George Beauchamp was a Vaudeville performer in the 1920s and played violin and steel guitar. Like a lot of string musicians he was looking for a way to stand out from the other band members. He set out to make a string instrument that would do just that.

In the early 1930s George Beauchamp partnered with Adolph Rickenbacker and together they founded the Ro-Pat-In Corporation to manufacture and sell electric steel Hawaiian guitars. Ro-Pat-In Corporation would eventually become Rickenbacker. They also developed a line of amplifiers that they produced under the name Electro-String.

Rickenbacker continued to specialize in steel guitars until the 1950s, but with rock-in-roll making in-roads into the music scene, they started to include the double-cutaway, semi-acoustic guitar which would eventually become the Rickenbacker 300 Series.

In the early 1960s, Rickenbacker became forever intertwined with what would become the most influential band of the 20th century, The Beatles.

In 1960, the then unknown John Lennon bought a Rickenbacker Capri 325 guitar, which he played throughout his early days with The Beatles. The guitar was a natural alder body guitar, which he had painted black, and is the guitar he is seen playing on the Ed Sullivan Show.