Bigsby cut down the edges of
the Kluson Deluxe tuners so
they would fit six on a side, end
to end. Leo Fender borrowed
this idea and used it on
all future Fender
production guitars.
The back of a 1950
Fender Broadcaster
headstock (bottom).
Bigsby’s Travis guitar had an early Bigsby “blade” pickup, and a walnut fiddle tailpiece with a string-through-body design. Photo courstesy Country Music Hall of Fame, taken by Greg Morgan.
Charlie Christian pickup, it differed in
using a cast aluminum housing to create a
shield that reduced the 60-cycle hum that
plagued single-coil pickups.
Bigsby, Les Paul, and Leo Fender used
to gather to discuss pickup and guitar
design. Paul eventually installed one of
Bigsby’s pickups in the bridge position of
the Epiphone hollowbody he used to record
“How High the Moon.” Paul has been
quoted as saying the reason the pickup was
so successful was because it was very large
and worked well by the bridge.
Word spread and soon Bigsby’s pickups
were being used by Chet Atkins, Hank
Garland, and the man who would inspire
Bigsby to build the first modern solidbody
electric guitar—Merle Travis.
Remembering Bigsby as the man who
claimed he could build anything, Travis
sketched out his idea for a solidbody instrument. It would have six-on-a-side tuners
on a headstock shape that foretold the
Stratocaster, and a body that presaged the
Les Paul. Travis wanted the neck inlaid with
a heart, diamond, spade, and club, and specified purely decorative walnut armrest and
fiddle-like tailpiece appointments (the strings
actually went through the body, held by six
metal ferrules). The original headstock on
the Travis guitar was not the “Strat” scroll it
now possesses, but was extended further and
scrolled in the opposite direction. That part
was later cut off and the scroll reversed into
the classic shape we see today.
This revolutionary instrument’s body
was made of bird’s-eye maple, hollowed
out to reduce the weight, and its back
was covered with Plexiglas. A metal bar
across the back reinforced the body. Early
pictures of Travis with the guitar show
that the body cutaway was not part of the
original guitar, but added later.
The Man Who Could Build
Anything
Paul Bigsby began experimenting with
the idea of a solidbody guitar as early as
1944, building one for Les Paul with the
same small body as his lap steels. Paul had
attempted to get Gibson interested in his
own design, “The Log,” as early as 1941 to
no avail. Bigsby’s design also failed to catch
on, possibly because, like the Rickenbacker
Frying Pan before it, the small body made
it hard to hold while playing.
Meanwhile, Merle Travis sought a guitar
that would sustain like the Bigsby steels
he heard played by Murphey and West. “I
kept wondering why steel guitars would
sustain the sound so long, when a hollowbody electric guitar like mine would fade
out real quick,” Travis said in his memoir,
Recollections of Merle Travis: 1944-1955. “I
came to the conclusion it was all because
the steel guitar was solid.”
BIGSBY BY THE BOOK
Much of the information in this article came
from an exhaustive book about Paul Bigsby
by Andy Babiuk. A musician and owner of a
music store in Fairport, New York, Babiuk has
written an amazing coffee-table tome called
The Story of Paul Bigsby: Father of the Modern
Electric Solidbody Guitar. The book combines
text outlining the fascinating life of this
inventive maverick, beautifully reproduced
pictures of Bigsby’s amazing instruments,
important historical documents, personal pho-
tos, and more. It also includes a CD of spoken
word tapes Bigsby sent to former bandmate
Jack Parsons in the 1950s. Parsons had
moved from California to the Northwest, and
through these tapes Bigsby kept him apprised of his business deals with Gibson,
Gretsch, Guild, Hofner, and other manufacturers.
Babiuk is a consultant to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and to auction houses in
London and New York. He also plays bass in the ’60s-retro band, the Chesterfield Kings.
