Albert Paul Bigsby
Born: December 12, 1899, in Elgin, Illinois
Died: June 7, 1968
Best Known For: Reinventing thepedal steel, producing one of the earliestprototypes of the solidbody electric guitar,developing the six-in-a-line tuner arrangment,inventing the Bigsby vibrato.

The real story of the modern solidbodyelectric guitar is more complicatedthan the story many of us grew up on.True,Les Paul and LeoFender helped usherthis new instrument into mass production,popularized it, and made it a driving musicalforce since the second half of the 20thcentury. But had they not been inspiredby the design innovations of Paul Bigsby,the electric guitar might have looked verydifferent today. It turns out Paul Bigsbywas much more than just the man whodesigned that “other” whammy bar.

Motorcycle Man
Paul Adelburt Bigsby was born in Elgin,Illinois, on December 12, 1899. The familymoved to Los Angeles when Paul was11. There he learned to be a patternmaker,carving the wood patterns used to makemetal part molds for manufacturing—askill that proved handy for making musicequipment as well.

While still in his teens, Bigsby developedan interest in motorcycles and motorcycleracing. By age 20 he had won his first race,quickly becoming famous in the cyclingcommunity. Then going by P.A. Bigsby,he opened a motorcycle dealership in the1920s. A decade of rough road racing ledto a shelf of trophies and more than a fewinjuries, so by 1934 Bigsby preferred promotingraces to riding in them. Still workingas a patternmaker, he produced partsfor Crocker Motorcycle Company. There hehelped design the Crocker V-Twin, famousfor having the largest engine of its time.The advent of World War II saw Bigsby’sdesigning skills servicing the US Navy.

Blade Runner
A short-lived relationship in 1946 led toBigsby’s first and only child, Mary, and by1947 he had remarried. An amateur uprightbass and guitar player, Bigsby would takelittle Mary to Cliffie Stone’s radio showHometown Jamboree, where they wouldenjoy the Western swing and country musiche loved. Western swing’s combination ofbig band, country, hillbilly, and polka wasbig in Southern California and Bigsby metmany stars and sidemen.

Steel guitar (in its pre-pedal form)featured prominently in Western swing,with some of the players using AdolphRickenbacker’s Hawaiian lap steel. Itslong neck and round body had earned itthe nickname the “Frying Pan.” In 1937Rickenbacker’s company with GeorgeBeauchamp, the Electro String InstrumentCorporation, built less than a hundred“Spanish Necked,” or round-necked versionsthat could be played like a regular guitar.Slingerland, a company better knownthese days for drums, also produced anearly solidbody guitar, but it, too, was morelike a flipped lap steel than the guitar weknow today, and neither instrument caughton. Former Rickenbacker employee, “Doc”Kauffman, teamed up with a radio repairmannamed Leo Fender to form the K&FManufacturing Corporation. Together theytoo developed a round-neck lap steel instrumentand patented it in 1944.

Joaquin Murphey’s 1946triple-neck lap steel, shownhere, is the oldest survivingBigsby instrument. Bigsbysupplied most of his steelswith a built-in ashtray (right).Photo courtesy Perry A.Margouleff, taken by GregMorgan.

That same year Bigsby began buildinginstruments in his spare time. Going straightto the top, he built a double 8-string consolesteel (a lap steel with legs) for Earl “Joaquin”Murphey, the steel player with the popularSpade Cooley Orchestra. Two necks enabledplayers to quickly switch between tunings(usually C6 and E9). Murphey’s instrumentwas made of solid bird’s-eye maple, withthe neck furthest from the player raised foreasier access. The instrument was soon seenin several movies featuring Cooley’s band.Bigsby later built the steel-guitar whiz atriple-8 version, the necks arranged in graduatedsteps, as per Murphey’s specifications.The raised neck and tapered headstockdesign developed by Bigsby and Murpheybecame the basis for the machinist’s nextinnovation—the pedal steel.

Like the solidbody electric guitar, PaulBigsby did not invent the pedal steel—hemerely revolutionized it.Gibson had introduceda system of pedals to change thetuning of the strings on their Electraharpsteel in 1940. The pedals, arranged in acluster radiating from the left rear leg,operated like the pedals on a harp. Bigsby’spedal steels were the first to feature pedalsmounted across a rack between the frontlegs of the instrument—the configurationwe see today.

Bigsby’s Travis guitar had anearly Bigsby “blade” pickup, anda walnut fi ddle tailpiece with astring-through-body design. Photocourstesy Country Music Hall ofFame, taken by Greg Morgan.

