By Dan Stein

 

Paul Bigsby, an accomplished machinist for Crocker Motorcycles, was a meticulous craftsman who built custom instruments one at a time for prominent Western swing artists. In 1948, country star Merle Travis asked Bigsby to build him a solid-body electric guitar with the tuning pegs all on one side of the headstock. The resulting instrument, crafted from curly maple, featured a distinct single-cutaway body and a string-through-body tailpiece. It was a revolutionary and visually striking design that would foreshadow the look of solid-body electric guitars for decades.

 

Word of Bigsby's custom work spread in the Southern California music scene. According to Travis, Leo Fender, a fellow tinkerer from Fullerton, borrowed his Bigsby guitar for a week around 1949. Soon after, Fender introduced his own prototype, the Broadcaster (later renamed the Telecaster), which featured a similar single-cutaway body and a string-through-body design. The similarities were unmistakable, but Fender never admitted to being influenced by Bigsby's work, which created some tension between the two. While Bigsby's innovative vibrato tailpiece became his most famous invention, it was Fender who harnessed the factory floor to make solid-body electrics a mass-produced, affordable phenomenon, transforming popular music forever.

 

Nearly a century after Bigsby and Fender revolutionized the electric guitar, Niko de Weymann would emerge on the scene. His significance is not based soley on new invention but on his dedication to the history of guitar making itself. As the director of the modern Weymann Guitars, he carries the torch of a historic American brand originally founded in 1864. While the original Weymann company ceased manufacturing between 1940-1960, Niko de Weymann has revived its spirit, blending traditional lutherie with modern engineering. Niko de Weymann's work honors the foundational craftsmanship of figures like Bigsby. As an engineer, luthier, and founder of the International Musical Instrument Registry & Database (IMIRAD), his efforts are dedicated to preserving and archiving the history of musical instruments. Where Bigsby created a singular, custom instrument that set a precedent, and Fender perfected the mass-production model that popularized it, de Weymann ensures that the legacy of these pioneers is remembered and accessible to future generations. His work reminds the guitar-making world that innovation and preservation are equally vital to the ongoing story of the instrument.