Rickenbacker

Smith

Part One

The Early History

The MIDGETS of the Tonal World

Attain to GIANTS Stature!

A miracle has come to pass in the realm of beautiful tone. The soft, fairy-voiced Hawaiian guitar, the tinkling mandolin, the ethereal Spanish guitar—all have been liberated, dignified, and given their rightful place among orchestral instruments.

HOW?

Touched with the magic wand of electrical genius the quality they lacked has been conferred upon them—

VOLUME!

Controlled volume—more than sufficient for the largest orchestra. As much or as little as you want. You can start the tone softly and build up a tremendous crescendo, or execute a musicianly swell, without stroking the strings again. You can follow every dynamic effect of wind or percussion with no trouble at all. Marvellous, isn’t it? Hardly believable till you hear it.

In addition to the added volume, the tonal qualities of each instrument have been vastly improved. The building of the instruments and the adjustment of the sound magnifying device have all been pointed to that end. There are no dissonances, or noises picked up to mar pure tone or damp vibration.

What would you say of a Hawaiian guitar you could hear a quarter of a mile on a clear day, or a Spanish Guitar louder than any piano? That’s what we have in the new

RICKENBACHER ELECTRO INSTRUMENTS

The National String Instrument Corporation

The story of Rickenbacker guitars began with a Texas born musician named George Beauchamp and his search for a louder, improved guitar. Beauchamp was the central figure in the founding of two important guitar manufacturing companies: National and Electro String (Rickenbacker). These companies did not set out to change music instrument history; they set out to change the lot of guitarists. Still, the people in these companies invented several unique musical instruments that left indelible imprints on the American music culture.

Beyond the musical importance of the instruments these two companies introduced, National and Electro String influenced the music industry by using new economical manufacturing techniques and untried materials to make guitars. Some of their ideas were failures while others were successes. In either case, Beauchamp and his associates made a headstrong entrance into the traditional realm of old-world craftsmanship and redefined it with modern new-world attitudes. Beauchamp’s most significant individual contribution to the world of musical instruments was the first commercially sold practical electric guitar--the Electro. This development was just part of a story filled with quarrels, controversies, and achievements. It began in Los Angeles, California.

George Beauchamp was a vaudeville performer, a trained violinist, and a steel guitarist. His booking agent was the prestigious William Morris Agency. George called one of his music trios with his brother Al and a friend named Slim Hopper The Boys from Dixie. When Slim and George performed as a duo, they called the act Grasshopper and George. In the mid 1920s Hawaiian music was popular, so, George usually played steel guitar in vaudeville. His instrument was a flat top steel string acoustic with a high nut.

Like many of his frustrated guitarist contemporaries, Beauchamp was seeking a louder guitar. Guitarists wanted to stand out like the brass and reed instruments and become effective soloists in all situations. To be truly effective, the guitar needed a tone and volume potential that could cut through an orchestra. At least, guitarists wanted an instrument that could stand its own ground against a banjo, the loudest of the acoustic stringed instruments.

One plausible solution to the guitarist’s problem, an idea that started in the late Nineteenth century, was to apply the principles of nonelectric phonographs to instruments. Good examples of phonograph influenced instruments came from the English company Strohviol which had jerry-built several bizarre looking styles. Beauchamp had seen a violin with a phonograph-like horn coming out of its body used by a fellow show performer. He thought someone could build a guitar with a similar amplifying horn. (Perhaps George did not know that Strohviol had already made such a steel guitar.) George’s search for a craftsman to do this work led him to John Dopyera.

John Dopyera was a violin repairman and inventor with a shop fairly close to Beauchamp’s Los Angeles home. His earlier work included a patented shipping crate and a patented machine for making picture frames. By the mid 1920s John and his brother Rudy had spent a lot of time designing improved banjos that they built in John’s shop. Their efforts eventually led to several banjo related patents. (Besides John and Rudy, the Dopyera brothers included Emil, Robert, and Louis. Over the years each became involved to some degree, either in instrument manufacturing or in financing these ventures.)

John realized that as the popularity of banjos began to decrease in the mid 1920s, he needed a new direction. He had already considered making guitars as the natural progression of his business by the time Beauchamp came to him. The Dopyeras built a guitar for George following his suggestions. It sat on a stand and had a wild-looking walnut body with a Victrola horn attached to the bottom. According to one report, Beauchamp played this instrument in vaudeville for a short period, although it was a disappointing failure.

The Tri-Cone Guitar

After John built the first guitar, there was another idea inspired by a phonograph. Nolan Beauchamp recalls that his father took the reproduction head off their Victrola. The head had a small mica disc attached to a needle; when the needle vibrated playing a record, the disc mechanically amplified the sound through the horn. (The mica disc acted like the tissue paper in a kazoo.) George gave the disc to Dopyera and suggested he apply the same principle to a guitar.

