The Solid Body Guitar owes its historical introduction to Les Paul.The Solid Body Guitar owes its historical introduction to Mr. Les Paul. Les Paul was a Jazz Guitar Player and Electronics enthusiast who experimented with various designs in attempts to further amplify the Acoustic Guitar with microphonic pickups while also controlling the tendency of the instrument cavity to feedback at sometimes horrendous levels. Les came up with an idea of attaching the the sides of an archtop guitar to and appropriate length of 4 x 4 inch lumber. He added a pickup and fingerboard to the assembly and fired it up. What he achieved was an instrument capable of high volume through amplication that also offered considerable control over feedback. Most of the feedback could be eliminated due to removal of the hollow-body which had vibrated like a drum when in close proximity to sound waves. More energy was being fed through the 4 x 4 block, the neck, fingerboard, and pickups which could be pushed further and amplified further. And unexpectedly, feedback inherent in the amplification process was available for new sonic tinkering. This feature alone has since appealed to generations of young guitarists in the Rock and Blues genres. Listen to Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Carlos Santana for examples of what can be done with feedback. A few Jazz Players have embraced feedback as well. This would include players such as John McClaughlin, John Schofield, Mike Stern, Al Dimiola, and Allan Holdsworth. These players are generally classified as Jazz-Fusion players. Another player noted for his signature use of sustain and feedback is Carlos Santana(mentioned above), a Latin-Blues-Rock player, who formed successful jazz touring and recording collaborations with John McLaughlin and Wayne Shorter. You will probably find your most plentiful choices of instrument selections in the Solid Body Guitar since the solid body construction lends itself well to mechanized and robotic techniques of cutting the wood, routing electronics cavities, and neck-body joins. However, in the higher end solid body guitars, human attention to minute details such as neck-body alignment, intonation, and tonal adjustments is required. You will also find that many manufacturers of Solid Body Guitars will cover virtually all price ranges. Paul Reed Smith has very expensive($2500+) custom guitars as well as low to mid-priced($500-$750) foreign(Taiwan) models built to the PRS rigorous specifications. Gibson's U.S. built Les Pauls, SG's, and Explorers command prices in excess of $2000. Meanwhile, Gibson's subsidiary, imports nearly identical instruments in specification to true Gibson's with the Epiphone brand. Fender will probably always be Gibson's biggest American competitor with its distinctive designs pioneered by Leo Fender. True American made Telecasters will go from $1500 to $2000 and up. However, again there is a subsidiary, in this case Squire>, to address the low and mid-markets with copies of the high-end instruments. Another company that I would not want to neglect is Ibanez Guitars. Ibanez is a Japanese company which started out making extremely good copies of Gibsons and Fenders in the late 1960's and early 1970's. There were numerous other foreign branded copies before or alongside Ibanez. What set Ibanez apart was the attention to detail and absolute quality of its guitars. As such, Ibanez constituted a serious threat to Gibson's market and a lawsuit followed. Ibanez agreed to cease copying the Gibson line. By this time, however, Ibanez was also successfully implementing its own designs and we should all be grateful. Ibanez has an extensive line of original low, mid, and mid-high priced instruments that compete very well with the major offerings of most other manufacturers. Ibanez has also received endorsements from such major players George Benson, John Schofield, Pat Metheny, and Joe Pass. The Ibanez line runs in price from low($199) to high($1000+). Ibanez quality remains consistently high in a price-to-value ratio.
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