MAKER’S MARKS
The story of the electric guitar is not just one of players. It’s also a tale of tinkerers, engineers and inventors, huddled day after day in their workshops, basements and garages. It’s these trailblazers that have truly shaped the instrument, from the formative stages of its development to ongoing refinements today.
The Ray Butts story has never been told as widely nor understood as thoroughly as those of the electric guitar’s ‘Mount Rushmore’ figures such as Leo Fender and Les Paul. But thanks to two major inventions – the Filter’Tron humbucker and EchoSonic amplifier – Ray Butts is one of the most important of the instrument’s revolutionary pioneers. It took a remarkable turn of events to shed further light on his work, revealing previously unknown details about the early development of pickups and the electric guitar itself.
This is a peculiar yarn, whose players include Paul Bigsby, Ted McCarty, Chet Atkins, Fred Gretsch and Seth Lover. But it’s also a story about the innovations of today and the future of the
