The Guitar Magician

Almost every interview or article I have ever read dealing with a guitarists work, eventually leads to the subject of “Tone”. And rightfully so.

Definition
Tone [French. ton; German Ton; Italian-Spanish tono]:(3) the character of the sound achieved in performance on an instrument (The Harvard Dictionary of Music).

In other words it is the way the note sounds, the quality of the sound, the color that it has, the pleasantness or harshness or fullness, the brightness or bite that the note might possess. It is what makes you either like it or hate it.

Do you know how the guitar got it’s name? Do you know where the guitar originally came from ? Do you know what the oldest guitar still in existence is? Do you know when then first “modern” style guitar was made. Do you know when the first electric guitar was patented?

I was just reading a great article at Wikipedia about all this information. It is really interesting to see the different evolutions the guitar went through and to see that it has always been a very popular instrument .

Yes, You read that correctly. That’s what Eric Clapton paid for 6 vintage
Stratocasters and Telecasters in a Nashville guitar shop back in 1970. I was just reading about this in an interesting story on the Fender website.

Three of these guitars he gave as gifts to friends George Harrison, Steve Winwood
and Pete Townsend. Eric then took the other three guitars and using the body from
one, the neck of another and the electronics from one and built his famous “Blackie”
Fender Strat.

Blackie has probably become one of the most famous guitars ever used by by a
Rock or Blues Guitar player.