The eternal question “Who invented the electric guitar?” has no single answer. By the late 1920s, many players, tinkerers, and inventors were exploring ways to get more volume from fretted instruments. Steel-string flat-tops from Martin, f-hole archtops from Gibson, and metal-bodied resonators from National were louder than their predecessors, but ran up against physical limits. At the same time, emerging technology in the form of amplifiers and loudspeakers offered potentially limitless volume.
The earliest electrically amplified fretted instruments offered commercially appeared in the 1929 Chicago Musical Instruments catalog. Billed as “Stromberg Electro,” they were the product of Stromberg-Voisinet in Chicago, which shortly after morphed into the Kay company. A fanciful illustration showed acoustic guitars and banjos with a two-cable amp connection described as having, “A magnetic pickup built in… which takes the vibrations direct from the sounding board.” It’s not known if any were actually built or sold; no examples seem to have survived.
By the early ’30s, several others were readying electric instruments for commercial production – George Beauchamp (formerly at National) partnered with Adolph Rickenbacker in California, while Seattle’s Arthur J. Stimson perfected a pickup that powered Paul Tutmarc’s AudioVox lap steels and the first Dobro “All-Electric” instruments in 1932-’33.
The third name, Lloyd Loar, is remembered for his early-’20s work on Gibson’s Master Model F-5 mandolin and L-5 guitar, which became templates for nearly all subsequent f-hole mandos and archtops.
In contrast, Loar’s early-’30s Vivi-Tone electrics were essentially ignored. Created by Loar and Lewis A. Williams (his former boss at Gibson), Vivi-Tones were the earliest commercial solidbody electric Spanish guitar. Thanks to research by Lynn Wheelwright, it has been established that these “Skeleton” (the company’s term) or “plank” Vivi-Tones were in production by mid ’32, making them the earliest guitars offered to the public with no resonant chamber. Though short-lived and sold in minimal quantity, the first Vivi-Tones are beautifully made – and historically important.
While “Master” Loar’s work at Gibson is celebrated, Williams was arguably more important in the company’s history. One of Gibson’s founding principals and author of the dense prose lining the company’s 1910’s catalogs, Williams became general manager in 1917 and guided it to new heights of success. Unfortunately, the mandolin-centric company was caught flat-footed by jazz-age musical trends; with sales slumping, it ran into the red by late ’23 and Williams was pushed out. Loar left in late ’24.
Williams moved to the new field of radio and PA amplification, becoming bullish on an electrified future. He and Loar remained friends and by ’32 reunited in Kalamazoo to launch Vivi-Tone, which integrated his electronic and marketing know-how with Loar’s skills designing pickups and instruments. Because Loar’s background was orchestral – he played violin, mandolin, and keyboard – guitar was never his primary interest, so Vivi-Tone announced plans to produce full sets of violin and mandolin-family instruments, basses, keyboards, as well as six-string, tenor, and plectrum guitars.
Vivi-Tone’s better-known late-’30s guitars are semi-acoustic, but that was not Loar’s original intent. His “Skeleton” designs, built around a wood center block with guitar-shaped “bodies” that were nothing more than a front plate, were intended to capture “pure string tone” and eliminate the “interfering” resonance of a hollow body.
Their first Skeletons appeared in a brochure issued by August of ’32, roughly contemporary with the earliest Rickenbacker Electros. The designs were quite different; George Beauchamp was a Hawaiian-style guitarist, and Rickenbacker concentrated on those, so the Electro A-25 lap steel had small cast-aluminum body/neck assemblies that are hollow – more likely a production expedient than a design choice. They are not solidbodies, and neither are the first Rickenbacker Spanish guitars, which had heavily braced hollow wooden bodies.
The initial Vivi-Tone guitars were the first true solidbodies intended for standard “Spanish” playing, the conceptual beginnings of how the electric guitar would evolve.
Pickups designed by Loar, Beauchamp, and Art Stimson used magnetic fields to generate an electrical signal from string vibration, but in different ways. Loar’s is a hybrid magnetic/electrostatic type with vibration from the wooden bridge activating a metal plate sensed by a solenoid beneath. Beauchamp went a direct route, with the string passing through the field of two large horseshoe magnets and the coil under the strings. Stimson used a single large magnet alongside the coil with a blade pole piece – a concept Gibson would adopt a few years later.
From a player’s point of view, Loar’s pickup offered a couple of advantages. It sensed bridge vibration, so any type of string could be used, not just steel. By ’32, this was not important for guitar, but many bowed orchestra players still preferred gut. Beauchamp’s horseshoe magnet got in some players’ way – not so much on Hawaiian guitar, but awkward to the Spanish-guitar player. Still, the Rick pickup provided a louder, clearer sound through primitive ’30s amplifiers. What little market interest there was for electric instruments came from Hawaiian guitarists; primarily serving those players, Rickenbacker succeeded where Loar and Williams did not.
Beauchamp’s other advantage was that the early Rickenbacker guitar business operated largely as a sideline to Adolph’s tool-and-die operation. Vivi-Tone, by contrast, was dependant solely on the sale of electric guitars. By late ’32, it had built fewer than 100 instruments and began re-tooling the designs, likely based on player reaction. An intriguing experiment was adding a back and sides to the Skeleton to create a thin semi-hollowbody. Very few of these exist, including one made for Alvino Rey in late ’32. Essentially, Loar invented the ES-335, albeit without cutaways or PAF pickups!
