Tribute To The World's First Solid Body Electric Guitar

Original 1931 A-22

The world's first commercially available solid body electric guitar was the Rickenbacker A-22 which debuted in 1932, eighteen years before Leo Fender released his first guitar. It had a small round body which with the neck sticking out of it engendered it's nickname of the "frying pan", The nickname was doubly fitting as the neck and body were cast as a single piece of aluminum.

Not many of these were sold because it was the height of the Great Depression and this was an entirely new product. It's estimated that only about fifty A-22s exist today. Because of their scarcity, they sell for thousands of dollars when one comes on the market. I thought it would be great to have one, but being both thrifty and a luthier, I decided to try building my own.

Materials for body

The first compromise I had to make was not going with the one piece cast aluminum neck and body. I don't happen to have a casting furnace that reaches the 1,221 degree melting point of aluminum in my Chicago high rise condominium. My compromise was to use 8"x1/16" aluminum disks for the top and bottom of the body with the sides made from a 2" wide roll of aluminum sheeting wrapped around a wooden interior. The interior was made from 8"x1/2" plywood circles with an extra 1/16" spacer made with scrap wood I had. I pared down the diameter of the wooden center so when I wrapped with the aluminum sheeting, it matched the diameter of the top & bottom.

Neck & body core

My compromise on the neck was to use a cheap folk guitar neck without a fretboard, convert the predrilled tuning peg holes into classical guitar type slots, add two hanger bolts to attach it to the body, add frets, paint it with aluminum colored paint and add the fret marker dots. For the pickup, I used a Telecaster style bridge pickup which is what Leo Fender used in all his early lap steel models. The pickup cover is from a Jazz bass which I cut in half to resemble the original horseshoe pickup.

Materials to create medallion

Rather than replicating the original 1932 model, I decided to replicate the 1934 model which added a volume knob and a metal "Richenbacher" medallion on the headstock. Note the company was originally named after the founder Rickenbacher and they later changed it to take advantage of the more common spelling used by World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker. The medallions are nowhere to be found for purchase online, so my solution was to take a picture of an A-22 headstock, bring it into Photoshop to correct the perspective, remove rust spots, etc. Then I printed it on waterslide decal inkjet paper, sprayed it with several coats of acrylic clear sealer so the colors wouldn't run, applied it to a very thin sheet of stainless steel and cut it out with a scissors.

My medallion on my headstock

Tom's Rickenbacker A-22 tribute

The finished product plays great! The extra wood in the body makes it a bit heavier than the original hollow aluminum body which probably makes it sit steadier in your lap.

I think it looks pretty darn close to the original 1931 model!

And of course, since I now had a nice replica of the guitar, I had to create a replica of the original amp that sold with it. I started with a 3 bottle wine crate, cut out the unique slotted speaker cutout, covered it with black tolex, installed some gold speaker cloth, added the handle and the box corners. I affixed a second copy of the Rickenbacher logo (see above). For the amplifier circuit, I used a Guitar Fuel SD2WH 2.5 watt amplifier. The speaker is a vintage Jensen Professional 8" speaker that I found and refurbished with some contact cement applied to a few cracks in the cone.