PORTLAND — Sound might matter, but everyone knows what’s really crucial about guitars: wicked-cool looks.
Consider the rounded elegance of classic hollow-body Gibsons, with their violinlike sound holes. Blues legend B.B. King likened his beloved Gibson six-string to a woman and even named it “Lucille.”
Even more classical looking is the world’s most celebrated electric bass, plucked off a shelf by left-handed young Paul McCartney, who said its roughly symmetrical violin shape made it look less “daft” pointing in the opposite direction from his bandmates’ guitars. (And because it was cheap.)
Check out the aerodynamically abstract curves and angles of the Fender Stratocaster — perhaps the most popular rock guitar, and the favorite of everyone from Buddy Holly to Eric Clapton — which must have looked like space-aged technology when it launched in the 1950s.
If You Go
• What: “Guitar: The Instrument that Rocked the World” exhibit.
• When: through Jan. 10 (closed Mondays).
• Where: Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, 1945 S.E. Water Ave., Portland.
• Cost: $13.50; $9.75 for ages 3 to 13 and those 63 and older. $5 parking.
• Information:www.omsi.edu
“The design was so futuristic. It seems so old now, but it was super-modern then,” said Matt Miller, a science educator at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, which is hosting a traveling exhibit called “Guitar: The Instrument that Rocked the World.” Produced by the National Guitar Museum, the exhibit opened at OMSI in September and continues through Jan. 10. (The Guitar Museum has no permanent home yet but hopes to settle down someplace in years to come.)
The exhibit features more than 60 examples of the amazingly adaptable instrument down through history: precursor ouds and lutes from ancient Mesopotamia and Renaissance Europe, to great-grandfather American Martins of the 1800s, all the way down to today’s digital guitar synthesizers and multinecked monstrosities.
When Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin achieved true guitar-god status in the 1970s, it wasn’t due just to his virtuosity; it was also thanks to his awesome-looking twin-neck (one six-string, one 12-string). After that, the race was on: In the 1980s, Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick got tired of running through five different guitars during a showstopping solo and had a quintuple-neck instrument built (that’s 12-string and four different-sounding six-strings, including one with a “whammy bar” and one that’s fretless).
At OMSI, visitors also can check out what’s billed as the “Rock Ock,” an eight-necked instrument one hesitates to call a guitar at all, since it also includes basses, mandolins and other multistringed versions of the basic idea. Watch a video of eight different musicians simultaneously giving the Rock Ock a workout. The National Guitar Museum calls the Rock Ock “the world’s largest fully playable multinecked instrument.”
Sound science
Most of these gems are behind glass at OMSI and can only be worshipped, not touched, by the faithful; but the exhibit comes with lots of interactive education and fun, too.
Visitors of all ages can explore the science behind guitars — How does sound work? Why does one guitar sound thin while another sounds deep? — by experimenting with different lengths of tubes and strings and by testing different types of wood, hammering them like xylophone keys, to hear how they resonate.
Spruce chirps brightly. Rosewood booms out with a big, full voice, while mahogany vibrates less and produces darker tones. These three are often used for the fronts, backs and sides of fine guitars. Maple, which is very hard, is best for guitar necks because it resists vibration and helps keeps strings in tune. Cheaper guitars are sometimes made of plywood, which does tone and volume no favors at all.
This brings us to Silvertone, the historic musical brand of housewares manufacturer Sears & Roebuck. In their heyday, Silvertone guitars were made of the extra materials that Sears had laying around, Miller said: plywood and Formica fashioned into oddly “cartoony” bodies, pickups that were embedded inside lipstick casings.
Did You Know?
Many iconic guitars and guitar brands were named for visionary founders and inventors such as Leo Fender, Orville Gibson and Les Paul.
But what about Fender’s famous “-caster” guitars? The name is all about the technological marvels of yesteryear. The first widely available electric guitar, circa 1950, was the Fender Broadcaster, named for the futuristic communication technologies of that day — radio and television — not to mention sheer volume, of course.
When the Gretsch music company threatened to sue because it was already selling a drum set by that name, Leo Fender made the problem an opportunity by renaming his new guitar after television: the Telecaster. Later on, the Tele’s younger, sexier cousin flew even further into the future when named after our planet’s stratosphere: the Stratocaster.
“It kept costs down,” Miller said.
Silvertone is still around today and advertises itself as the manufacturer of “honest reissue” guitars, the same as before but with better materials and technology.
Visitors can even put their hands all over a Guinness-certified world-record holder: the world’s largest “playable” electric guitar. It’s 43.5 feet long, 16 feet wide and weighs more than a ton. It doesn’t actually sound like much, Miller said, but it’s real and huge enough to let kids climb all over it, exploring for themselves how differently fretted strings create different pitches.
American invention
An acoustic guitar is a resonant box with a hole that lets air and sound move through. An electric guitar doesn’t need to be resonant. Some electric guitars have nothing to do with acoustic sound at all; they’re slabs of wood loaded with electronics, and shaped and decorated however you please — flying Vs, machine guns, fire-breathing dragons — you name it.
The first commercially available electric guitar, circa 1932, was slightly more modest. It was nicknamed the “Frying Pan” for its round, little body and long neck. It was invented by a clever-but-frustrated guitarist named George Beauchamp, who was tired of being drowned out by his band.
MORE MUSICAL HAPPENINGS AT OMSI
This fall is a season of music at our area’s premiere science museum. If worshipping guitars isn’t quite your speed, there’s still plenty of music in the OMSI air:
Opera on Screen: Recent productions from the San Francisco Opera, broadcast in the Empirical Theater. “Porgy and Bess” at 4 p.m. Nov. 8; “Aida” at 4 p.m. Nov. 15. $14; $12 for seniors, $8 for children.
Music on Film: If you ARE a guitar worshipper, check out screenings of many rock ’n’ roll classics, including “The Last Waltz” (Nov. 7 and 14); “Purple Rain” (Nov. 18); “Almost Famous” (Nov. 18); “Stop Making Sense” (Nov. 19); “A Hard Day’s Night” (Nov. 21 and 22) and “This Is Spinal Tap” (Dec. 9) — to name just a few. Visit the OMSI website for the list and details. $7; $6 for children and seniors.
Sound of Science: An OMSI after Dark festival, featuring live music, science demonstrations and local beer. 21 and older event. Starts at 6 p.m. Dec. 2. $13.
Physics of Music: Christine McKinley, author of “Physics for Rock Stars.” 7 p.m., Dec. 15, $5 suggested donation.
It’s interesting to note what an American — meaning multicultural — instrument the electric guitar really is. It was the explosive popularity of Hawaiian songs on the mainland in early 20th century that prompted Beauchamp to invent an instrument that produced that sweet, slidy twang.
He and his partner, machinist Adolph Rickenbacker, sold thousands of what officially became the Rickenbacker Electro A-22, but because it took years to secure a patent, the secret formula escaped their clutches.
Guitarists have been rocking the world ever since.
