Steel guitars are an important and (I think) overlooked part of the history of the guitar. For example, this was the first solidbody electric guitar:
06.03.2026 19:55
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Steel guitars are an important and (I think) overlooked part of the history of the guitar. For example, this was the first solidbody electric guitar:
If anybody's curious about this guitar, I did a post about it the other day.
Jens Ritter's guitars were made to be featured on this account. Go through the ones of his I've posted, and I bet you'll say to yourself "what the hell?" more than once. The one I'm posting today, the Monroe, is actually pretty normal by his standards. It's a solidbody electric guitar with a single cutaway. It's got two humbuckers, one volume and one tone control, a 3-way switch, and a Bigsby trem. The weirdest part of the guitar is that it's all blue. Even the fretboard is blue.
Ritter Monroe
Thanks!
The Verso Log is a 6-string lap steel guitar. The base model has one pickup, although you can buy another one separately. The pickups are mounted to the steel body magnetically, which means you can move them anywhere you want and get different tones. The only control on the guitar is an A/B switch that controls whether you're playing in mono or stereo, and that's on the bottom of the guitar. It's got six harp-style tuners that require a tool to tune. That's clipped onto the bottom of the body as well. This description doesn't do the guitar justice. I'll post a video in the comments that will show what it really does.
Verso Log
There's only one guitar I've seen with more and weirder switches.
Are you sure he wasn't talking about this?
30. I mentioned it in the alt text.
A friend just asked me why the G string of his guitar always sounds out of tune on his guitar, and this is a public service announcement for anyone else who's bothered by this: the guitar can't be in tune with itself.
Yep! It's a riff (heh) on something Danelectro put out in the 50s and 60s.
Let me know what they think of it!
30. There's more info in the alt text.
I've posted before about how Eastwood guitars makes copies of weird guitars from decades ago. Sometimes they come up with new guitars as well, like this BG-64. This "baritone guitarlin" was developed with guitarist MIchael Weber. It's an offset-style guitar that's tuned B to B like a baritone, but has a 30-fret neck to let you play those really high notes as well. It's got two single-coil pickups, and each one has its own on/off switch. There's also one volume, one tone control, and a rhythm/lead switch. It's got a stop tailpiece, but there's an optional tremolo available if you want to get wiggly.
Eastwood BG-64
Did you see the bass I posted the other day?
Gibson had guitars with 6 knobs too.
The Kay K573 Speed Demon is a hollowbody electric with a single cutaway and one F-hole. It's got three single-coil pickups, and each one has its own volume and tone control. There's a rotary pickup selector where you'd normally find the pickup switch on a Les Paul.
Kay K573 Speed Demon
New for my paid Patreon backers, a 48-minute bonus episode on the Zombies and "Time of the Season", expanding greatly on the 13-minute one I did five years ago.
Here's a guitar that was made by the Chicago School of Guitar Making as a promotional item for Bosch. It's a roughly X-shaped guitar, and one of the lines of the X is shaped and painted like one of Bosch's Edge sawblades. It's got a humbucker, a volume knob, and a Strat-style hardtail bridge. The flipped 6-in-line headstock is also shaped like a sawblade. Four of these were made, although I don't know if any of them were used "for HEAVY METAL," as the label on the body says.
CSGM Bosch
I posted a Crucianelli guitar a while back, and here's another one, an Elite 40-V. This Italian guitar is a solidbody electric with an offset body shape. This specific one is red with a blackpickguard and a white stripe around the side of the body. It's got four pickups, with a gap between each set of two. (They probably could've fit a fifth pickup in there if they weren't cowards.) There are six plastic toggle switches above the strings (helpfully labeled ALL, T, B+T, M, B, and O), and a volume and a tone knob in the normal control area. The guitar also has a Jazzmaster-style trem.
Crucianelli Elite 40-V
Read the alt text.
I found this bass right after watching this video. It's neat how things line up like that sometimes.
This is a Fender Precision bass. No, really! A company from the UK called The Painted Player carved and painted the body of a Fender Precision to make it look like the eponymous submarine from the Beatles movie Yellow Submarine. You can tell it's a Precision because of the pickguard shape and the split pickup. Since the normal control cavity has been carved away, the volume and tone knobs are on the bottom of the body. This picture also shows the case for the bass, which has been painted as well.
Fender Precision bass (customized)
They probably would've fixed those issues if this had made it past the prototype phase.
The Burns LJ24 was a prototype for a budget guitar that Burns built in the late 1970s. (Ironically, since only 25 were made, they're really expensive now.) It's got a double-cutaway body reminiscent of a Fender. The bridge even looks like one of the classic 3-barrel Tele bridges. There are two humbuckers, one volume and one tone knob, and a 3-way switch.
Burns LJ24
The first 8-string guitar was a jazz guitar, too.
That's where they started. Here's the other one I mentioned in the alt text:
It's a low B.
If you've been following this account for a while, you know that the first mass-produced modern 7-string was the Gretsch George Van Eps model from 1968. Well, this custom Gibson Super 400 from 1952 predates that by 16 years! This special 7-string was one of two built, and this specific one belonged to jazz guitarist Tony Mottola. It's a big single-cutaway jazzbox with two P-90s. Each pickup has its own volume and tone control, and there's also a 3-way switch in the lower cutaway horn. To make things even weirder, It's got a 24-fret fingerboard, which pushes the neck pickup really close to the bridge one. The headstock is the normal Gibson design, although it looks really weird with that extra tuner on the bass side.
Gibson Super 400CES 7-string