About Rickenbacker
Rickenbacker International Corporation, also known as Rickenbacker (pronounced /ˌrɪkənˈbækɚ/) ), is an electric guitar manufacturer, notable for having invented the first electric guitar during the 1930s. All production takes place at its headquarters in Santa Ana, California. Rickenbacker is the largest guitar company to manufacture all of their guitars within the United States.
Founding
The company was founded as the Electro String Instrument Corporation by Adolph Rickenbacher and George Beauchamp in 1931 to sell electric "Hawaiian" guitars designed by Beauchamp. They chose the brand name Rickenbacher (later changed to Rickenbacker) for these guitars.
These instruments, nicknamed "frying pans" due to their long necks and circular bodies, are the first solid-bodied electric guitars, though they were not standard guitars, but a lap-steel type. They had huge pickups with a pair of horseshoe magnets that arched over the top of the strings. By the time production ceased in 1939, several thousand frying pans had been produced.
Right from the start, Electro String also sold amplifiers to go along with their electric guitars. A Los Angeles radio manufacturer, Mr. Van Nest, designed the first Electro String production-model amp. Shortly thereafter, design engineer Ralph Robertson was hired to further develop the amplifiers and by the 1940s at least four different Rickenbacker amplifier models were made available. James B. Lansing of the Lansing Manufacturing Company designed the speaker in the Rickenbacker professional model. During the early 1940s, Rickenbacker amps were sometimes repaired by fellow Californian Leo Fender, whose repair shop soon evolved into the Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company.
