The Rickenbacker Frying Pan

It’s hard to imagine, when looking at the range of electric guitars available, that everything from the most fancy boutique custom guitar to the mass-produced Les Paul and Strat knockoffs owe their very existence to a small cast aluminum lap-steel guitar known as the Rickenbacker Frying Pan. This instrument, besmirched now with the patina of aged aluminum, was the first solid body electric guitar. It stands now as the beginning of a new epoch that made possible everything from Bo Diddley to the metal insanity of Yngwie Malmsteen and all points in between and beyond.

The Frying Pan came into existence to fill a need. In the 1920s and 1930s Hawaiian music was enjoying considerable popularity in the US. The lead instrument in Hawaiian music was an acoustic guitar that was played much in the style of modern dobros, on one’s lap, with a steel (a bar of metal that works in the same way as a bottleneck or slide that blues players use).

The increased popularity of Hawaiian music created the opportunity to sell out larger venues. The only problem was that the acoustic instruments weren’t loud enough to be heard by the larger audiences.

George D. Beauchamp was a Hawaiian music enthusiast and musician. In an effort to amplify his acoustic guitar he mounted a magnetic pickup to the top of his guitar. While it did amplify the signal, it also produced copious amounts of feedback as a result of the guitar’s sympathetic vibration.

He resolved to deal with this problem by building a solid-body instrument. Beauchamp enlisted the help of a machinist by the name of Adolph Rickenbacker who Beauchamp had worked with while developing Dobro resonator guitars. Rickenbacker and Beauchamp together designed the guitar that came to be known as the Frying Pan.

The body and neck of the Frying Pan were cast of one piece of solid aluminum. The pickup consisted of two rather large horseshoe magnets wrapped with wire. These magnets surrounded the six strings and each string had a small iron pole piece to increase the pickup’s sensitivity. This was still a lap steel guitar, not meant to be held and played in the “Spanish style” like most modern guitars.

While the Frying Pan was only made between 1932 and 1939, its creation was one of the most catalyzing events in 20th century popular music. Other guitars which took advantage of the Frying Pad’s innovations were soon on the market. These guitars have shaped the sound of much of the popular music that has come after the Frying Pan’s creation.

So the next time you’re playing your electric guitar, whether that be a mint condition Fender Broadcaster or a $30 beater you found in a thrift store, take a moment to consider how we went from a lowly aluminum lap steel made for playing Hawaiian music to the axe you have in your hands now.