Once again the inventor went straight tothe top, building one of his first pedal steelsin 1948 for Wesley Webb “Speedy” West.West, whose fame stemmed from replacingMurphey in Cooley’s band, receivedan instrument with three necks and fourpedals. A sheet of bird’s-eye maple withSpeedy West in black letters acted as a “curtain”in front of the player’s legs. Bigsby’slogo was inlaid as well, giving the builderexposure through West’s touring and televisionappearances. In contrast to Murphey’swooden necks, West’s were cast aluminum.Other players were blown away by the tonethey heard on West’s legendary duo recordswith guitarist Jimmy Bryant. More famoussteel players, like Noel Boggs and BudIsaacs, began to seek the Bigsby sound.

An incorrigible tinkerer, Bigsby soonbegan to experiment with pickups, buildinghis own winding machine from sewingmachine parts. At first he wound his owncoils for the established horseshoe style;later he came up with his own design,employing a blade magnet with a wide, flatcoil wrapped around it. Similar to Gibson’sCharlie Christian pickup, it differed inusing a cast aluminum housing to create ashield that reduced the 60-cycle hum thatplagued single-coil pickups.

Bigsby cut down the edges ofthe Kluson Deluxe tuners sothey would fit six on a side, endto end. Leo Fender borrowedthis idea and used it onall future Fenderproduction guitars.The back of a 1950Fender Broadcasterheadstock (bottom).

Bigsby, Les Paul, and Leo Fender usedto gather to discuss pickup and guitardesign. Paul eventually installed one ofBigsby’s pickups in the bridge position oftheEpiphone hollowbody he used to record“How High the Moon.” Paul has beenquoted as saying the reason the pickup wasso successful was because it was very largeand worked well by the bridge.

Word spread and soon Bigsby’s pickupswere being used by Chet Atkins, HankGarland, and the man who would inspireBigsby to build the first modern solidbodyelectric guitar—Merle Travis.

The Man Who Could BuildAnything
Paul Bigsby began experimenting withthe idea of a solidbody guitar as early as1944, building one for Les Paul with thesame small body as his lap steels. Paul hadattempted to get Gibson interested in hisown design, “The Log,” as early as 1941 tono avail. Bigsby’s design also failed to catchon, possibly because, like the RickenbackerFrying Pan before it, the small body madeit hard to hold while playing.

Meanwhile, Merle Travis sought a guitarthat would sustain like the Bigsby steelshe heard played by Murphey and West. “Ikept wondering why steel guitars wouldsustain the sound so long, when a hollowbodyelectric guitar like mine would fadeout real quick,” Travis said in his memoir,Recollections of Merle Travis: 1944-1955. “Icame to the conclusion it was all becausethe steel guitar was solid.”

Remembering Bigsby as the man whoclaimed he could build anything, Travissketched out his idea for a solidbody instrument.It would have six-on-a-side tunerson a headstock shape that foretold theStratocaster, and a body that presaged theLes Paul. Travis wanted the neck inlaid witha heart, diamond, spade, and club, and specifiedpurely decorative walnut armrest andfiddle-like tailpiece appointments (the stringsactually went through the body, held by sixmetal ferrules). The original headstock onthe Travis guitar was not the “Strat” scroll itnow possesses, but was extended further andscrolled in the opposite direction. That partwas later cut off and the scroll reversed intothe classic shape we see today.

This revolutionary instrument’s bodywas made of bird’s-eye maple, hollowedout to reduce the weight, and its backwas covered with Plexiglas. A metal baracross the back reinforced the body. Earlypictures of Travis with the guitar showthat the body cutaway was not part of theoriginal guitar, but added later.

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 inLondon and New York. He also plays bass in the ’60s-retro band, the Chesterfield Kings.

Bigsby cast the nut and compensatedbridge from aluminum. The bridge’s heightraised or lowered on two adjustmentwheels. A single Bigsby blade pickup positionedby the bridge, and a 3-way switchwith capacitors for some tonal variationcompleted the basic design.

The six-on-a-side string arrangementhad been done before, as far back as theearly 19th century by Stauffer in Austriaand Martin in America. Travis may havebeen recalling these, but Bigsby creditedthe guitarist with the idea. The advantagesof the Bigsby version over three tunerson a side are many: All the tuners turnin the same direction to raise the stringpitch; a more even tension is applied toeach string; and the strings pull straightthrough the nut. The latter helps keep theinstrument in tune when bending stringsor using a whammy bar.

The Travis guitar was fitted with closedbackKluson tuners with wings on eachside through which the screw holes weredrilled. This works fine on three-on-a-sideheadstocks, but to make it work for hisdesign, Bigsby used the bass side tunersfrom two sets, machining off the endsthrough the middle of the screw hole sothat one screw would hold two tuners. Heleft one wing on each of the two end tuners.This solution set the template for allsets of six-in-line Klusons to come.

