BOY HOWDY'S GUIDE TO ELECTRIC GUITARS
Not so very long ago, guitarists had only a few instruments to choose from; there were a handful of established names in the business, and it was generally considered that if you couldn't quite afford a Gibson, you played a Fender. If you were of the country-western persuasion, it was a Gretsch, simple as that.
BOY HOWDY'S GUIDE TO ELECTRIC GUITARS
WHERE THE AXE-TION IS
by Allen Hester
Not so very long ago, guitarists had only a few instruments to choose from; there were a handful of established names in the business, and it was generally considered that if you couldn't quite afford a Gibson, you played a Fender. If you were of the country-western persuasion, it was a Gretsch, simple as that. A few types of wood were used to make these instruments, such as mahogany, ebony, maple, ash and rosewood, but beyond that, not much else; certainly nothing as exotic as vermillion or zebra-wood was ever considered an appropriate guitar wood. Nor was there much difference in pickups and wiring among electric guitars—sure, there were different types of pickups and various tone-altering setups (Gibson's ES-345TDC even had a phase switch) but by and large, the instruments of yesteryear had similar electronics in that the circuits were of a passive nature, i.e., one could only limit the output of the pickup, but never boost any certain area of the pickup response.