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In the hands of talented guitarists such as Charlie Christian, an amplified electric guitar became a bona-fide solo instrument.Looking for a great deal on a ukulele? Keep it locked to our Black Friday guitar deals page for all the latest savings and offers. These guitars were loud enough to be heard even in large bands.

As its steel strings were played, their vibration caused changes in the magnetic field, thus producing an electrical current that could be amplified by plugging a cable into a small tube amplifier.Īfter introducing its own electric lap steel in 1936, the Gibson Instrument Company began production of the model ES-150 (“Electro Spanish”) guitar: The first archtop guitar with a built-in magnetic pickup. The Electro’s horseshoe- shaped electro-magnetic pickup employed coils that created a magnetic field. Owing to the Hawaiian slide guitar’s great popularity, in 1932 the Ro-Pat-In Corporation (later to become Rickenbacker) created and produced the world’s first commercial electric lap steel guitar: the “Electro” (nicknamed the “Frying Pan” due to it’s small round body). Although resonator ukes were louder than regular ukuleles, they never achieved wide use in either Hawaiian or mainland bands. Resonator ukuleles, both with metal and wood bodies, soon followed. The Hawaiian Territories were a different story: Native musicians quickly embraced the resonator guitar and developed a style of slide playing which gave popular Hawaiian music one of its signature sounds. Although they are notably louder than archtops, resonators possessed a metallic sound quality that limited their appeal. Resonator guitars employed one or more speaker-like aluminum cones to mechanically amplify the sound of their strings. Resophonic instruments developed by the Dopyera Brothers in the late 1920s provided one solution. Resonator ukuleles, like the two modern National Reso-phonics seen here, were the loudest option in the days before electric amplification.īut as bands got larger in the big band era, guitarists struggled to be heard. In lieu of traditional Spanish-style guitars, most players chose archtop guitars, which possess a crisp tone loud enough to be heard when played in the rhythm sections of small ensembles. As popular band music evolved in the 1930s, banjo players traded their instruments for guitars, which had a mellower, less jangly sound more appropriate for the songs of the time. In the 1910s and 20s, the rhythm sections of ragtime and Dixieland bands typically featured tenor banjos, as they naturally produced enough volume to be heard amidst the bands’ much louder horn sections and drums. In order to understand how ukulele amplification evolved in the decades to follow, we need to trace the history of the uke’s 6-stringed cousin, the guitar. During the uke’s first heyday in the 1920s, microphones were more commonly used for recording and radio broadcasting than for live performances, and electronic pickups were still in the experimental phase. But then what of the lowly ukulele, one of the quietest stringed instruments on the planet? These days, making your uke loud enough to be heard in a noisy club or cavernous performance venue is no problem: If your instrument has a built-in pickup, just plug it in if not, simply step up to a microphone and strum away.īut ukulele performers didn’t always have it so easy.

BY SANDOR NAGYSZALANCZY | FROM THE FALL 2018 ISSUE OF UKULELEĪll photos by Sandor Nagyszalanczy, except where notedĪ s an iconic guitar riff launches the Southern Rock classic “Sweet Home Alabama,” Lynyrd Skynyrd’s vocalist, Ronnie Van Zant, tells us to “turn it up.” He was certainly on to something: It’s a scientific fact that human ears enjoy music more when it’s played louder (within reason, I’m not talking about ear-splitting rock concert volumes). If you learned something new here, will you leave us a tip? We're asking you to give just $2 (or whatever you can afford) to support this site.

Electric ukelele