6 GUITAR INVENTIONS EXPLAINED

Multiple Invention 

Since the first caveman chiseled out the first wheel, we’ve seen a strange phenomenon in world history known as “multiple invention.” Essentially, this is what happens when two or more people invent or discover the same thing at the same time, with absolutely no communication between the different inventors to explain how they arrived at the same idea simultaneously. This is especially prevalent in guitar history, as you’ll shortly see. 

People may also call this phenomenon multiple independent discovery, simultaneous invention or simply “the multiple.” Let me be clear, however, that multiple invention is not synonymous with synchronicity, as these phrases convey very different meanings and ideas.  

There are countless historical examples of multiple invention, but a few of my favorites include the discovery of calculus (which was simultaneously hammered out by mathematicians Isaac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Pierre de Fermat in England, Germany and France, respectively), the theory of evolution by natural selection (first proposed by Charles Darwin in 1840 and discovered separately by Alfred Russel Wallace around 1857), the theory of gravity and its effect on mass (discovered by Galileo Galilei in Italy and Simon Stevin in Belgium at the same point in the sixteenth century) and the electrical telegraph (which was invented independently in 1837 by Charles Wheatstone in England and Samuel F.B. Morse in the United States).

The examples are endless. If something was invented or discovered, you can be certain that someone else stumbled onto the same idea around the same time. But why does this happen– and how?

The Adjacent Possible

The idea had been percolating in my brain for a while, but I was only recently able to verbalize it: “Things aren’t invented, they evolve.” Understanding this idea is the first step in explaining how multiple invention happens in the real world. 

Specifically, you need to understand an idea called “The Adjacent Possible.” In 2002, writer and theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman introduced this theory, which postulates that biological systems are able to morph into more complex systems by making incremental, less energy-consuming changes in their makeup. Essentially, ideas and technologies evolve from the last evolved ideas and technologies. This explains why no one was designing automobiles in the fourteenth century. The adjacent possible– that is, factors that had to exist for this invention to be created, like the internal combustion engine, fuel for that engine and the assembly line –was not yet in play.

This also ties into something called the aggregate effect, which is basically the process by which old technology breeds new technology, and innovation brings aggregate to previous discoveries. You could also view it as a geometric progression where a unit of technology generates a series of progressions of that particular innovation, meaning that each unit is improved by a fraction of its previous innovation and once all the fractions are added, you reach the adjacent possible point when the new technology/discovery/theory/invention can be created. That is one way to account for the rapid progress we have made in the last 50 years. 

There are tons of examples of the adjacent possible theory in technological history. For instance, the invention of the internet couldn’t have happened without Benjamin Franklin. You can't have the internet until you have networking, and you can’t have networking until you have the personal computer. You can't have the personal computer until you've had the transistor, and you can't have the transistor until you have electricity, which was discovered in part by Benjamin Franklin in the mid-sixteenth century. Thus, you can trace a direct line from Benjamin Franklin’s experiments in 1752 to the launch of Google in 1998. 

Another example is that the moon landing in 1969 couldn’t have happened without Johannes Gutenberg inventing the printing press in 1436. The printing press led to literature being available to the general public for the first time, and as a result nearly half of the population realized that they were actually nearsighted– something that wouldn’t have been an issue before reading became such a popular pastime. Reading glasses were developed as a tool for nearsighted readers, which in turn led to the development of the telescope, camera lenses and microscopes. These inventions were then used to discover truths about the Earth, biology and our solar system, including the discoveries NASA needed to build a working space shuttle and send three astronauts to the Moon in 1969.

The adjacent possible theory also factors into music history. Take Jimi Hendrix and Elvis Presley, for example. Fifteen-year-old Jimi was inspired to become a rock musician when he first saw Elvis at a concert at Sick's Stadium on September 1, 1957. Seeing Elvis Presley perform opened the adjacent possible in Jimi’s mind to consider becoming a performer himself, making the same kind of music, and as a result, Jimi passionately continued learning his guitar, got work on the Chitlin Circuit, ended up playing with Curtis Knight and the Squires and eventually collaborated with Chas Chandler to become a solo performer. By the end of his career Jimi had recorded four full-length albums (84 more would be released posthumously), played 294 shows and was one of the highest paid performers in the history of music. But none of this could have happened unless Elvis Presley had inspired Jimi at that 1957 concert. 