Dopyera has usually insisted that the idea for a disc or diaphragm type resonator was his alone, something he had thought about long before he met Beauchamp. Regardless of where the idea came from, John started to experiment with discs made out of a variety of materials. These included paper, pressed fibre, glass, tin, and other sheet metals.

George Beauchamp as he looked in the National catalog from about 1930. George was National’s general manager from 1928 through 1931.

Adolph Rickenbacker as he looked in the same catalog from 1930. Adolph’s title at National was engineer.

Rickenbacker’s shop around 1929. This picture appeared in the blue National catalog circa 1930.

John found that conical shaped 98% aluminum resonators, with the proper thickness and hardness, worked the best.¹ John says that he turned a lathe originally used to make banjos hoops into a spinning lathe. His nephews, Paul and Carl Barth, spun the resonator discs. (Paul Barth later told Nolan Beauchamp that they had learned the metal spinning technique working for an L.A. jewelry concern.)

The resonators were wafer-thin, like the mica discs in the Victrola reproduction heads. John attached his resonators to a cast aluminum bridge that had an inserted wooden saddle. He installed this assembly into a metal guitar body. Dopyera tried using from one to four resonators in his tests, concluding that the best combination was three. The aluminum resonators amplified the bridge’s vibrations the same way the small mica disc in a Victrola reproducing head amplified the needle’s vibration. After some tinkering and adjustments, the prototype was ready. It got the nickname tri-cone or triplate.

Research into Dopyera’s early work shows that he first sought to patent a tri-cone resonator guitar design on October 12, 1926.² This design, which must have represented the early prototype made for Beauchamp, had the three resonators concentrically arranged with respect to the bridge. The three legs of the bridge were the same length. Beauchamp loved the new guitar so much, he told John that they should go into business together to manufacture it.

Since the original prototype design apparently did not meet John’s exacting standards, he perfected another design--the one they would manufacture. This guitar still used three resonators, but Dopyera positioned them in the guitar differently. Like the first version, the bridge on the new design had three legs. Each leg attached to the top of a cone, but one leg was longer. It had an orangewood saddle inserted directly into it to contact the strings. John applied for a patent on the improved tri-cone April 9, 1927.³

Once they were satisfied with the design, the Dopyeras started to make the tri-cone guitars in their shop. The brothers called the new guitars Nationals, the name they used for their banjos. John Dopyera once estimated that they built about twenty-five before a bigger factory was a reality. Meanwhile, George began a search for investors and capital to build that factory.

Forming the National Corporation

Beauchamp took a National prototype and the Sol Hoopii Trio to a wild, lavish party being held by George’s cousin-in-law, millionaire Ted E. Kleinmeyer. The group played and impressed everyone with the wonderful sound of the new guitar. Kleinmeyer, excited about the guitar and the prospects for an investment in a new company, gave Beauchamp a check that night. Nolan Beauchamp reports that it was for $12,000--more than enough money to start organizing a new company to begin substantial production of the new metal body guitars.

No one knows the exact date factory production of the National guitars began, but almost without a doubt, the tri-cone Silver Guitars started rolling out sometime in 1927.⁴ Soon after this the inventors and investors decided to form a corporation since a corporation could issue stock to raise capital to expand the factory further.

The State of California certified the National String Instrument Corporation on January 26, 1928. The Dopyera brothers sold the trademark National name (they had registered it August 16, 1926) to the corporation in exchange for common stock. Besides Ted Kleinmeyer, Paul Barth, George Beauchamp, and John Dopyera, the original members of the new organization included Murray Ferguson. Ted Kleinmeyer was president and George Beauchamp was secretary/treasurer. George signed the minutes for the board of director’s first meeting on February 29, 1928.

At a July 16, 1928 meeting, the directors unanimously resolved to divide the executive management end of the company into three departments. The first department’s head was the general manager. His job covered business relations, the sales force, and the office employees. In addition, the board granted him General Supervisory power of the complete business. The second department’s head was the factory superintendent. His job was to oversee all work of manufacture and raw material and to supervise all factory workmen. The third department’s head was the assistant factory superintendent. His responsibility was to supervise the stockroom and the shipping department.

At the same July 1928 meeting John Dopyera moved and Paul Barth seconded that the directors appoint George Beauchamp general manager. The board vote was unanimous. Likewise, the directors unanimously appointed John Dopyera as factory superintendent and Paul Barth as assistant factory superintendent. George’s salary was $55. per week, John’s was $50, and Paul’s was $48.

The new company, still fueled for the most part by Teddy’s cash, got off the ground in a big way. Acting as general manager, George hired some of the most experienced and competent craftsmen available, including several members of his own family and several members of the Dopyera family. He purchased expensive new equipment for the factory they had located near Adolph Rickenbacker’s metal stamping shop. The address was 1855 West 64th Street, Los Angeles, California.

