Hanging here at the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum with museum director Eric Cale and local Wichita legend Ron Starkel. Some fun stuff brewing this weekend!
I’ve seen the guitar before on a previous visit, but it’s always a thrill to visit with THE very first electric guitar! This little butterbean-potato of a guitar has been documented to be the very first electric Spanish guitar, made in the very first batch in the fall of 1932, by a company called Ro-Pat-In, which would become Rickenbacker Guitars by 1934 (I know there are guitar geeks constantly fact-checking me, so to be accurate, it was the original German “Rickenbacher” spelling for a few years before it became the better known, Americanized “Rickenbacker” name).
This first electric guitar (along with an early Ro-Pat-In frying pan steel guitar) was purchased by a Wichita bandleader named Gage Brewer, who brought the instruments from California to Wichita, where they were featured in a newspaper article in October 1932. Prehistoric times, as far as the electric guitar is concerned. This guitar is so early, they didn’t even have a standardized quarter-inch input jack yet. The input of this guitar are two 1930s-era metal pins, almost like something you would see on a dynamite detonator or something. Fascinating stuff!
Eric has also put together a fabulous display of early and historic electric guitars from the 1930s through the 1960s. We will be focusing on this exhibit tonight and tomorrow, as he tries to explore ways to allow it to travel to museums around the country.
See more photos at Deke’s original Facebook post!
