Random Thoughts

[Rev. Rye]

Another incident of "That Can't Possibly Be Right." Dad's been watching videos about "Trigger," Willie Nelson's famous guitar.




About halfway through the video, someone says of Trigger's pickup that it was the first time an acoustic guitar had been successfully amplified by a pickup. Naturally, since I'm the sort of person who's so obsessed with the guitar gear of the past subscribed to Guitar Gear Connections on the off chance that I'd learn a bit more about the strings they used, this did not sit right with me.

I know that early electric bluesmen like Lightnin Hopkins and Elmore James did what they did by attaching pickups to old acoustic guitars:




And, of course, there were the famous Gibson J-160Es that John and George Played with The Beatles. And, while they were often played acoustically, I know for a fact that they used them with amps sometimes:




I can only assume that they meant either with a classical guitar, with a pickup that was supposed to accurately portray the acoustic sound, or within country music.