The third version of what Bigsby nowcalled his Standard guitars had individualadjustable pole pieces on its twopickups. This guitar went to honky-tonklegend Ernest Tubb’s guitarist Tommy“Butterball” Page. Engraved in itspickguard was Tubb’s constant call to theguitarist: “Come In Butter Ball.”

Headstock EvolutionFrom left to right: 1830’s MartinStauffer-style,1940’s BigsbyPrototype,1948 BisbyTravis,1949 FenderPrototype,1950 FenderBraodcaster,1954 FenderStratocaster,1959 FenderJazzmaster.

Bigsby vs. Fender
Merle Travis always contended that LeoFender borrowed his Bigsby guitar for aweek before bringing it back, along withthe prototype for what would become theTelecaster. InThe Story of Paul Bigsby:Father of the Modern Electric SolidbodyGuitar, author Andy Babiuk references aletter written in 1950 by Fender employeeDon Randall. In his letter, Randall,in charge of Fender’s distribution at thetime, describes meeting with Merle Travisand observing his Bigsby guitar. Randallwrites: “He is playing the granddaddy ofour Spanish guitar, built by Paul Bigsby—the one Leo copied.” Fender has claimedthat he never borrowed the guitar, but thesimilarities seem to substantiate Travis’story. Though the first Fender had athree-on-a-side headstock, it copied theBigsby in its single cutaway, inch-and-ahalfthick body, and its through-the-bodystringing system. The second Fendersolidbody increased the resemblancefurther with a six-in-line tuning systemusing the same cutoff Klusons as on theBigsby Standards.

It is widely acknowledged among guitaraficionados that Bigsby’s designs directlyinspired Fender’s. “The Bigsby pegheadshape is very distinctive and so close to thedesign later introduced by Fender that itwould stretch the imagination to think thiswas a random coincidence,” notes one ofthe foremost authorities on the history ofvintage guitars, George Gruhn of NashvillebasedGruhn Guitars.

Already competitive with Fender when itcame to lap steels, the similarities of the newFender production models angered Bigsbyconsiderably. If theTelecaster headstockirked him, the even more similar Stratocasterversion would make him see red.

Though Bigsby was upset, the fact is, hewas not interested in the kind of low-costmass production that drove Leo Fender.You might say that P.A. Bigsby was one ofthe first boutique instrument manufacturers,concerned with handbuilding highqualitypieces one at a time, rather thanchurning out assembly line quantity.

“Although Bigsby operated a one-manshop,” says Gruhn, “and produced a lowtotal number of instruments, his influenceon the evolution and development ofmodern electric instruments was profoundlygreater than his numerical output.”

Bigsby was so adamant about handlingevery aspect of the instrument’s construction,he even resisted hiring an assistant.

Guitars for the stars
Undaunted by Fender’s new business,Bigsby continued to make instruments for a“who’s who” of country guitar legends. Theinstrument he built for session great GradyMartin had a neck-through design, a bird’s eyemaple veneer on its spruce top andback, and a scroll on the top of the bodyoffsetting the one on the neck. Anotherversion was originally built for JimmyBryant, but he changed his mind at the lastminute and Ernest Tubb’s new guitarist,Billy Byrd, bought it. This model sportswhat may be the first double cutaway.

In addition to building custom instruments,Bigsby was installing his uniquepickups on guitars from other manufacturersfor players like the aforementioned LesPaul, Hank “Sugarfoot” Garland (who alsoplayed a Bigsby guitar at one point), andChet Atkins. His shop also provided custominlaid pickguards, as well as replacementnecks for acoustic guitars. Merle Travis wasso fond of his Bigsby guitar’s neck that hehad the custom builder replace the one onhis Martin D-28 with a Bigsby six-in-lineversion. Travis’ conversion inspired fellowcountry stars Joe Maphis and HankThompson to have their acoustic guitarsrefitted as well.

The popularity of Bigsby’s steel guitars,standard guitars, and retrofits—combinedwith his refusal to delegate any of the work—soon resulted in a two-year waiting list.The principled artisan ran the list as a strictdemocracy. Once when a country star pulledthe “Don’t you know who I am?” card, Bigsbyreplied, “I don’t care if you are Jesus Christ,you will wait your turn like everybody else.”

Bigsby’s Billy Byrd guitar wasoriginally made for guitaristJimmy Bryant, but Bryant endedup signing a contract with Fender.Bigsby carved out Bryant’s nameand sold it to Billy Byrd.