Coincidentally, Elvis Presley wouldn’t have put on that 1957 concert unless he’d been inspired to become a performer by guitarist Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, who was in turn inspired by bluesman Tampa Red, who was inspired by a street musician called Piccolo Pete– so if you really want to get down to brass tacks, Jimi Hendrix performing at Woodstock couldn’t have happened without Piccolo Pete. Crazy, huh?

Just like the Big Bang Theory says that the universe keeps expanding, adjacent possibilities keep expanding from these origin points in history. Let’s take a closer look at some of these points on the guitar history timeline.

The Solid-Body Electric Guitar

This first example of multiple invention is especially interesting (or, for an OCD historian like me, frustrating) because there’s almost as much legend surrounding the invention of the first solid-body electric guitar as there is verifiable history. For this reason, it can be difficult to separate fact from fiction. This is where the adjacent possible theory is extremely helpful. Even if we can’t nail down the specific date when the first inventor created the first electric guitar, we can confidently cite which technological developments allowed it to happen– i.e., when the “adjacent possible” fell into place for this discovery. 

The most important development was the amplifier. After all, what good is an electric guitar if no one can hear it? We can trace early amplification all the way back to 1907, when Lee de Forest invented the Audion triode vacuum tube which was utilized in the first successful amplifiers. This invention led to the world wide phenomenon of radio through which the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) launched on November 15, 1926. By 1934, sixty percent of American households had at least one radio. By this point, radios were essentially guitar amplifiers waiting to be discovered. Simply remove the antenna and wire in a jack for a cable, and you had the equivalent of an early Fender amplifier. Thus, the radio was the adjacent possible to the guitar amp, and that amp was the adjacent possible for the electric guitar.  

The biggest motivation for the electric guitar to be invented was the need for more volume. Once loud, dependable amplifiers became available, inventors began stumbling into other guitar designs that allowed them to be turned up louder without feedback. Inventors like George Beauchamp, Les Paul, Paul Bigsby and Leo Fender developed their own solid-body electric guitars around this time (though, in a slight twist from most examples on this list, Les, Leo and Paul were friends and probably did borrow ideas from each other during their early R & D), with Adolph Rickenbacker, Paul Barth, Harry Watson, Walter Fuller, Lloyd Loar, Paul Tutmarc and Victor Smith adding their own contributions to the solid-body electric design. The solid-body electric guitar is a perfect example of how one technology creates space for the next; thus, the electric guitar wasn't invented, it evolved. 

Overdrive

Though it can be hard to believe now, overdrive was not immediately accepted by the mainstream when it appeared in the forties and fifties. Just the opposite, in fact. Folks were convinced that rock music was evil because it sounded too aggressive, literally banning songs like Link Wray’s “Rumble” from the radio in 1958 out of fear that it would incite riots (proof that the moral guardians of the day definitely wouldn’t have been able to handle Korn or Slipknot).

If you Google which musician was the first to intentionally use overdrive in a recording, you’re going to come up with a lot of conflicting answers, but here are the top contenders:

• 1946 -- Bob Wills and Junior Barnard, “Bob Wills Boogie”

• 1949 -- Goree Carter, “Rock Awhile” 

• 1951 (April) -- Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, “Rocket 88”

• 1951 (August) -- Howlin’ Wolf, “How Many More Years”

• 1956 -- Sanford Clark, “Go On Home”

• 1958 -- Link Wray, “Rumble”

• 1961 -- Marty Robbins, “Don’t Worry”

• 1961 -- Grady Martin, "The Fuzz" 

• 1962 -- The Ventures, “2000 Pound Bee”

• 1964 -- The Kinks, “You Really Got Me”

• 1965 -- The Rolling Stones, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”

Figuring out which song utilized overdriven guitar first isn’t as easy as picking the earliest released song on the list (case in point: “Bob Wills Boogie”, released in 1946, does feature electric guitar, but it’s not massively distorted). Also taking into account that the majority of these songs were released in two dense time periods (between 1946-1951 and 1956-1965, respectively), the phenomenon of multiple invention is definitely at work. Regardless of which song did it first, all of these songs gave permission to the musicians that came afterward to utilize overdrive in an intentional way. 

