Ernie Ball Incorporation

Roland Sherwood "Ernie" Ball was a professional musician in Los Angeles and played guitar in the United States Air Force Band during the Korean War. In the 1950s, he began working as a studio musician and teacher.

Sometime in 1957 or 1958, Ball opened a music store in Tarzana, California. He claimed it was the first shop in the United States to sell guitars exclusively. When music sales representatives criticized him for refusing to sell drumsticks and other musical equipment, Ball replied, "I just want to sell guitars." Within the next two years he opened additional stores in Canoga Park and Thousand Oaks. Ball and his company appeared in a 1965 television commercial for the Xerox 813 photocopier.

Guitar string innovations

With the guitar-based rock revival of the 1960s, Ball noticed that beginner students were having difficulty playing the bestselling Fender #10 medium gauge strings, particularly in holding down or bending the stiff.028" third ("G") string. At the time, it was common for a set of strings to have a third string that was "wound". He approached the Fender company with the problem, suggesting a lighter gauge, but was rebuffed. Ball convinced a string manufacturer to make him custom sets with a 24-gauge third string which he sold in his store. He would also order separate strings in various sizes and displayed them in a makeshift case allowing musicians to experiment in creating their own sets. Located not far from Hollywood, the store began to attract a large patronage of professional musicians, including The Beach Boys, Merle Travis, and The Ventures.

Ball also began to notice the practice of "slack stringing" among players who discarded the bottom sixth string and added a banjo first string on top. This resulted in an overall lighter gauge set with a plain third string. Again, he contacted Fender with a suggestion for a lighter set and was turned down. He then approached Gibson, who also turned him down. So, once again he ordered from the manufacturer naming the product the Ernie Ball Slinky. Slinky strings traveled the country with the professional musicians who used them and before long, Ball was receiving mail orders from individuals and stores.

The characteristic packaging of Ball's guitar strings was designed by Rolly Crump, a Disney Imagineer. Slinky strings went on to become popular with mainstream artists in the rock n' roll genre.