Lloyd Loar

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Lloyd Loar in 1911.

Lloyd Allayre Loar (born January 9, 1886 in Cropsey, Illinois , † September 14, 1943 in Chicago , Illinois) was an American musical instrument maker , composer , inventor and musician . After a career as a musician at the beginning of the 20th century, he became known in the 1920s for his work at the musical instrument manufacturer Gibson , for which he worked as a senior engineer in the development department. One of his achievements in making musical instruments is the transfer of manufacturing techniques from violin making to the construction of mandolins and guitars . His most important works as a developer for Gibson include the mandolin models A-5 and F-5 and the Gibson L-5 guitar model . Another credit for Loars is his research into the development of electromagnetic pickups for the electrical amplification of musical instruments. Lloyd Loars founded Vivi-Tone in 1933 and was one of the first companies to offer such cartridges on the market. Loar also played the musical instruments mandolin, viola and singing saw and performed as a musician with various ensembles in the USA and Europe.

plant

A Gibson L-5 archtop acoustic guitar in the form developed by Lloyd Loar until 1923

Lloyd Loar has been known as a mandolin player since the early 20th century, performing with musical groups in the United States and Europe, and also writing compositions for various stringed instruments. In addition, he had given classes in composition and arrangement . Before joining Gibson, he had already worked for the Italian violin making company Virzi .

Loar at Gibson

From 1919 to 1924 Loar worked as an acoustic engineer and head of development at Gibson. Its founder, Orville Gibson , had already adopted elements from violin making for the construction of mandolins and guitars since the beginning of the 20th century . With the aim of further improving the sound quality of Gibson musical instruments in the spirit of Orville Gibson and being able to offer higher quality instruments than before, Loar borrowed additional design features from string instruments and transferred them to mandolins and guitars in a partially modified form. This includes the practice of letting the end of the fingerboard float freely above the ceiling in order to improve its vibration properties. Even the dash board of guitars (pickguard) was for the same reason a "floating" suspension. Another characteristic design element is the introduction of f- shaped sound holes , initiated by Loar, instead of the round openings in the ceiling that were previously used with these instruments. In addition, Loar designed the first height-adjustable bridge for guitars, with which the distance between the strings and the body can be changed.

During his first two years at Gibson, Loar developed the mandolin model F-5 , the mandola H-5 and the mandocello K-5 . In 1922, an adjustable metal rod was introduced inside the instrument necks of guitars, with which the tensile load of the strings could be compensated ( neck tension rod ). This made it possible to produce thinner instrument necks that were more comfortable to play on. In April 1923 Gibson finally presented its new archtop guitar model L-5 , which had been developed under Loar's leadership. A small part of the edition was signed by hand on the label inside the body .

At the beginning of the 1920s, Loar also devoted himself to research into ways to amplify stringed instruments electrically. One of his first known work in this area was in 1923 the construction of a violin with electrostatic-capacitive pickups and solid wood body ( solid body ) . The practical suitability of this supposedly first pickup for a musical instrument was, however, very limited by strong background noise. The reason for this should have been its high resistance. As early as 1924, Lloar played a self-constructed electrically amplified double bass and an electric viola on stage. In the same year Gibson separated from Loar; the reason for this is believed to be that Loars developments were viewed by the traditional company Gibson as "too modern".

Loar and the Vivi-Tone company

Loar then took up a teaching position at Northwestern University near Chicago and continued his research and experiments on his own. By 1933 he was able to develop a first electromagnetic pickup model until it was ready for production. This pickup essentially consisted of a permanent magnet wrapped in wire. However, the electrical signal was not generated directly by the vibrations of the strings in the magnetic field. Instead, a metal rod attached to the bridge transmitted its vibrations into the magnetic field. Early in 1933 founded Loar together with other former Gibson employees the company Vivi-Tone to stringed instruments to market with his self-developed pickup. One of Vivi-Tone's few competitors in the field of electrically amplified musical instruments was Ro-Pat-In (later renamed Rickenbacker ) , founded a year earlier by Adolph Rickenbacker and George Beauchamp in California . Despite Vivi-Tone's intensive advertising measures , the company's sales remained far below expectations, so that the production of plucked instruments had to be discontinued at the end of the year. Instead, Vivi-Tone began manufacturing an electric piano, also invented by Loar, and an electric audio amplifier that went with it . This attempt by the company to gain a foothold in the market also failed.

In 1936 Lloyd Loars former employer Gibson brought out his first musical instruments with electromagnetic pickups with the models ES-150 (percussion guitar) and EH-150 (" Hawaiian guitar "); the utilization of Loar's research results from the 1920s for these models can be assumed.

Lloyd Loar died on September 14, 1943 in Chicago of the consequences of an illness that he contracted on a concert tour in France sponsored by the YMCA (the American equivalent of the YMCA).

literature

  • Tony Bacon, Dave Hunter: Totally Guitar - the Definitive Guide , Guitar Encyclopedia. Backbeat Books, London 2004. ISBN 1-871547-81-4
  • George Gruhn & Walter Carter: Electric Guitars and Basses . In it: Chapter Spanish-Necks: Vivi-Tone, p. 42 ff. Press Projekt Verlag, Bergkirchen 1999. ISBN 3-932275-04-7
  • Carlo May: Vintage guitars and their stories . MM-Musik-Media-Verlag, Ulm 1994. ISBN 3-927954-10-1

Web links

(All accessed April 22, 2010)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b May: Vintage guitars and their stories , p. 49
  2. ↑ Tony Bacon: Guitar classics - all models and manufacturers , p. 37. Premio-Verlag 2007, ISBN 978-3-86706-050-9
  3. ↑ a b May: Vintage guitars and their stories , p. 51
  4. ↑ May: Vintage Guitars and Their Stories , p. 50
  5. ↑ May: Vintage guitars and their stories , p. 35
  6. ↑ electric guitars ; Special issue of the journal Guitar & Bass on the history of the electric guitar, p. 22. MM-Musik-Media-Verlag, Ulm 2004. ISSN  0934-7674
  7. ↑ Helmuth Lemme: Electric guitars - technology and sound, p. 14. Elektor-Verlag, Aachen 2003, ISBN 3-895-76111-7
  8. ↑ Gruhn / Carter: Electric Guitars & Basses, p. 44
  9. ↑ a b Gruhn / Carter: Electric Guitars & Basses, p. 45
  10. ↑ Gruhn / Carter: Electric Guitars & Basses, p. 46
personal data
SURNAME Loar, Lloyd
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Loar, Lloyd Allayre
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American instrument maker
DATE OF BIRTH January 9, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Cropsey, Illinois, USA
DATE OF DEATH September 14, 1943
Place of death Chicago , Illinois , USA