So, if the multiple invention of overdriven guitar exploded in the forties, fifties and sixties, what adjacent possible allowed this to happen? First off, you would need an amplifier that could create such a sound. Secondly, you would need musicians who were willing to turn up those amps as loud as possible to be heard over the other instrumentalists in the band, causing the amp valves to distort. This was especially prevalent with Texas swing guitarists like Junior Barnard who were desperately trying to be heard over at least ten other band members playing much louder instruments. With the availability of amps that could actually magnify the volume of their guitars, the guitar not only became a lead instrument for the first time, it also took on a distorted tone when musicians maxed out the volume knob.

Simply put, the Tubescreamer wouldn’t have been invented or even allowed in 1979 unless guitarists like Junior had maxed out their amps three decades earlier. 

Fuzz Pedals

In 1962, Glenn Snoddy and Revis Hobbs invented the first fuzz pedal manufactured for sale, the Maestro FZ-1 (though it’s worth noting that it wasn’t a success straight out of the gate; it took about three years for sales to take off). Even before this, though, there had been recordings featuring fuzz/distortion (see above), including Sanford Clark’s “Go On Home,” which utilized a fuzz box built by a radio engineer in Phoenix for producer Lee Hazelwood. For those keeping score at home, this is a full six years before Snoddy and Hobbs patented the Maestro FZ-1, and it’s not the only fuzz pedal to appear before the FZ-1 officially hit the market. So, how did two sets of inventors nearly 1,900 miles apart invent the same thing around the same time?

The answer is multiple invention, which can only happen when the adjacent possible is in place. In this case, the adjacent possible included transistors, first patented by William Shockley on April 4, 1950 and shortly afterwards incorporated into radio design. When production companies began buying transistors by the thousands for mass manufactured radios, the price finally got low enough that middle-class inventors could buy and experiment with transistors, too. This moment when the price finally dipped is called the “change function.” Essentially, a change function is the point at which the pain of purchasing something is less than the cost of not having it. An example would be how the price of a flat screen TV today is so significantly cheaper than they were in 2002 that almost everyone in America can afford one, not just the lawyers and doctors. In this case, the adjacent possible was simply the ability of the same inventors to afford transistors as a tool for creating a new sound. 

The second adjacent possible factor was the ability to overdrive or distort. A transistor had to exist for fuzz pedals to be invented, as detailed above.

Hard-Clipping Distortion

In what may be the most blatant example of multiple invention on this list, the Dan Armstrong Blue Clipper, MXR Distortion+, DOD 250 and DeArmond Square Wave were all presumably invented in a twelve month period between 1974 and 1975, by inventors who were in some instances literally continents apart. All four of these pedals utilized a methodology called hard-clipping distortion, which you may be more familiar with in pedals like the ProCo RAT, the BOSS DS-1 or the Klon. So what were the adjacent possible factors that preceded this flurry of inventions in 1974? 

Simply put, you can’t have hard-clipping op-amp distortion without an op-amp. The very first op-amp was the μA741 op-amp, released in 1967. Likewise, you couldn't have the μA741 op-amp without the transistor, which was patented in 1950 by William Shockley (see above) since an op-amp is basically multiple transistors combined in a small chip sized component. You couldn’t have the transistor without the vacuum tube, invented by Lee de Forest in 1907, and you couldn’t have the vacuum tube without electricity, which takes us back to Benjamin Franklin flying that kite. See it? You could technically trace this all the way back to the first caveman figuring out how to make fire, which led to the invention of the oil lamp, which led to the invention of the incandescent lightbulb, which could only run using electricity.

So, yes, it’s accurate to say that Franklin’s experiments with electricity in the 1750s are directly responsible for the invention of the Klon in 1995. Magical. 

Reverb Pedals

Between 1984 and 1985, two nearly identical guitar pedals hit the market: the DOD FX45 Stereo Reverb and the Arion SRV-1 Stereo Reverb. Both were the first pedals to utilize a Bucket Brigade chipset as a reverb effect, which you may have heard called a BBD or analog delay chip. In 1969, Philips Research invented a chipset device that could take in a voltage and delay its output by dropping it into small “buckets” that slowed its movement down from input to output (hence the name Bucket Brigade), thus “delaying it”. This raises a very good question: if the BBD chip was invented in 1969, why didn’t the first bucket brigade reverb pedals hit the market until 1984?