The Bigsby
Not content to just build instruments,Bigsby was constantly coming up with newideas for products. Seeing that steel guitaristshad to stop playing to change volumeand tone with their hands, he invented acombination volume and tone footpedal:up and down controlled the volume, whileleft and right moves adjusted the tone.

When Bigsby first met Merle Travis, heattempted to make the guitarist’s KauffmanVibrola vibrato system stay in better tune.When he failed, Travis challenged him to“build a vibrato contraption that works.” By1951 Bigsby had succeeded: Using the samealuminum alloy employed in his pickupcovers and bridges, he produced the firstBigsby True Vibrato.

The Billy Boy guitar was eventually reconfigured, but featuresthe same bird’s-eye maple body as the original.

Early Bigsby trems had a fixed arm thatcould not be pushed away and a rubberstopper rather than a spring to push thearm back in tune. Designed to lower orraise the pitch one half-step, the unit camewith a bridge that rocked back and forth toprevent the strings from sawing across it.

Customers quickly came to the shop tohave the new vibrato installed. The first,of course, went to Travis. When retrofittingBilly Byrd’s guitar, Bigsby discoveredthe new tailpiece had to be inlaid intothe body to create proper string tensionover the bridge. By elevating the necks onfuture models, the bridge could be raisedand the proper angle achieved withouthaving to inlay the tailpiece.

Gibson’s president at the time, TedMcCarty, made an exclusive deal for theunit, with the proviso that McCarty wouldhelp revise the design so it allowed thearm to be pushed out of the way whennot in use. Soon other guitar companies,including Gretsch, wanted the new, morestable vibrato. Bigsby worked out a revisedcontract with Gibson, giving them a preferentialprice and money to McCarty forhelp with the design, in exchange for anon-exclusive agreement.

By this time relations with Leo Fenderwere cordial enough that Bigsby designed aspecial vibrato unit for the Telecaster—onethat incorporated the surround for thepickup. The fighting started up again whenFender introduced theStratocaster, withits uncomfortably familiar headstock and avibrato system of its own. A Bigsby lawsuitwas unsuccessful, as the headstock design hadexisted on European instruments of the past.

With the hugely increased vibrato business,Bigsby had to expand his shop, hireemployees, and job out the production ofthe device’s parts. It could be said that byinventing this iconic piece of equipment,he effectively put himself out of the guitarbuildingbusiness. Though he designed aline of instruments for the amp manufacturingcompany, Magnatone, and continuedto build steels for a while, by 1956 the eraof the Bigsby guitar was over.Legend has it that when someoneasked for a guitar like the one he’d madefor Travis, Bigsby said, “Hell no! Go toFullerton and look up Leo Fender. He’llbuild you one.”

Grown and Gone
The late 1950s and early ’60s saw PaulBigsby growing his vibrato business intoa global enterprise. He traveled the worldsetting up international distribution dealsthat would result in Bigsby units appearingon instruments owned by the Beatles, KeithRichards, and David Gilmour.

With thousands of orders coming in, andthe compromises of mass production testinghis perfectionist nature, the 66-year-old Bigsbydecided it was all too much. In 1965, heoffered the company to friend Ted McCarty,who was ready to leave Gibson. Bigsbyretired, soon dying of cancer on June 7, 1968.McCarty retained the business until 1999,when he sold it to the most loyal user of theproduct—the Gretsch Guitar Company.

Bigsby built relatively few instrumentsduring his lifetime (an original guitarwill set you back between $40,000 and$80,000), yet his pedal steels and volumepedals helped usher in the crying soundof country music, and his electric solidbodiesrevolutionized the way guitarslook and function. It is hard to find amodern solidbody guitar that does notin some way reflect his innovations. Andif that wasn’t enough, years before theStratocaster, his simple vibrato deviceintroduced guitarists of the world to thejoys of a different kind of rocking.

Bigsby Lives on
The Bigsby vibrato has inspired guitarists for more than 50 years. Check out the following clips from these 6-string titans on YouTube.com.

Joaquin Murphey shows his incredibly fluid bar technique on a 1945 Bigsbydouble-neck lap steel.

Bigsby master Neil Young does his stuff.

Duane Eddy spices up “Ghost Riders in the Sky” with subtle Bigsby shimmies.

Brian Setzer shakes up “Sleep Walk.”

Bigsby cut down the edges ofthe Kluson Deluxe tuners sothey would fit six on a side, endto end. Leo Fender borrowedthis idea and used it onall future Fenderproduction guitars.The back of a 1950Fender Broadcasterheadstock (bottom).

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 inLondon and New York. He also plays bass in the ’60s-retro band, the Chesterfield Kings.

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