The original National instrument line included Spanish and Hawaiian style tri-cones. The different models ranged from the plain, non-engraved Style 1 to the top-of-the-line Style 4. Beauchamp designed the engraving pattern for the ornate Style 4 Artist’s Model. Today collectors call this the Chrysanthemum pattern. Dopyera and his wife designed the Style 3, called the Lily of the Valley. The company also made four string tenor guitars, a mandolin, and a ukulele. All of these employed Dopyera’s three diaphragm amplification system.

Adolph Rickenbacker

Adolph Rickenbacker was born in Switzerland in 1892. Apparently, as a child his parents died and other relatives brought him to America. One of his distant cousins was World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker. Before moving to Los Angeles in 1918, Adolph lived first in Columbus, Ohio and then in Chicago, Illinois. He and two partners formed the Rickenbacker Manufacturing Company in 1925 and two years later incorporated the business. Beauchamp met Rickenbacker through Ted Kleinmeyer, who knew him from another manufacturing venture. Adolph was a likeable and generous guy from most reports. His friends called him Rick.

By the time he had met Beauchamp and had joined forces with the guitar operation, Rick was a highly skilled production engineer and machinist. He was proficient in a wide variety of manufacturing techniques using both metals and plastics. In addition, Rick had business experience and money to invest. He owned thirty-four shares of National’s preferred stock and seventeen shares of its common stock from June 1928 to July 1933. The company gave him the title of engineer on the back of an early catalog.

Local residents remember this house to be Adolph Rickenbacker’s birthplace.

Rickenbacker Mfg. manufactured the metal bodies for the Nationals with one of the largest deep drawing presses on the West Coast. The shop was able to produce as many as fifty guitars a day. That was enough production capacity to challenge the major Eastern and Midwestern guitar manufacturing companies.

The Single Cone National Guitars

Despite National’s ability by 1928 to turn out hundreds of guitars, if not thousands, the company did not have a well diversified line of instruments. The elaborate tri-cone guitars were expensive and soon demand for them dropped. It was obvious that the West Coast firm needed new guitar models with lower production costs to increase sales and to create a better cash flow. In his experiments John Dopyera had either ruled out a single cone design or could not make one that worked well. He stated in a patent application for the tri-cone: It is preferable to use three and never less than three resonators.

Seemingly, a single resonator guitar with a simple bridge setup was the answer to the company’s money problem. According to Nolan Beauchamp, his father perfected and patented the economical and highly popular single resonator design. It is likely the single cone National ukulele, which followed the earlier tri-cone uke, was their first instrument with the single cone. Beauchamp equipped the Triolian models, originally introduced in late 1928 as wooden body tri-cones, with his single cone resonator. Several other later models used Beauchamp’s system too. Their sales gave the company a much needed boost.

Disagreements at National

Late in 1928 John Dopyera became disgruntled with what he felt was mismanagement of the company’s money and resources. Ironically, inventor Dopyera thought Beauchamp was wasting money spending time experimenting with new ideas. For one thing, they argued about the single cone resonator. John also said that Beauchamp tried to develop a new economical neck that failed.

The first Triolians had wood bodies and three resonators like this example photographed in 1928.

The Grasshopper and George, circa 1924.George Beauchamp (left) was a talented musician on the vaudeville circuit before he met John Dopyera.

National Style O circa 1931. This model and several other National models used the single cone diaphragm perfected by Beauchamp.

John Dopyera, as brilliant as he was devising new instruments, was rather egocentric remembering National. He stated in 1973 that he was the main spoke of the wheel and had all the good ideas at the company. For whatever reason, John did not respect his boss George and as a consequence quit in January 1929. He resigned as an officer, director, and stockholder in the National on February 19, 1929. John assigned his stock interest to Kleinmeyer; Harry Watson took on John’s responsibilities as shop superintendent. Dopyera formed the Dobro Manufacturing Co., later called the Dobro Corporation, Ltd., in collaboration with his brothers, and they introduced their own novel line of Dobro resonator instruments.

Beauchamp’s reaction to the Dopyeras’ new company, whether right or wrong, caused the brothers problems. National and Dobro had many of the same customers. As alleged in court later, George told many of these firms that the Dobro instruments infringed on the National patents. (Of course, the courts never resolved that issue.) When told that the Dobro product had patent problems, many of the distributors either cancelled orders or avoided Dobro products. The Dopyeras’ reaction to Beauchamp was predictable. On January 1, 1931 a newspaper in Los Angeles announced that Dobro was suing National for $2,000,000 in damages.

Another problem within National was Ted Kleinmeyer, characterized by Nolan Beauchamp as a spendthrift and playboy. He had inherited a million dollars at age twenty-one and was trying to spend it all before age thirty. Kleinmeyer would