A big factor here would have been the change function (see “Fuzz Pedals”) of BBD chips, meaning that it took roughly fourteen years for the price of the BBD chipset to drop low enough for inventors to not only buy them, but buy them in bulk and integrate them into a profitable reverb design. This showcases that the affordability of bucket brigade chipsets was a major adjacent possible factor, as well as having access to technologies that made it easier to manufacture smaller pedals. 

By that logic, you can actually trace the invention of the BBD chipset all the way back to the 1930s. Bell Labs had developed an electromechanical device to simulate the delay experienced on long-distance calls (which owed their existence to the experiments of Alexander Graham Bell in the 1870s). This electromechanical device is better known as spring reverb. In 1939, Laurens Hammond of Hammond Organs utilized Bell Labs’ existing technology to create a spring-based mechanical reverberation system for his organs, which Leo Fender then leased from Hammond to use in the Fender Reverb Tank in 1961 and later in legendary amp designs like the Deluxe Reverb.

Thus, Alexander Graham Bell’s experiments with the telegraph in 1874 led directly to the invention of the BBD chipset ninety-five years later. You can’t make this stuff up. 

Two-Transistor Fuzz Pedals

The two-transistor fuzz topology is a truly wild example of multiple invention. Essentially, three nearly identical two-transistor circuits appeared between 1965 and 1966: the Dick Denney Distortion Booster, the Tone Bender MK1.5 and the Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face, and they were furthermore released out of the same city: London, England. How could these pedals be released just months apart by three separate inventors?

The previous fuzz iterations (the Maestro FZ-1 and the Tone Bender MK1) released prior to ’65 were three-transistor arrangements. These would have been the fuzz pedals that inspired these three inventors to create their own take on the infamous fuzz circuit. 

But the main adjacent possible factor for these inventions would have been the invention of the two-transistor arrangement for gain. It is hard to pin down which of these three pedals (the VOX v816 Distortion Booster, the Sola Sound Tone Bender 1.5 and the Arbiter Fuzz Face) hit the scene first. There’s a legend in the guitar community that Gary Hurst may have actually borrowed his design from Denney’s VOX v816 Distortion Booster for the Tone Bender 1.5, and although this hasn’t been substantiated one way or the other, it is a probability. It’s equally possible that any or all of these inventors were inspired to develop a two-transistor fuzz circuit after reading about the configuration of the circuit in one of the RCA or Mullard Transistor Manuals. Almost sixty years later, there are still a ton of unanswered questions surrounding the invention of the two-transistor fuzz, but we can be certain of one thing: the adjacent possible factors lined up in the mid sixties to give all three of these men the same idea.

The Takeaway 

Frankly, I get really tired of seeing people make outlandish assumptions about the origin of guitar effects and putting single people up on a pedestal. Even if it’s coming from a place of sincere respect, claiming that only these singular geniuses could have made these inventions is simply not true. There are no infallible innovators to whom these ideas are delegated. Anyone could have invented the solid-body electric guitar, the transistor, the fuzz pedal or overdrive. These inventions simply appeared at the moment in history when the adjacent possible factors finally lined up. In that way, the invention itself was inevitable. There is a reason the saying “right place at the right time” exists. 

To be clear, I’m not devaluing the accomplishments of these inventors. The fact that Glenn Snoddy and Revis Hobbs were able to recreate the console malfunction that caused Grady Martin’s fuzzed out guitar in “Don’t Worry” was no small feat. But, at the same time, anyone in 1961 could have built a three-transistor fuzz circuit. The same goes for building the elements of an already proven solid-body lap steel guitar into a Spanish style guitar; it wasn’t magic, it was the next logical step. Maybe Leo Fender was a genius, but he and dozens of other innovators had been building solid-body steel guitars for years before the Telecaster was invented. The pieces were just sitting there waiting to be assembled. 

If the theory of multiple invention proves anything, it’s that technological innovation is a much more level playing field that most people realize. Who knows? You could be the one to make the next great discovery and, to quote Gandalf the Grey, “that is an encouraging thought.”