Rickenbacker offered them in the late 60's, and Novax Guitars among others offers such guitars today.

Rickenbacker offered dual coil pickups arranged in a humbucking pattern beginning in late 1953 but dropped the design in 1954 due to the perceived distorted sound.

Orteig offered the prize in 1919 after attending a dinner honouring the American flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker.

In 1971, the Rickenbacker guitar company offered their 331LS " Lightshow " model ( and matching bass, model 4005LS ), the body of which contained a three-channel light organ ( with a dimmer ); each channel corresponded to the pitch of the strings being played.

In 1932, the first production electric guitar was introduced, the aluminum Ro-Pat-In ( later Rickenbacker ) A22 " Frying Pan " lap steel.

Early electric guitar manufacturers include: Rickenbacker ( first called Ro-Pat-In ) in 1932, Dobro in 1933, National, AudioVox and Volu-tone in 1934, Vega, Epiphone ( Electrophone and Electar ), and Gibson in 1935 and many others by 1936.

Another early, substantially solid Spanish electric guitar, called Electro Spanish, was marketed by the " Rickenbacker " guitar company in 1935 and made of Bakelite.

Rickenbacker International Corporation, also known as Rickenbacker, is an electric and bass guitar manufacturer based in Santa Ana, California.

At the end of 1931, Beauchamp, Barth, Rickenbacker and with several other individuals banded together and formed the Ro-Pat-In Corporation ( elektRO-PATent-INstruments ) in order to manufacture and distribute electrically amplified musical instruments, with an emphasis upon their newly-developed A-25 Hawaiian Guitar, often referred to as the " Frying Pan " lap-steel electric guitar as well as an Electric Spanish ( standard ) model and companion amplifiers.

Rickenbacker continued to specialize in steel guitars well into the 1950s, but with the rock and roll boom they shifted towards producing standard guitars, both acoustic and electric.

In 1963 Rickenbacker developed an electric twelve-string guitar with an innovative headstock design that enabled all twelve machine heads to be fitted onto a standard-length headstock by alternately mounting pairs of machine heads at right-angles to the other.

Hall of Rickenbacker met with the band and their manager, and gave Harrison a model 360 / 12 ( the second electric twelve-string built by Rickenbacker ).

Although a small number of Rickenbacker acoustics were sold in the 1950s and were seen in the hands of stars like Ricky Nelson and Sam Cooke, the company concentrated on their electric guitar and western steel guitar business from the early 1960s onward.

In October 1932, orchestra leader Gage Brewer introduced the electric guitar to the world from Wichita using an instrument developed by what would later become known as the Rickenbacker Guitar Company.

Paul Tutmarc of Audiovox Manufacturing Co. built a solid body electric bass in 1935 and Adolph Rickenbacker had marketed a solid-body guitar in the 1930s and Paul A. Bigsby had built one for Merle Travis in 1948 and Leo Fender also independently created his own ( the Fender " Broadcaster " later changed to " Esquire " for copyright reasons, a single pickup model ) in 1948.

In the early days with The Who, Townshend played an Emile Grimshaw SS De Luxe and 6-string and 12-string Rickenbacker semi-hollow electric guitars primarily ( particularly the Rose-Morris UK-imported models with special f-holes ).

The popular Rickenbacker 4001 and 4003 model electric bass guitars also have adjustable string mutes integrated into their bridge / tailpiece assemblies, which can be used to give the instrument a more percussive sound or to simulate the shorter sustain of an upright bass.

" In the late 1940s, solidbody electric guitars began to emerge in popularity, yet they were still considered novelty items with the Rickenbacker Spanish Electro guitar being the most commercially available solidbody, and Les Paul's one-off home-made " Log " and the Bigsby Travis guitar made by Paul Bigsby for Merle Travis being the most visible early examples.

The strings are generally arranged such that the first string of each pair to be struck on a downward strum is the higher octave string ; however, this arrangement was reversed by Rickenbacker on their electric 360 / 12.

Two electric 12 strings, a Shergold Modulator 12 ( top ) and a Maton Magnetone TB36 / 12 ( bottom ); the latter is a copy of the Rickenbacker 360 / 12

* 360 is a famous model of electric guitar built by Rickenbacker Corporation.

* Rickenbacker pickups ( including the original 1930s " horseshoe " pickup as used in lap steel and solidbody upright basses, and later 6 string electric guitars, pedal steels, and electric bass guitars ; also the " Toaster " and " Hi-Gain ")

However, the ES-150 was made several years after the first solid body electric guitar, which was made by Rickenbacker.

Similar to The Beatles and Yes ' effect on the popularity of the Rickenbacker 4001, the early adoption of the electric bass was in part due to Bill Black's ownership of the instrument.

He began by apprenticing at the Rickenbacker factory, where he learned much of his guitar making skills from Roger Rossmeisl, a German immigrant who brought old-world luthier techniques into the modern electric guitar manufacturing process.

The first successful magnetic pickup for a guitar was invented by George Beauchamp, and incorporated into the 1931 Ro-Pat-In ( later Rickenbacker ) " Frying Pan " lap steel ; other manufacturers, notably Gibson, soon began to install pickups in archtop models.

Sketch of Rickenbacker " frying pan " lap steel guitar from 1934 patent application

During World War II, Leo met Clayton Orr " Doc " Kauffman, an inventor and lap steel player who had worked for Rickenbacker, which had been building and selling lap steel guitars for a decade.

This Vibrola was also used on some Rickenbacker lap steel guitars at around the same time and was introduced on their six string electric guitars beginning about 1937.

Some early Vibrolas on Rickenbacker guitars were not operated by hand, but rather moved with an electrical mechanism developed by Doc Kauffman to simulate the pitch manipulation available with steel guitars.

Although the most common seven-string has a low B string, Roger McGuinn ( of The Byrds and Rickenbacker ) uses an octave G string paired with the regular G string as on a 12-string guitar, allowing him to incorporate chiming 12-string elements in standard six-string playing.

It was during the making of A Farewell to Kings when Geddy began using a custom made Rickenbacker Bass / Guitar Double Neck, incorporating a 4001 bass and a 480 12-string guitar.

In the 1960s Japanese guitar makers started to mainly copy American guitar designs and Ibanez branded copies of Gibson, Fender and Rickenbacker models started to appear.

In 1956, Rickenbacker introduced two instruments with the " neck through body " construction that was to become a standard feature of many of the company's products, including the Combo 400 guitar, the model 4000 bass, and, later, the 600 series.

During the 1960s, Rickenbacker benefited tremendously when a couple of Rickenbacker guitar models became permanently intertwined with the sound and look of The Beatles.

He continues to offer all eight models of the Rickenbacker flat top guitar line, each instrument being built to order.

* " Born to Rock " guitar exhibit at Harrods, London, February 2007, featuring the 1931 Rickenbacker " Frying Pan ".

( An article about a guitar exhibition, includes details on the Rickenbacker Frying pan.

Lennon, for his part, made much greater use of acoustic guitar, forsaking his famous Rickenbacker.

It was nicknamed the frying pan because of its shape, though Adolph Rickenbacker liked to call it the pancake.

In addition to the standard pickups, vintage reissue bass models are equipped with Horseshoe wrap-around style pickups, very similar to the pickups on the earliest Rickenbacker Frying Pan models.