached. If you move the vibrato lever, the strings are wound or unwound and the pitch changes according to the fluctuating string tension. Bigsby vibrato allows the pitch to vary slightly by around 1–2 semitones . The string tension is counteracted by a massive spring that originally comes from the engine of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. The spring is still part of the Harley-Davidson spare parts program today. The most common types of bigsby vibrato are:
- B 3 - Bigsby vibrato with a trapezoidal base plate. The B 3 is fixed to the frame with screws and rests unattached on the ceiling. The bridge is held in position by the string pressure; a corresponding neck angle is a prerequisite for this. Since no further drilling has to be made on the guitar top, the B 3 is very popular as a retrofit set. The B 3 and especially the B 6 can be found mainly on semi-acoustic guitars (e.g. Gretsch).
- B 5 - Small version of the B 3 with a circular base plate and low pressure roller. The B 5 is also called "Horseshoe" by musicians because of its appearance. Due to its small, compact design, the B 5 is suitable for mounting on flat solid body guitars such as the Gibson SG or Fender Telecaster. Fixing with screws on the ceiling.
- B 6 - Longer version of the B 3.
- B 7 - Longer version of the B 3 with an additional low-pressure roller for the strings. This is used if the guitar neck does not have the required angle to fix the bridge sufficiently through the string pressure. Due to the additional screw mounting on the top, a sustain block is required inside the semi-acoustic guitar such as the Gibson ES-335.
A disadvantage of the system compared to the Fender vibratos is the extremely limited range in which the pitch can be changed. In addition, it often does not work completely out of tune.
Bigsby in music
The Bigsby guitars and lap steels can only be heard on a few recordings from the 1950s as they were quickly superseded by Fender instruments. In addition to Merle Travis, u. a. Jimmy Bryant and Grady Martin guitars from Bigsby, the latter also a double neck guitar. The Lapsteels were u. a. used by Speedy West .
The Bigsby vibratos are more widespread than the instruments. Due to their construction, they allow a characteristic "shimmer" to be added to the guitar tone. This sound is mainly used in those styles in which the guitar sound is little or not distorted like in jazz , blues or rock 'n' roll . Audio samples can be found both from country musicians such as Chet Atkins and Duane Eddy to the rockabilly punk of the Stray Cats . John Lennon had a Bigsby B 5 vibrato mounted on his legendary Rickenbacker guitar in the 1960s.
Sound sample:
See also
literature
- Tony Bacon / Dave Hunter: Totally Guitar - The definitive guide . London 2004, ISBN 3-86150-732-3
- Tony Bacon: Guitars - All models and manufacturers London / Vienna 1991, ISBN 3-552-05073-6
- George Gruhn / Walter Carter: Electric Guitars & Basses - The History of Electric Guitars and Basses ISBN 3-932275-04-7
- Richard R. Smith: Fender - A sound makes history . Hamburg 2005 ISBN 3-937872-18-3
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Hannes Fricke: Myth guitar: history, interpreters, great hours. Reclam, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-15-020279-1 , p. 29.