go electric/acoustic

[Mullins, Bill]

>
> Good find! It makes sense, I guess, that the expression would
> first be applied to the guitar and then metonymically to the player.
>
I saw a number of other cites, predating this one, in which devices
"went electric" (street cars, for example).  I think there is a
continuum of devices going electric, then musical instruments, then
guitars, then singers/musicians, then genres of music.  Probably, the
first occurrence in print of "going electric" in the sense for which you
are searching doesn't denote a watershed event in language so much as it
does an incremental point in that continuum.