Chet was an early disciple of the electric guitar. He grew up listening to his brother Jimmy on the radio, playing in a trio with another strong proponent of the electric guitar: Les Paul. As a teenager in the early '40s, he bought a pickup to electrify his guitar, even though his home in rural Harris County, Georgia, had no electricity (he had to go to his schoolhouse to plug it in). When he got his first session call in 1945, on the debut recording of the group that would become the Oak Ridge Boys, he played hot lead licks on his electrified Gibson.

By the early '50s Chet was a star solo performer in country music. The Gretsch company offered him an endorsement model, which would grow into a family of eight different Chet Atkins models. By 1958 (concurrent with Gibson's development of the semi-hollowbody ES-335), Chet extended the top bracing on his hollowbody model all the way to the back of the guitar so that it gained more solidbody characteristics. All the F-hole models, including the top-of-the-line Country Gentleman and the entry-level Tennessean, eventually featured a top with no soundholes (they were simulated with plastic inlays) to reduce feedback.

By the late '70s, Chet had become interested in classical, nylon-stringed guitars, an interest spurred in part, he says, by the fact that his fingernails were so brittle that they couldn't hold up to steel strings. He wanted a classical guitar with a pickup system that would produce a true acoustic sound without feedback. He had Kentucky guitarmaker Hascal Haile put a piezo pickup on a guitar with a solid "body" (actually it was just a board), and the result was the first solidbody acoustic guitar. Having terminated his affiliation with Gretsch, Chet approached Gibson with the idea.

Gibson introduced the Chet Atkins Standard in 1982, available with standard fingerboard or a wider classical fingerboard. A steel-string version, the SST debuted in 1987. Although Chet had envisioned his "acoustic solidbody" only for the small classical market, the SST caught on with performers of all styles of guitar music, from stadium rockers to singer/songwriters. Gibson has continued to refine the acoustic solidbody Chet Atkins models, incorporating new top bracing patterns, back routing patterns and electronics to offer players the greatest versatility as well as the purest acoustic sounds.

Chet's original guitar-picking style has never gone out of style and in response to his legions of loyal followers, Gibson introduced a new, updated edition of the legendary Chet Atkins Country Gentleman in 1987, followed by the Chet Atkins Tennessean three years later.

The models of today's Gibson Chet Atkins Series represent the many facets of Chet's legendary career and they offer today's guitarists the tools, as well as the legacy to become tomorrow's legends.