Loar filed a number of patents in this era, the bulk of them concerned with keyboard instruments. In ’33, Vivi-Tone pursued more financing for development of an Electric Clavier keyboard and began building guitars and mando-family instruments with hollow bodies that could be played acoustically or electrically. They then offered the Acousti-Guitar, essentially the hollowbody electric without a pickup. While it was an incredibly eccentric design, they sold in larger quantities over the next couple of years.
The two guitars shown here are among the very few extant examples of first-generation Vivi-Tone Skeletons. The earlier carries serial number 47 on its blue label (the other is 68; serial numbers included all instruments, not just guitars). Numerous small differences suggest these guitars were hand-built, though exactly who made them is an open question; neither Loar nor Williams were luthiers and the workmanship is to a fairly high level. In ’32, the world was experiencing the depths of the Great Depression and Gibson was at its lowest ebb, on a reduced schedule with many workers laid off. Williams may have been able to provide work for some of his former employees, as indicated by the hand-shaded finishes, neatly scraped binding, and fret work, in particular, which is very similar to ’20s Gibson practice.
Allowing for the eccentric design, these are elegant guitars (from the front at least). The body is built around a 19″-wide/21/4″-deep piece of mahogany tapered front to back (following the neck heel) and capped with ivoroid. The section near the tailpiece has a carved filigree that looks suspiciously like a repurposed blank originally intended to become a table leg! The guitar-shaped “body” is just 3/16″ thick, triple-bound on the edges and decorated with simulated sound holes (foreshadowing Gretsch!). Number 47 has a subtly sunbursted finish similar to Gibson’s ’20s “Cremona burst,” while 68 is in a lighter, even shade.
Neatly faired into the center core with a conventional heel, the mahogany necks are dressed with an ivoroid center strip and topped by a bound, dot-inlaid rosewood fretboard. The headstocks are veneered with ivoroid front and back, and varying versions of an art-nouveau Vivi-Tone logo is hand-screened on the face. The tuners on number 47 are plastic-button Grovers with riveted gears; 68 has Waverly strips that look like 1920s stock. The tailpieces are different as well; 47 has the cast piece with an impressed deco logo seen on most Vivi-Tones, while 68 has a generic cheap flat-metal pressing also seen on the Alvino Rey guitar. It’s possible the factory simply temporarily ran out of correct tailpieces.
The bridge on 47 is a carved piece of ebony, while 68 has maple stained dark with an ebony cap. Both mount through a slot in the top to rest on the metal bar that transfers vibration to the pickup coil underneath. The unit is enclosed in a wooden box under the body that can be removed for servicing. It also carries a small lever-activated Volume control on the bass side. Number 47 has a primitive output connection – two terminals marked “Speaker+” and “Speaker-” to which the cable must be wired before running to an amp! Number 68 takes twin mini-plugs similar to the illustration of the Stromberg Electros. In an unusual (possibly factory) installation, 47 has a piece of ’20s Ludwig drum hardware attached on the back with a wooden rest to help space the guitar off the player’s body, somewhat alleviating the rather awkward feel.
The guitars were likely sold with Vivi-Tone amplifiers, as very little else was available. At least some were colorfully named “Aggrandizer.” These amps are even rarer than the guitars. In 1932, the complete unit was priced at $175 – a substantial sum. Very few are documented as sold or used, but one is pictured at a demonstration performance during the ’34 World’s Fair. Loar himself played a Vivi-Tone Clavier accompanied by Charles D. Stein on violin and a young lady identified as “Miss Stanger” on guitar, both playing first-generation Vivi-Tones through a large amplifier with five inputs.
No more than 96 Vivi-Tone Skeletons are thought to have been produced, with an unknown proportion of six-string guitars before the designs were re-engineered starting later in ’32. The acoustic/electric and Acousti-Guitars were sold from ’33 on as the Vivi-Tone company was reorganized several times before sputtering to a close sometime before World War II, by which time Loar and Williams had departed. Documented serial numbers suggest around 700 Vivi-Tones of all types were made, the bulk of them being Acousti-Guitars.
Only a handful of Skeletons are known to still exist. While it’s unlikely anyone would gig one today (almost nobody did in the ’30s), as pieces of history, they’re hard to beat. The electric sound is somewhat microphonic, with a slight natural “reverb” when played through a clearer modern amp, despite Loar’s attempt to isolate “Pure String Tone.” Number 47 shows some play wear, while 68 is cleaner and boasts a stronger output that is pleasing considering the pickup’s limitations.
In 1932-’33, Vivi-Tone was promoted in the fretted-instrument journal Crescendo, for which Lewis Williams authored pieces (prematurely) heralding a future dominated by electric instruments; the December ’33 issue has an optimistic news item about the company reincorporating to market its new electric Clavier. In the back is a small ad “For Sale: Vivi-Tone guitar and power case. Cost $200, hardly used. Will sell for $100 cash.” Combined, they provide a fitting epitaph for Williams’ and Loar’s doomed plugged-in vision.
Dave Hunter’s September ’15 profile of the Vivi-Tone Aggrandizer amp can be read at www.vintageguitar.com.
This article originally appeared in VG’s February 2025 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
