Paul A. Bigsby – Guitar Builder

Paul Bigsby is one of the legendary figures in 20th Century American guitar history. He was a major contributor to the development of both the pedal steel guitar and the solid body electric guitar, and built or customized instruments for many of the top country music artists of the 1940’s and ‘50’s including Merle Travis, Chet Atkins, Hank Garland, Grady Martin, Faron Young, Joe Maphis, Speedy West, Billy Byrd, Hank Thompson, Zeke Clements, Tiny Moore and others. Bigsby never wanted to run a large operation; he preferred to craft instruments one at a time by himself so each of his creations is unique. He was building solid-body guitars before Leo fender, but was not interested in commercializing them to any large extent. Instead the vibrato unit he designed for Merle Travis became widely popular as an add-on accessory in the 1950’s and was eventually adopted by Gretsch, Gibson, Guild Harmony, Magnatone and Kay as standard equipment on their guitars and is still in production and widely used today,

Bigsby had a background in motorcycle design and construction, becoming involved with guitars through his friendship with seminal country picker Merle Travis. Around 1947 Travis had the idea for a fully solid electric guitar, and jokingly asked his cycle-building friend if he could make one. “I can build anything” was Bigsby’s reply, and within a short time he had built from scratch the unusual instrument Travis had sketched on the back of a radio program sheet. Travis’ enthusiastic use of the guitar soon had other country musicians requesting custom instruments from Bigsby. Soon he began building highly advanced steel guitars with elaborate pitch-shifting mechanisms which became the prototypes for all later pedal steel guitars. Bigsby would also add electric pickups or extra decoration to existing instruments, and built custom necks for flat-top guitars.

His customers were overwhelmingly Country & Western artists, and a Bigsby instrument was a mark of distinction, a Cowboy Cadillac among musicians. When Lefty Frizzell had his new Gibson SJ-200 customized by Paul Bigsby, he was ensuring his instrument carried the visual statement that he had arrived as a full-blown star.