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Metal-strung guitars have been around for hundreds of years. Some of the earliest guitars were strung with drawn wire and had quite long scale lengths. The steel string guitars in modern use mainly derive from U.S.A. designs from the early part of the 20th century. Orville Gibson built a quite large-bodied, carved-top gutar in 1896, and a whole line of guitars and mandolins developed from his designs. The Martin Guitar company introduced steel strings into their production much later. They retained the x-braced designs of their gut-string guitars, adapting them to the higher tension of steel strings. The majority of steel-string guitars built today owe much to Martin’s designs.
Just before 1920, the Ditson company commissioned a very large-bodied (16” wide) guitar for their music stores. This was called the “Dreadnought” and was designed as a bass instrument to accompany singing. Subsequently in the 1930s, Martin modified the Dreadnought from a 12-fret to a 14-fret neck and produced the model which would become the most imitated steel-string guitar in history. The popularity of Martin’s Dreadnought in Bluegrass, Country Music and what became called “Rock and Roll” (in the hands of Elvis Presley) coincided with the rise of Japan as a force in guitar mass production. The guitar they most copied was the Dreadnought and so we see today the dominance of this square-shaped, shallow-waisted guitar in today’s mass-produced market.
Whilst also building flat-topped steel-string guitars in the 1920s, the Gibson company focussed their creative energies (and a great deal of marketing) into a line of carved arch-top instruments following the design of their founder Orville Gibson. These guitars were modified through the 1920s, especially with the input of musician and acoustic engineer Lloyd Loar to become the preferred guitar the emerging Jazz players of the 1930s. The bodies grew to up to 18” (458mm) wide and these huge, shallow bodied guitars were used in the large jazz orchestras as their strong treble and mid frequency emphasis enabled them to be heard amongst the brass and wind instruments without amplification.
As the demand for flat - topped instruments grew in the late 1930s, Gibson used some of their archtop outlines to produce some of the largest steel-string guitars being built. The J 200 or “Jumbo” model and the smaller J185 or “Everly Brothers” model. They were also a great success in the country and popular music genres and are copied widely today. To counter this, the Martin company enlarged one of their body shapes in the 1980s to produce their own jumbo. Gibson also produced many Dreadnought derived instruments.
In the 1970s a large number of individual guitar makers emerged, all adapting and building these established deigns and using them as a springboard from which to develop their own models. Some formed companies and went into competition with the established firms. Many remained solo makers and concentrated on refining and optimising each instrument. My large-bodied designs are listed below. As with the small-medium bodies, each model has its own page. Click on the picture.
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