The Evolution
"Change is the only constant." - Heraclitus
Guitar Evolution Timeline:
- 1852 - Classical Guitar (Anotnio de Torres)
- ----- Acoustic Guitar Golden Years (1920-1940) -----
- 1927 - Resonator Guitar (National Tiolian)
- ----- Great Depression (1929-1939) -----
- 1931 - Electric Guitar (Rickenbacker A-22 Electro Hawaiian)
- 1936 - Acoustic-Electric Guitar (Gibson ES-150)
- 1937 - Single-Coil Pickup (George Beauchamp)
- ----- Gap in innovation due to WWII (1939-1945) -----
- ----- Rise of the solid body guitar (1946-1949) -----
- 1946 - P-90 pickup (Gibson)
- 1948 - Guitar Pedal (DeArmond Trem-Trol 800 Tremolo)
- ----- Electric Guitar Golden Years (1950-1965) -----
- 1951 - Fender Telecaster
- 1952 - Gibson Les Paul
- 1954 - Fender Stratocaster
- 1957 - Humbucker Pickups (Gibson Les Paul Standard)
- 1962 - Modern Guitar Pedal (Maestro Fuzz-Tone FZ-1)
- ----- Gap in innovation due to decline of major players (1966-1979) -----
- 1977 - Digital Audio Workstation (Soundstream's Digital Editing System)
- ----- SuperStrat Era (1980-1989) -----
- 1983 - Digital Pedal (Boss DD2)
- 1984 - Guitar Synth (Roland GR-700)
- 1985 - MIDI Guitar (SynthAxe)
- 1988 - Hybrid Guitar (Casio PG-380)
- ----- Rise of Digital Technology (1990-1999) -----
- 1998 - Acoustic Simulator Pedal (Boss AC-2)
- 1998 - Guitar Digital Modelling (Line 6 Amp Farm)
- 1999 - USB Audio Interface (Roland UA-30)
- ----- Gap in innovation due to Boomers shifting focus from digital tech to vintage gear (2000-Present) -----
So, while nostalgia reigns in the guitar market, AI technology has been evolving.
Recent AI Evolution Timeline:
- ----- AI: Rise of Deep Learning (2010-2019) -----
- 2013 - AI: Variational Auto-Encoder (VAE)
- 2014 - AI: Generative Adversarial Network (GAN)
- 2014 - AI: Attention Network
- 2015 - AI: Diffusion Model
- 2016 - AI: WaveNet
- 2017 - AI: Transformers
- ----- AI: The Decade of AI (2020-Present) -----
- 2023 - AI: Breakout year for Generative AI Models
- 2025 - AI: Edge Computing is Trending (smaller models, real-time, on device)
As you can see from above, the vintage guitar vibe was the driver for the last two and a half decades, which slowed down the emerging digital tech of the 1990's. Those same two decades saw an AI boom. So now, in 2025, the guitar market is yearning for innovation at the same time that AI Edge Computing is becoming reality. It is time for guitar tech to evolve: