An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external electricsound amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar. It uses one or more pickups to convert the vibration of its strings into electrical signals, which ultimately are reproduced as sound by loudspeakers. The sound is sometimes shaped or electronically altered to achieve different timbres or tonal qualities via amplifier settings or knobs on the guitar. Often, this is done through the use of effects such as reverb, distortion and "overdrive"; the latter is considered to be a key element of electric blues guitar music and jazz, rock and heavy metal guitar playing. Designs also exist combining attributes of electric and acoustic guitars: the semi-acoustic and acoustic-electric guitars.
There are several types of electric guitar. Early forms were hollow-body semi-acoustic guitars, while solid body guitars developed later. String configurations include the six-string guitar (the most common type), which is usually tuned E, A, D, G, B, E, from lowest to highest strings; the seven-string guitar, which typically adds a low B string below the low E; the eight-string guitar, which typically adds a low E or F# string below the low B; and the twelve-string guitar, which has six two-string courses similar to a mandolin.
In rock, the electric guitar is often used in two roles: as a rhythm guitar, which plays the chord sequences or progressions, and riffs, and sets the beat (as part of a rhythm section); and as a lead guitar, which provides instrumental melody lines, melodic instrumental fill passages, and solos. In a small group, such as a power trio, one guitarist may switch between both roles; in larger groups there is often a rhythm guitarist and a lead guitarist.
History
The "Frying Pan", 1932
Many experiments with electrically amplifying the vibrations of a string instrument were made dating back to the early part of the 20th century. Patents from the 1910s show telephone transmitters were adapted and placed inside violins and banjos to amplify the sound. Hobbyists in the 1920s used carbon button microphones attached to the bridge; however, these detected vibrations from the bridge on top of the instrument, resulting in a weak signal.[2]
Electric guitars were originally designed by acoustic guitar makers and instrument manufacturers. The demand for amplified guitars began during the big band era; as orchestras increased in size, guitar players soon realized the necessity in guitar amplification and electrification.[3] The first electric guitars used in jazz were hollow archtop acoustic guitar bodies with electromagnetic transducers.
The first electrically amplified stringed instrument to be marketed commercially was a cast aluminiumlap steel guitar nicknamed the "Frying Pan" designed in 1931 by George Beauchamp, the general manager of the National Stringed Instrument Corporation, with Paul Barth, who was vice president.[4] George Beauchamp, along with Adolph Rickenbacker, invented the electromagnetic pickups.[5] Coils that were wrapped around a magnet would create an electromagnetic field that converted the vibrations of the guitar strings into electrical signals, which could then be amplified. Commercial production began in late summer of 1932 by the Ro-Pat-In Corporation (Electro-Patent-Instrument Company), in Los Angeles,[6][7] a partnership of Beauchamp, Adolph Rickenbacker (originally Rickenbacher), and Paul Barth.[8]
In 1934, the company was renamed the Rickenbacker Electro Stringed Instrument Company. In that year Beauchamp applied for a United States patent for an Electrical Stringed Musical Instrument and the patent was later issued in 1937.[9][10][11][12] By the time it was patented, other manufacturers were already making their own electric guitar designs.[13] Early electric guitar manufacturers include Rickenbacker in 1932; Dobro in 1933; National, AudioVox and Volu-tone in 1934; Vega, Epiphone (Electrophone and Electar), and Gibson in 1935 and many others by 1936.
Electro-Spanish by Ken Roberts, 1935
By early-mid 1935, Electro String Instrument Corporation had achieved success with the "Frying Pan", and set out to capture a new audience through its release of the Electro-Spanish Model B and the Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts, which was the first full 25-inch scale electric guitar ever produced.[14][9][10][11][12] The Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts was revolutionary for its time, providing players a full 25-inch scale, with easy access to 17 frets free of the body.[15] Unlike other lap-steel electrified instruments produced during the time, the Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts was designed to play while standing upright with the guitar on a strap, as with acoustic guitars.[15] The Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts was also the first instrument to feature a hand-operated vibrato as a standard arrangement,[15] a device called the "Vibrola", invented by Doc Kauffman.[15][16] It is estimated that fewer than 50 Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts were constructed between 1933 and 1937; fewer than 10 are known to survive today.[9][10][11][12]
The solid-body electric guitar is made of solid wood, without functionally resonating air spaces. The first solid-body Spanish standard guitar was offered by Vivi-Tone no later than 1934. This model featured a guitar-shaped body of a single sheet of plywood affixed to a wood frame. Another early, substantially solid Spanish electric guitar, called the Electro Spanish, was marketed by the Rickenbacker guitar company in 1935 and made of Bakelite. By 1936, the Slingerland company introduced a wooden solid-body electric model, the Slingerland Songster 401 (and a lap steel counterpart, the Songster 400).
Gibson's first production electric guitar, marketed in 1936, was the ES-150 model ("ES" for "Electric Spanish", and "150" reflecting the $150 price of the instrument, along with matching amplifier). The ES-150 guitar featured a single-coil, hexagonally shaped "bar" pickup, which was designed by Walt Fuller. It became known as the "Charlie Christian" pickup (named for the jazz guitarist who was among the first to perform with the ES-150 guitar). The ES-150 achieved some popularity but suffered from unequal loudness across the six strings.
A functioning solid-body electric guitar was designed and built in 1940 by Les Paul from an Epiphone acoustic archtop as an experiment. His "log guitar" — a wood post with a neck attached and two hollow-body halves attached to the sides for appearance only — shares nothing in common for design or hardware with the solid-body Gibson Les Paul, designed by Ted McCarty and introduced in 1952.
The feedback associated with amplified hollow-bodied electric guitars was understood long before Paul's "log" was created in 1940; Gage Brewer's Ro-Pat-In of 1932 had a top so heavily reinforced that it essentially functioned as a solid-body instrument.[2]
Types
Solid-body
The Fender Stratocaster has one of the most often emulated electric guitar shapes
Unlike acoustic guitars, solid-body electric guitars have no vibrating soundboard to amplify string vibration. Instead, solid-body instruments depend on electric pickups, and an amplifier ("amp") and speaker. The solid body ensures that the amplified sound reproduces the string vibration alone, thus avoiding the wolf tones and unwanted feedback[19] associated with amplified acoustic guitars. These guitars are generally made of hardwood covered with a hard polymer finish, often polyester or lacquer. In large production facilities, the wood is stored for three to six months in a wood-drying kiln before being cut to shape. Premium custom-built guitars are frequently made with much older[why?], hand-selected wood.
One of the first solid-body guitars was invented by Les Paul. Gibson did not present their Gibson Les Paul guitar prototypes to the public, as they did not believe the solid-body style would catch on. Another early solid-body Spanish style guitar, resembling what would become Gibson's Les Paul guitar a decade later, was developed in 1941 by O.W. Appleton, of Nogales, Arizona.[20] Appleton made contact with both Gibson and Fender but was unable to sell the idea behind his "App" guitar to either company.[21] In 1946, Merle Travis commissioned steel guitar builder Paul Bigsby to build him a solid-body Spanish-style electric.[22] Bigsby delivered the guitar in 1948. The first mass-produced solid-body guitar was Fender Esquire and Fender Broadcaster (later to become the Fender Telecaster), first made in 1950, five years after Les Paul made his prototype. The Gibson Les Paul appeared soon after to compete with the Broadcaster.[23] Another notable solid-body design is the Fender Stratocaster, which was introduced in 1954 and became extremely popular among musicians in the 1960s and 1970s for its wide tonal capabilities and more comfortable ergonomics than other models. Different styles of guitar have different pick-up styles, the main being 2 or 3 "single-coil" pick-ups or a double humbucker, with the Stratocaster being a triple single-coil guitar.
The history of electric guitars has been summarized by Guitar World magazine, and the earliest electric guitar on their top 10 list is the Ro-Pat-In Electro A-25 "Frying Pan" (1932) described as "The first-fully functioning solid-body electric guitar to be manufactured and sold".[24] It was the first electric guitar used in a publicly promoted performance, performed by Gage Brewer in Wichita, Kansas in October 1932.[25][26][27] The most recent electric guitar on this list was the Ibanez Jem (1987) which featured "24 frets", an impossibly thin neck" and was "designed to be the ultimate shredder machine". Numerous other important electric guitars are on the list, including Gibson ES-150 (1936), Fender Telecaster (1951), Gibson Les Paul (1952), Gretsch 6128 Duo Jet (1953), Fender Stratocaster (1954), Rickenbacker 360/12 (1964), Van Halen Frankenstrat (1975), Paul Reed Smith Custom (1985) many of these guitars were "successors" to earlier designs.[24] Electric guitar designs eventually became culturally important and visually iconic, with various model companies selling miniature model versions of particularly famous electric guitars, for example, the Gibson SG used by Angus Young from the group AC/DC.
Chambered-body
Some otherwise solid-bodied guitars, such as the Gibson Les Paul Supreme, the PRS Singlecut, and the Fender Telecaster Thinline, are built with hollow chambers in the body. These chambers are designed to not interfere with the critical bridge and string anchor point on the solid body. In the case of Gibson and PRS, these are called chambered bodies. The motivation for this may be to reduce weight, to achieve a semi-acoustic tone (see below) or both.[28][29][30]
Semi-acoustic guitars have a hollow body similar to an acoustic guitar and electromagnetic pickups mounted directly into the body. They work in a similar way to solid-body electric guitars except that because the hollow body also vibrates, the pickups convert a combination of string and body vibration into an electrical signal. Many models, known as semi-hollow bodies, have a solid block running through the middle of the soundbox designed to reduce acoustic feedback. They do not provide enough acoustic volume for live performance, but they can be used unplugged for quiet practice. Semi-acoustic guitars are noted for being able to provide a sweet, plaintive, or funky tone. They are used in many genres, including jazz, blues, funk, sixties pop, and indie rock. They generally have cello-style F-shaped sound holes, which can be blocked off to further reduce feedback. Whereas chambered guitars are made, like solid-body guitars, from a single block of wood, semi-acoustic guitar bodies are made from multiple pieces of wood in an archtop form, a method of construction different from the typical steel string acoustic guitar. The top is formed from a moderately thick piece of wood which is then carved into a thin outward-curving shape, whereas conventional acoustic guitars have a thin, flat top.
Some steel-string acoustic guitars include a built-in system to electrically amplify their output without altering their tone as an alternative to using a separate microphone. The system may consist of piezoelectric pickups mounted under the bridge, or a low-mass microphone (usually a condenser mic) inside the body of the guitar that converts the vibrations in the body into electronic signals. Combinations of these types of pickups may be used, with an integral mixer/preamp/graphic equalizer. Such instruments are called electric acoustic guitars. They are regarded as acoustic guitars rather than electric guitars because the pickups do not produce a signal directly from the vibration of the strings, but rather from the vibration of the guitar top or body, and the amplification of the sound merely increases volume, not alters tone.
Electric guitar design and construction vary greatly in the shape of the body and the configuration of the neck, bridge, and pickups. However, some features are present on most guitars. The photo below shows the different parts of an electric guitar. The headstock (1) contains the metal machine heads (1.1), which use a worm gear for tuning. The nut (1.4)—a thin fret-like strip of metal, plastic, graphite, or bone—supports the strings at the headstock end of the instrument. The frets (2.3) are thin metal strips that stop the string at the correct pitch when the player pushes a string against the fingerboard. The truss rod (1.2) is a metal rod (usually adjustable) that counters the tension of the strings to keep the neck straight. Position markers (2.2) provide the player with a reference to the playing position on the fingerboard.[31]
The neck and fretboard (2.1) extend from the body. At the neck joint (2.4), the neck is either glued or bolted to the body. The body (3) is typically made of wood with a hard, polymerized finish. Strings vibrating in the magnetic field of the pickups (3.1, 3.2) produce an electric current in the pickup winding that passes through the tone and volume controls (3.8) to the output jack. Some guitars have piezo pickups, in addition to or instead of magnetic pickups.
Some guitars have a fixed bridge (3.4). Others have a spring-loaded hinged bridge called a vibrato bar, tremolo bar, or whammy bar, which lets players bend notes or chords up or down in pitch or perform a vibrato embellishment. A plastic pickguard on some guitars protects the body from scratches or covers the control cavity, which holds most of the wiring. The degree to which the choice of woods and other materials in the solid-guitar body (3) affects the sonic character of the amplified signal is disputed. Many believe it is highly significant, while others think the difference between woods is subtle. In acoustic and archtop guitars, wood choices more clearly affect tone.
Woods typically used in solid-body electric guitars include alder (brighter, but well rounded), swamp ash (similar to alder, but with more pronounced highs and lows), mahogany (dark, bassy, warm), poplar (similar to alder), and basswood (very neutral).[32][33][34]Maple, a very bright tonewood,[34] is also a popular body wood but is very heavy. For this reason, it is often placed as a "cap" on a guitar made primarily of another wood. Cheaper guitars are often made of cheaper woods, such as plywood, pine, or agathis—not true hardwoods—which can affect durability and tone. Though most guitars are made of wood, any material may be used. Materials such as plastic, metal, and even cardboard have been used in some instruments.
The guitar output jack typically provides a monaural signal. Many guitars with active electronics use a jack with an extra contact normally used for stereo. These guitars use the extra contact to break the ground connection to the on-board battery to preserve battery life when the guitar is unplugged. These guitars require a mono plug to close the internal switch and connect the battery to ground. Standard guitar cables use a high-impedance1⁄4 inch (6.35mm) mono plug. These have a tip and sleeve configuration referred to as a TS phone connector. The voltage is usually around 1 to 9 millivolts.
A few guitars, such as Rickenbacker guitars equipped with Rick-O-Sound, feature stereo output. There are a variety of ways the "stereo" effect may be implemented. Commonly, but not exclusively, stereo guitars route the neck and bridge pickups to separate output buses on the guitar. A stereo cable then routes each pickup to its signal chain or amplifier. For these applications, the most popular connector is a high-impedance 1⁄4 inch (6.35mm) plug with a tip, ring, and sleeve configuration, also known as a TRS phone connector. Some studio instruments, notably certain Gibson Les Paul models, incorporate a low-impedance three-pin XLR connector for balanced audio. Many exotic arrangements and connectors exist that support features such as midi and hexaphonic pickups.
Bridge and tailpiece systems
The bridge and tailpiece, while serving separate purposes, work closely together to affect playing style and tone. There are four basic types of bridge and tailpiece systems on electric guitars. Within these four types are many variants.
A hard-tail guitar bridge anchors the strings at or directly behind the bridge and is fastened securely to the top of the instrument.[35] These are common on carved-top guitars, such as the Gibson Les Paul and the Paul Reed Smith models, and on slab-body guitars, such as the Music Man Albert Lee and Fender guitars that are not equipped with a vibrato arm.
Pictured is a tremolo arm or vibrato tailpiece-style bridge and tailpiece system, often called a whammy bar or trem. It uses a lever ("vibrato arm") attached to the bridge that can temporarily slacken or tighten the strings to alter the pitch. A player can use this to create a vibrato or a portamento effect. Early vibrato systems were often unreliable and made the guitar go out of tune easily. They also had a limited pitch range. Later Fender designs were better, but Fender held the patent on these, so other companies used older designs for many years.
Detail of a Squier-made Fender Stratocaster. Note the vibrato arm, the 3 single-coil pickups, the volume and tone knobs.
With the expiration of the Fender patent on the Stratocaster-style vibrato, various improvements on this type of internal, multi-spring vibrato system are now available. Floyd Rose introduced one of the first improvements on the vibrato system in many years when, in the late 1970s, he experimented with "locking" nuts and bridges that prevent the guitar from losing tuning, even under heavy vibrato bar use.
Tune-o-matic with "strings through the body" construction (without stopbar)
The fourth type of system employs string-through body anchoring. The strings pass over the bridge saddles, then through holes through the top of the guitar body to the back. The strings are typically anchored in place at the back of the guitar by metal ferrules. Many believe this design improves a guitar's sustain and timbre. A few examples of string-through body guitars are the Fender Telecaster Thinline, the Fender Telecaster Deluxe, the B.C. Rich IT Warlock and Mockingbird, and the Schecter Omen 6 and 7 series.
Pickups on a Fender Squier "Fat Strat" guitar—a "humbucker" pickup on the left and two single-coil pickups on the right.
Compared to an acoustic guitar, which has a hollow body, electric guitars make much less audible sound when their strings are plucked, so electric guitars are normally plugged into a guitar amplifier and speaker. When an electric guitar is played, string movement produces a signal by generating (i.e., inducing) a small electric current in the magnetic pickups, which are magnets wound with coils of very fine wire. The signal passes through the tone and volume circuits to the output jack, and through a cable to an amplifier.[37] The current induced is proportional to such factors as string density and the amount of movement over the pickups.
The resulting hum is particularly strong with single-coil pickups. Double-coil or "humbucker" pickups were invented as a way to reduce or counter the sound, as they are designed to "buck" (in the verb sense of oppose or resist) the hum, hence their name. The high combined inductance of the two coils also leads to the richer, "fatter" tone associated with humbucking pickups.
Necks
Roasted Maple guitar neck blanks with flame figure before shaping
Electric guitar necks vary in composition and shape. The primary metric of guitar necks is the scale length, which is the vibrating length of the strings from nut to bridge. A typical Fender guitar uses a 25.5-inch (65cm) scale length, while Gibson uses a 24.75-inch (62.9cm) scale length in their Les Paul. While the scale length of the Les Paul is often described as 24.75inches, it has varied through the years by as much as a half inch.[39]
Frets are positioned proportionally to scale length—the shorter the scale length, the closer the fret spacing. Opinions vary regarding the effect of scale length on tone and feel. Popular opinion holds that longer scale length contributes to greater amplitude. Reports of playing feel are greatly complicated by the many factors involved in this perception. String gauge and design, neck construction and relief, guitar setup, playing style, and other factors contribute to the subjective impression of playability or feel.
A bolt-on neck
Necks are described as bolt-on, set-in, or neck-through, depending on how they attach to the body. Set-in necks are glued to the body at the factory. This is the traditional type of joint. Leo Fender pioneered bolt-on necks on electric guitars to facilitate easy adjustment and replacement. Neck-through instruments extend the neck to the length of the instrument so that it forms the center of the body. While a set-in neck can be carefully unglued by a skilled luthier, and a bolt-on neck can simply be unscrewed, a neck-through design is difficult or even impossible to repair, depending on the damage. Historically, the bolt-on style has been more popular for ease of installation and adjustment. Since bolt-on necks can be easily removed, there is an after-market in replacement bolt-on necks from companies such as Warmoth and Mighty Mite. Some instruments—notably most Gibson models—continue to use set-in glued necks. Neck-through bodies are somewhat more common in bass guitars.
Materials for necks are selected for dimensional stability and rigidity,[40] and some allege that they influence tone. Hardwoods are preferred, with maple, mahogany, and ash topping the list. The neck and fingerboard can be made from different materials; for example, a guitar may have a maple neck with a rosewood or ebony fingerboard. Today there are expensive and budget guitars exploring other options for fretboard wood for instance Pau-Ferro, both for availability and cheap price while still maintaining quality.[41] In the 1970s, designers began to use exotic human-made materials such as aircraft-grade aluminum, carbon fiber, and ebonol. Makers known for these unusual materials include John Veleno, Travis Bean, Geoff Gould, and Alembic.
Aside from possible engineering advantages, some feel that with the rising cost of rare tonewoods, human-made materials may be economically preferable and more ecologically sensitive. However, wood remains popular in production instruments, though sometimes in conjunction with new materials. Vigier guitars, for example, use a wooden neck reinforced by embedding a light, carbon fiber rod in place of the usual heavier steel bar or adjustable steel truss rod. After-market necks made entirely from carbon fiber fit existing bolt-on instruments. Few, if any, extensive formal investigations have been widely published that confirm or refute claims over the effects of different woods or materials on the electric guitar sound.
A neck-through bass guitar
Several neck shapes appear on guitars, including shapes known as C necks, U necks, and V necks. These refer to the cross-sectional shape of the neck (especially near the nut). Several sizes of fret wire are available, with traditional players often preferring thin frets, and metal shredders liking thick frets. Thin frets are considered better for playing chords, while thick frets allow lead guitarists to bend notes with less effort.
An electric guitar with a folding neck called the "Foldaxe" was designed and built for Chet Atkins by Roger C. Field.[42]Steinberger guitars developed a line of exotic, carbon fiber instruments without headstocks, with tuning done on the bridge instead.
Fingerboards vary as much as necks. The fingerboard surface usually has a cross-sectional radius that is optimized to accommodate finger movement for different playing techniques. Fingerboard radius typically ranges from nearly flat (a very large radius) to radically arched (a small radius). The vintage Fender Telecaster, for example, has a typical small radius of approximately 7.25 inches (18.4cm). Some manufacturers have experimented with fret profile and material, fret layout, number of frets, and modifications of the fingerboard surface for various reasons. Some innovations were intended to improve playability by ergonomic means, such as Warmoth Guitars' compound radius fingerboard. Scalloped fingerboards added enhanced microtonality during fast legato runs. Fanned frets intend to provide each string with an optimal playing tension and enhanced musicality. Some guitars have no frets, while others, like the Gittler guitar, have no neck in the traditional sense.
