Joseph Raymond Butts (September 22, 1919 – April 20, 2003) was an American inventor and engineer best known for designing several devices that influenced the evolution of electrified music, in particular those used with the electric guitar. Most notably, Butts is the inventor of the

EchoSonic The EchoSonic is a guitar amplifier made by Ray Butts. It was the first portable guitar amplifier with a built-in tape echo Effects unit, effect, and it allowed guitar players to use Delay (audio effect), slapback echo, which dominated 1950s rock a ...

, a guitar amplifier with a built-in

tape echo Delay is an audio signal processing technique that records an input signal to a storage medium and then plays it back after a period of time. When the delayed playback is mixed with the live audio, it creates an echo-like effect, whereby the or ...

, and the FilterTron, the first

humbucker A humbucking pickup, humbucker, or double coil, is a type of guitar pickup that uses two wire coils to cancel out the noisy interference picked up by coil pickups. In addition to electric guitar pickups, humbucking coils are sometimes used in d ...

guitar pickup (used extensively on

Gretsch Gretsch is an American company that manufactures musical instruments. The company was founded in 1883 in Brooklyn, New York by Friedrich Gretsch, a 27-year-old German immigrant, shortly after his arrival to the United States. Friedrich Gretsc ...

guitars). He was active in other fields from studio equipment maintenance to sound engineering, and had intimate working relationships with people such as

Sam Phillips Samuel Cornelius Phillips (January 5, 1923 – July 30, 2003) was an American record producer. He was the founder of Sun Records and Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee, where he produced recordings by Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, ...

Sun Studios Sun Studio is a recording studio opened by rock-and-roll pioneer Sam Phillips at 706 Union Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee, on January 3, 1950. It was originally called Memphis Recording Service, sharing the same building with the Sun Records label ...

and

Chet Atkins Chester Burton Atkins (June 20, 1924 – June 30, 2001), known as "Mr. Guitar" and "The Country Gentleman", was an American musician who, along with Owen Bradley and Bob Ferguson, helped create the Nashville sound, the country music s ...

Biography

As a toddler, Butts moved with his father to

Cairo, Illinois Cairo ( ) is the southernmost city in Illinois and the county seat of Alexander County. The city is located at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Fort Defiance, a Civil War camp, was built here in 1862 by Union General Ulysses ...

, where he developed an interest in electronics, building his first crystal radio in 1928 when he was just eight years old.

Musical career

Butts was an accordion player. In the early 1940s, he moved to Calumet City, Illinois, where he played at several clubs. His band leader had a chance to join with a traveling tent show billed as a "Hillbilly Jamboree featuring the Colorado Cowhands". They played the southern coastal states before ending up in Nashville, Tennessee, where they played alternating days on the WSM's Morning Show. He returned to Calumet City, playing nights from 8:00pm to 5:00am, but his career as a musician ended abruptly when his father had a heart attack, and he moved back to Cairo.Dave Kyle
"An Interview with Ray Butts"
''Vintage Guitar'', November 1994

"Ray Butts' Music" store (194?–1962)

Back in Cairo, Butts worked for an appliance store as a warranty repairman, servicing GE products ranging from washing machines to radios. Soon he started his own business, focusing on musical instruments and amplification, "Ray Butts' Music". It was a small music store; Butts' wife Ann ran the store out front and kept the books, while he tinkered in the back. This tinkering, and his connections with local musicians, led to the development of the

EchoSonic

In 1952, a local guitar player named Bill Gwaltney (an admirer of

Les Paul Lester William Polsfuss (June 9, 1915 – August 12, 2009), known as Les Paul, was an American jazz, country, and blues guitarist, songwriter, luthier, and inventor. He was one of the pioneers of the solid-body electric guitar, and his prototype ...

, who was known for his tape experiments) sparked Butts' interest in creating the "sound-on-sound" effect with live guitar. An early amplifier which Butts built for him used a 15-watt Gibson amplifier and a wire recorder, with disappointing results,Rich Kienzie, "Riffs, Amps, and Butts", ''Guitar Player'', March 1990, p.14 and after some more experimentation Butts settled on the new plastic tape made by 3M, and soon created the Echosonic: Bill Gwaltney bought the first one. In 1954, Butts went to Nashville where he looked up

in the phone book. After making contact and meeting, Atkins sold a brand new Fender Twin amplifier to buy the second Echosonic amp, which he went on to use in many famous recordings, including his rendition of "Mister Sandman". The next year,

Elvis Presley Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), or simply Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one ...

's guitarist

Scotty Moore Winfield Scott Moore III (December 27, 1931 – June 28, 2016) was an American guitarist who formed The Blue Moon Boys in 1954, Elvis Presley's backing band. He was studio and touring guitarist for Presley between 1954 and 1968. Rock critic D ...

was the next big name to start using the EchoSonic, which he did on most of Elvis' late Sun and early RCA singles, in addition to the 1968 comeback special. Butts's tape-loop technology was the basis for the later

Echoplex The Echoplex is a tape delay effect, first made in 1959. Designed by Mike Battle, the Echoplex set a standard for the effect in the 1960s—it is still regarded as "the standard by which everything else is measured." It was used by some of the ...

, for which he received a "nominal sum" from the manufacturers. Though it has been represented in error by some authors in later years, Butts had received a U.S. patent for his tape echo technology in 1957.

Gretsch Filter'Tron pickup

In 1954, Gretsch began plans to produce the first

-endorsed guitar model, the

Gretsch 6120 The Gretsch 6120 is a hollow body electric guitar with f-holes, manufactured by Gretsch and first appearing in the mid-1950s with the endorsement of Chet Atkins. It was quickly adopted by rockabilly artists Eddie Cochran, Duane Eddy, and later b ...

. Atkins recorded much of his music of the 1950s with the Echosonic, and had serious

hum Hum may refer to: Science * Hum (sound), a sound produced with closed lips, or by insects, or other periodic motion * Mains hum, an electric or electromagnetic phenomenon * The Hum, an acoustic phenomenon * Venous hum, a physiological sensation ...

problems caused by the single-coil pickups and an unshielded transformer in the amplifier. Butts finally connected two single-coil pickups serially and out of phase, creating the first

. Butts did not receive a patent until later, when it became the Gretsch Filter'Tron, and Gibson is often credited with developing the first humbucker. Throughout the early years of production, Butts insisted on making all the Filter'Tron pickups by hand. Mass production of the Gretsch Filter'Tron (or simply Filtertron) pickup began in 1957.

References

* Dickerson, Deke (2013)
''The Strat in the Attic: Thrilling Stories of Guitar Archaeology''
Voyageur Press. pp. 146–147. * Hunter, Dave (2006)
''The Electric Guitar Sourcebook: How to Find the Sounds You Like''
Hal Leonard Corporation. p. 47. * Hunter, Dave (2013)
''365 Guitars, Amps & Effects You Must Play: The Most Sublime, Bizarre and Outrageous Gear Ever''
Voyageur Press. p. 62.

External links

* http://www.scottymoore.net/Ray_Butts_interview.html * http://www.guitarplayer.com/article/scotty-moore/8027 {{DEFAULTSORT:Butts, Ray Engineers from Illinois American accordionists 1919 births 2003 deaths American country singer-songwriters People from Cairo, Illinois Singer-songwriters from Illinois 20th-century American singers 20th-century American engineers 20th-century accordionists 20th-century American inventors Country musicians from Illinois People from Attala County, Mississippi Singer-songwriters from Mississippi