Bigsby

Paul Bigsby built his first solid-body electric guitar for Merle Travis in 1948 — a birdseye maple instrument with string-through construction, a single pickup, and six tuners in a row on one side of the headstock. The cutaway came later, added at Travis' request, but the core design was already unlike anything being made. Every Bigsby guitar was built one at a time in his backyard shop in Downey, California, with custom-wound pickups and machined aluminum hardware, all by Bigsby's own hand. Total production across his lifetime was a few dozen instruments at most.

The influence on what followed is hard to overstate — and well-documented, if still technically disputed. A 1950 letter from Fender's own distribution head describes the Travis guitar as "the granddaddy of our Spanish guitar, built by Paul Bigsby — the one Leo copied." Travis himself claimed Fender borrowed the guitar for a week before returning it alongside an early Broadcaster prototype. Fender denied it. The design similarities — single cutaway, 1½" body depth, string-through stringing, six-in-line headstock — speak for themselves.

Bigsby shifted focus to his vibrato tailpiece in the mid-1950s, eventually selling the company to Gibson president Ted McCarty in 1966. Gretsch acquired it in 1999 and produced an authorized recreation of the original solid-body design — the BY-50 — during their ownership. Fender acquired Bigsby in 2019 and holds the brand today.