See also
A selection of guitars and amps at Apple Music Row in Portland, Oregon in 2012
The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass is the lowest-pitched member of the guitar family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and scale length. The bass guitar most commonly has four strings, though five- and six-stringed models are also relatively popular, and bass guitars with even more strings or courses have been built. Since the mid-1950s, the bass guitar has largely come to replace the double bass in popular music due to its lighter weight, the inclusion of frets in most models, and, most importantly, its design for electric amplification. This is also because the double bass is acoustically compromised for its range in that it is scaled down from the optimal size that would be appropriate for those low notes.
The guitar is a stringed musical instrument that is usually fretted and typically has six or twelve strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strings against frets with the fingers of the opposite hand. A guitar pick may also be used to strike the strings. The sound of the guitar is projected either acoustically, by means of a resonant hollow chamber on the guitar, or amplified by an electronic pickup and an amplifier.
Rickenbacker International Corporation is a string instrument manufacturer based in Santa Ana, California. Rickenbacker is the first known maker of electric guitars, with a steel guitar in 1932, and produces a range of electric guitars and basses.
Clarence Leonidas Fender was an American inventor and founder of the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation.
An electric violin is a violin equipped with an electronic output of its sound. The term most properly refers to an instrument intentionally made to be electrified with built-in pickups, usually with a solid body. It can also refer to a violin fitted with an electric pickup of some type, although "amplified violin" or "electro-acoustic violin" are more accurate then.
The Fender Stratocaster, colloquially known as the Strat, is a model of electric guitar designed between 1952 and 1954 by Leo Fender, Bill Carson, George Fullerton, and Freddie Tavares. The Fender Musical Instruments Corporation has continuously manufactured the Stratocaster since 1954. It is a double-cutaway guitar, with an extended top "horn" shape for balance. "Stratocaster" and "Strat" are trademark terms belonging to Fender. Guitars that duplicate the Stratocaster by other manufacturers are sometimes called S-Type or ST-type guitars. Many prominent rock musicians have been associated with the Stratocaster for use in studio recording and live performances, most notably Eric Clapton, Buddy Holly, David Gilmour, Mark Knopfler, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Frusciante, Jeff Beck, George Harrison, and Tom Petty.
A single coil pickup is a type of magnetic transducer, or pickup, for the electric guitar and the electric bass. It electromagnetically converts the vibration of the strings to an electric signal. Single coil pickups are one of the two most popular designs, along with dual-coil or "humbucking" pickups.
A semi-acoustic guitar, also known as a hollow-body electric guitar, is a type of electric guitar designed to be played with a guitar amplifier featuring a fully or partly hollow body and at least one electromagnetic pickup. First created in the 1930s, they became popular in jazz and blues, where they remain widely used, and the early period of rock & roll, though they were later largely supplanted by solid-body electric guitars in rock.
An archtop guitar is a hollow acoustic or semi-acoustic guitar with a full body and a distinctive arched top, whose sound is particularly popular with jazz, blues, and rockabilly players.
Jazz bass is the use of the double bass or electric bass guitar to improvise accompaniment ("comping") basslines and solos in a jazz or jazz fusion style. Players began using the double bass in jazz in the 1890s to supply the low-pitched walking basslines that outlined the chord progressions of the songs. From the 1920s and 1930s Swing and big band era, through 1940s Bebop and 1950s Hard Bop, to the 1960s-era "free jazz" movement, the resonant, woody sound of the double bass anchored everything from small jazz combos to large jazz big bands.
A pickup is a transducer that captures or senses mechanical vibrations produced by musical instruments, particularly stringed instruments such as the electric guitar, and converts these to an electrical signal that is amplified using an instrument amplifier to produce musical sounds through a loudspeaker in a speaker enclosure. The signal from a pickup can also be recorded directly.
