Tribute To The World's First Solid Body Electric Guitar

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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.

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.

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 and then paint it with aluminum colored paint.