Prehistory
(1920s-1940s) | The initial aim was to amplify guitars to make them audible in louder environments. Simple pickups were integrated into acoustic guitars for this purpose, ensuring audibility even against a big band. The idea was to maintain the original sound, but this was challenging with magnetic pickups. |
1950s | When visionaries like Leo Fender and Lester Polfuss (known as Les Paul) conceptualized that the guitar's resonating body wasn't essential, they mounted necks, pickups, and strings onto a plank, giving birth to the electric guitar. Initially met with skepticism, the Fender Broadcaster was renamed Telecaster and soon became a bestseller. This was followed by the company's own Stratocaster model, creations from Bigsby (known for its vibrato system to this day), and Gibson's iconic Les Paul. The quest remained for a loud yet clear sound. Ironically, this led Gibson to briefly halt production of the Les Paul in 1960. Their guitars with low-noise PAF humbuckers lacked clarity and distorted the amps too quickly. Typical guitar sounds of the 1950s: - Chuck Berry: Gibson ES 350T (later ES 355) through Fender tube amps
- Effects like a reverb spring only emerged in the early '60s. |
Early 1960s | When The Beatles emerged, they used VOX amplifiers, which produced a wonderful clean sound, especially in harmony with their semi-acoustic Rickenbacker, Gretsch, and Epiphone guitars. Interestingly, The Beatles took quite some time to transition to the "big" brands - Fender and Gibson. |
1965 | Since there weren’t PA systems (only vocal setups back then), amps had to be cranked up louder for enthusiastic crowds. Initially undesired distortions and feedback occurred. Some musicians saw musical potential in these distortions. Dave Davies of The Kinks famously destroyed the speaker of his "little green amp" to create the distorted "You Really Got Me" sound. Ritchie Blackmore allegedly kicked a hole in his speaker with his boot... Amps were cranked up to the max, mercilessly overdriving the power stages. Technicians started to embrace what they had previously avoided: distortion. Early famous examples include Keith Richards' Satisfaction riff and Paul McCartney's Fuzz Bass on Think For Yourself (LP: Rubber Soul). In both cases, a Maestro Fuzz was likely used. '60s fuzz sounds are pretty rough and artificial sounding long-term, but one of the best in this realm was delivered by Eric Clapton. Recording the legendary Bluesbreaker album, he used a (completely unfashionable) Gibson Les Paul Sunburst (a '58 or '59 with PAF humbuckers) and a 50-watt Marshall Combo. Master Volume was nowhere to be found, so Eric cranked all the knobs (the "typical hand motion"). The sound engineer reportedly had a panic attack, and the mic had to be placed at a considerable distance. The result? One of the fattest, smokiest, and in my opinion, most beautiful sounds of all time. A must-listen! |
1966/67 | Colleagues like Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, successors to Clapton in The Yardbirds, used Soul Benders to beef up their VOX AC30s. Jimi Hendrix used the Maestro Fuzz Face and a VOX WAH WAH. There weren’t many more effects back then. Worth mentioning were tape echoes like Echoplex or WEM Copycat. Hendrix had a few more intricate gadgets like the Univibe (a kind of artificial Leslie) and the Octaver.
Important: The preceding distortions usually just teased the already overdriven amp. It's a completely different sound from using a cranked distortion into a clean amp (more on that later). The rock sound, as we know and love it, was essentially complete. "But that was at the end of the '60s," some might rightly wonder. Since then, there have been tons and megatons of new gear.
Of course, most of it tries to replicate those beautiful old sounds and jazz them up a bit. To be honest, there hasn't been much genuinely new stuff. |
1970s |
In the '70s, the Master Volume was developed. So, the beautiful tube sounds could be achieved at non-health-threatening volumes by creating distortion in the preamp, and another volume knob controlled the overall volume. The type of distortion was slightly different (many modern guitarists even prefer it), but these amps also sound better when the power stage is teased a bit. Hence, even at room volume, there's a compromise. Phaser pedals emerged as floor effects, followed later by flangers and chorus. The punk movement, apart from its occasionally refreshing raw play style, didn’t bring much new. |
| 1978 | The real innovation came from a young guitar hero - Eddie Van Halen. He injected new energy into old blues licks, employing lightning-fast legato lines, using chromatic scales, two-handed tapping, and, of course, extensively using the tremolo bar. His sound philosophy dominated for years (more on that elsewhere). STRAT bodies with a humbucker at the bridge and a volume pot, coupled with almost indestructible tremolo systems like Floyd Rose or Kahler, amplified through a beefed-up MARSHALL or similar. |
| 1980s | In the '80s, sound fanatics like Steve Lukather crafted huge rack systems (often disdainfully called "fridges" now) where different preamps and amps were sent through a plethora of high-quality studio effects - not always sounding as expensive as their price tags suggested. Due to the many stages the signal passed through, often the "tone," which people rave about today, was lost. The sounds were often so overloaded with chorus, harmonizer, delay, and reverb that naturalness was nowhere to be found. |
| 1990s to Present | In the '90s, the pendulum swung back. Grunge was the buzzword, and indeed, the return "back to the roots" produced beautiful music and good sounds. The philosophy: take a guitar, plug it into an amp, and off you go. However, the "Grunge" drawer sometimes concealed the sale of lacking musical quality and berserk guitar thrashing under a trendy cover. What has certainly remained is the tendency to use more "natural" sounds. Fewer "fridges" are seen on stages today, interestingly, the old pedals that went out of style in the '80s had a proper revival. Devices that were carelessly thrown aside back then are now cult. Also, the gain knob is less cranked by many guitarists today (except for the heavy metal faction). In many cases, a harmonically balanced crunch sound is sought after, which ten years ago would have just passed as a rhythm sound. The whammy bar, so unavoidable in the '80s, doesn't play as prominent a role anymore. Many former extreme users now completely do without it (e.g., Paul Gilbert). |