Variax was the name of a line of guitars developed and marketed by Line 6 between 2002 and 2023. They differed from typical electric and acoustic guitars in that internal electronics processed the sound from individual strings to model (replicate) the sound of specific guitars and other instruments. The maker claims it was the first guitar family able to emulate the tones of other notable electric and acoustic guitars. It also provided a banjo and a sitar tone. The Variax was available primarily in electric guitar models, but acoustic and electric bass guitar models have also been available in the past.
The electric upright bass (EUB) is an instrument that can perform the musical function of a double bass. It requires only a minimal or 'skeleton' body to produce sound because it uses a pickup and electronic amplifier and loudspeaker. Therefore, a large resonating structure is not required to project the sound into the air. This minimal body greatly reduces the bulk and weight of the instrument. EUBs must always be connected to an amplifier and speaker cabinet to produce an adequate audible sound. The EUB retains enough of the features of the double bass so that double bass players are able to perform on it.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to guitars:
A solid-body musical instrument is a string instrument such as a guitar, bass or violin built without its normal sound box and relying on an electromagnetic pickup system to directly detect the vibrations of the strings; these instruments are usually plugged into an instrument amplifier and loudspeaker to be heard. Solid-body instruments are preferred in situations where acoustic feedback may otherwise be a problem and are inherently both less expensive to build and more rugged than acoustic electric instruments.
The Rickenbacker Electro A-22, nicknamed the "Frying Pan" is the first electric lap steel guitar, also widely considered the first commercially successful electric guitar. Developed in 1931/1932, it received its patent in August 1937. A previous attempt, the Stromberg company‘s transducer-based "Stromberg Electro", was introduced in 1928. It used a "vibration-transfer rod" from the instrument's sounding board attached to magnets inside the guitar, and was not successful. George Beauchamp created the "Fry-Pan" in 1931, and it was subsequently manufactured by Electro String Instrument Corporation under the name Electro, later named Rickenbacker. The instrument gained its nickname because its circular body and long neck make it resemble a frying pan.
Electric guitar design is a type of industrial design where the looks and efficiency of the shape as well as the acoustical aspects of the guitar are important factors. In the past many guitars have been designed with various odd shapes as well as very practical and convenient solutions to improve the usability of the object.
A bridge is a device that supports the strings on a stringed musical instrument and transmits the vibration of those strings to another structural component of the instrument—typically a soundboard, such as the top of a guitar or violin—which transfers the sound to the surrounding air. Depending on the instrument, the bridge may be made of carved wood, metal or other materials. The bridge supports the strings and holds them over the body of the instrument under tension.
Classical electric guitars, also known as nylon-string electric guitars, represent a unique fusion of traditional classical guitar design and modern electric guitar technology. These instruments combine the rich and warm tonal qualities of nylon-stringed classical guitars with the versatility and amplified sound capabilities of electric guitars. By integrating nylon strings with onboard electronics, pickups, and preamp systems, classical electric guitars offer musicians a wide range of sonic possibilities for various musical genres and performance settings.
The Fender Telecaster, colloquially known as the tele, is an electric guitar produced by Fender. Together with its sister model the Esquire, it was the world's first mass-produced, commercially successful solid-body electric guitar. Its simple yet effective design and revolutionary sound broke ground and set trends in electric guitar manufacturing and popular music. Many prominent rock musicians have been associated with the Telecaster for use in studio recording and live performances, most notably Bruce Springsteen, Luis Alberto Spinetta, Keith Richards and George Harrison.
1 2 Wheelwright, Lynn; Carter, Walter (28 April 2010). . Vintage Guitar. Retrieved 10 July 2014.
↑ "Invention: Electric Guitar". www.invention.si.edu. Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. Archived from the original on 24 August 2018. Retrieved 21 July 2018.
↑ Wheeler, Tom (1978). The Guitar Book: A Handbook for Electric & Acoustic Guitarists. Harpercollins. p.153. ISBN0-06-014579-X.
↑ "Invention". Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. 18 April 2014. Retrieved 8 December 2019.
↑ Lemme, Helmuth (25 February 2009). "The Secrets of Electric Guitar Pickups"(PDF). Build Your Guitar. Electronic Musician. Archived from the original(PDF) on 27 April 2016. Retrieved 15 April 2016– via Electric Guitar Pickup, Joseph Henry Project.
Sweetwater Sound | Who Invented the Electric Guitar? — A chronological exploration of the development of the electric guitar from 1890 to 1952, including contributions from Rickenbacker, Bigbsy, Fender, and Gibson.
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