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The electric guitar started right here! In the early 1930s, Hollowbody Guitars were the very first electrics to be made, incorporating pickups that were mounted to the inside of an archtop instrument specially designed to be amplified. These are the instruments that have been popularized by jazz icons, singer-songwriters, and sonic travelers who seek to incorporate their wonderfully pristine sounds to genres ranging from electronic to fusion and all stops in-between. AMS carries hollowbody guitars of all types from the biggest brands in music - find yours today with the help of our True 0% interest payment plans!
American Musical Supply is excited to be your stop for Hollowbody Electric Guitars from top brands! We offer True 0% interest payment plans - applying is easy. Use your own debit or credit card, enjoy fast and free shipping, and add an Hollowbody to your creative setup.
We make buying a Hollowbody Electric Guitar quick and easy - in-stock items that are ordered before 5PM will ship out the same day! (see our Shipping Information Page for more details) Do you have questions about Hollowbody Electric Guitars and want to know which one would be best for you? Give us a call at 800-319-9043 - our experts are standing by.
The acoustic guitar has always been a solo instrument and a singer-songwriter’s trusty companion. In the early part of the 20th century, they also served as both a vital rhythm and chording instrument in jazz combos and dance bands. As musical groups got bigger, played louder, and performed in larger venues, the guitar quickly got overwhelmed in the texture by the horns and percussion. What was the solution to this problem? Why, electrify the guitar and project the sound through an amplifier and speaker! Early builders and tinkerers started by mounting a pickup (a carefully constructed magnet wrapped in wiring that generates a current in coordination with the vibration of guitar strings) and the requisite electronics inside hollow archtops and the first electric guitars were born!
While the first hollowbody guitars were built and marketed in the early 1930s, it was during the middle of the decade that numerous companies released production models and manufacturing was scaled up. Gibson’s very first production hollowbody electric guitar – the ES-150 – was released in 1936. ES was short for ‘Electric Spanish,’ referencing an electric version of a traditional ornate archtop guitar built in the style of an instrument of Spanish origin, complete with violin-style F-holes and fine-finished appointments. Jazz guitarist Charlie Christian was the first to perform with the Gibson ES-150 and he quickly took the new guitar in exciting directions. Armed with that extra volume and a collection of fresh new tones, he was able showcase the guitar as both a solo instrument and more colorful accompaniment. That meant that commanding improvisations and lead melody lines quickly became available to a generation of players.
The biggest challenge facing those early hollowbody guitars was uncontrolled feedback at extremely high volumes. Guitar companies began working to tackle this challenge and sought to improve the instrument. Over the following decades, this spurred a rapid evolution in the guitar world, also leading to the creation of the solidbody guitar and semi-hollowbody guitar. Today’s full hollowbodies are remarkably consistent and versatile but remember . . . they are based around utilizing pure cleans and crisp attacks. If you’re looking for something that can handle mega distortion, tons of volume, and is able to drench your music in overdriven sound, a solidbody electric is going to be more of your style.
We carry a wide variety of hollowbody guitars from the biggest names in music - Gibson, Epiphone, D’Angelico, Gretsch, and Ibanez have wonderful offerings available! Their clear, focused cleans are some of the most pristine and complex guitar sounds in existence and it’s no wonder that they are sought after for their use in jazz, dub, atmospheric EDM, fusion, folk, and numerous singer-songwriter genres.
