Electric guitar
An
electric guitar is a type of
guitar that uses
electronic pickups to convert the vibration of its steel-cored strings into electrical current. The signal may be electrically altered to achieve various tonal effects prior to being fed into an
amplifier, which produces the final sound which can be either an electrical sound or an acoustic sound. Distortion, equalization, or other pedals can change the sound that is emitted from the amplifier.
The electric guitar is used extensively in many popular styles of music, including almost all genres of
rock and roll,
country music,
pop music,
jazz,
blues,
rap and even contemporary classical music. Its distinctive sound and intimate association with many legendary internationally-famous musicians has made it the signature instrument of late twentieth-century music.
Specialised
steel guitars, although they are also electric instruments descended from the guitar, are normally not considered electric guitars but rather as a separate instrument. This distinction has important consequences on claims of priority in the history of the electric guitar.
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Both the North America-built Godin LG (left) and the Fender Stratocaster (right - an entry-level, Korean-made Squier model is shown) are solidbody electric guitars, but they differ significantly in design, including scale length, neck and body woods, and pickup type. |
There are two main types of electric guitar:
*
Hollow body electric guitars, sometimes called
semi-acoustic, and themselves of two types:
**
Archtop electric guitars with a full sound box.
** Thin hollow body guitars.
*
Solid body guitars.
Electro-acoustic guitars
Some
acoustic guitars are fitted with
pickups purely as an alternative to using a microphone. These are also sometimes called
semi-acoustic, and sometimes
acoustic electric, but are regarded as acoustic rather than electric guitars. The terminology is not generally agreed, and the line hard to draw.
Seven-string guitars
Seven-string guitars exist, most of which add a low B string below the E. They were popularized by
Steve Vai and others in the
1980s, and have been recently revived by some
nu metal bands (such as
Korn). Jazz guitarists using a seven-string include veteran jazz guitarist
Bucky Pizzarelli and his son
John Pizzarelli.Another common seven-string arrangement is a second G string situated beside the standard G string and tuned an octave higher, in the same manner as a twelve-stringed guitar (see below).
Eight-string guitars
There are even eight-string electric guitars, such as the one played by
Charlie Hunter (manufactured by
Novax Guitars), but they are extremely unusual. The largest manufacturer of 8- to 14-strings is Warr Guitars. Their models are used by
Trey Gunn (of
King Crimson) who has his own
signature line from the company.
Twelve-string guitars
Twelve string electric guitars feature six pairs of strings, usually with each pair tuned to the same note, although in different octaves. The pairs of strings are played together as one, so the technique and tuning are the same as a conventional guitar, although creating a much fuller tone. They are used almost solely to play chords and are relatively common in
folk rock music.
Double Neck guitars
Jimmy Page, an innovator of
hard rock, used and made famous custom Gibson electric guitars with two necks - essentially two instruments in one; in his case, a 6-string and 12-string guitar, to replicate his use of two different guitars when playing live "
Stairway to Heaven" so that he didn't have to pause to switch from one section to another. These are commonly known as
double-neck (or, less commonly, "twin-neck") guitars. The purpose is to obtain different ranges of sound from each instrument; typical combinations are six-string and four-string (guitar and bass guitar) or, more commonly, a six-string and
twelve-string. Such a combination may come handy when playing
ballads live, where the 12-string gives a mellower sound as accompaniment, while the 6-string may be used for a guitar solo. English
progressive rock bands such as
Genesis took this trend to its zenith using custom made instruments produced by the
Shergold company.
Rick Nielsen, guitarist for
Cheap Trick, uses a variety of custom guitars, many of which have five necks, with the strap attached to the body by a swivel so that the guitar can be rotated to put any neck into playing position - more for comic effect than for actual usefulness. Guitar virtuoso
Steve Vai occasionally uses a triple-neck guitar; one neck is twelve string, one is six string and the third is a fretless six string.
The popularity of the electric guitar began with the
big band era because amplified instruments became necessary to compete with the loud volumes of the large brass sections common to jazz orchestras of the thirties and forties. Initially, electric guitars consisted primarily of hollow
archtop acoustic guitar bodies to which electromagnetic transducers had been attached.
Early years
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Sketch of Rickenbacker "frying pan" lap steel guitar from 1937 patent application. |
Electric guitars were originally designed by an assortment of luthiers, electronics enthusiasts, and instrument manufacturers, in varying combinations. Some of the earliest electric guitars, then essentially adapted
hollow bodied acoustic instruments, used
tungsten pickups and were manufactured in the
1930s by
Rickenbacker. The first recording of an electric guitar was by jazz guitarist Eddie Durham in 1937. Durham introduced the instrument to a young
Charlie Christian, who made the instrument famous in his all-too-brief life and is generally known as the first electric guitarist and a major influence on jazz guitarists for decades thereafter.
The version of the instrument that is most well known today is the [solid body] electric guitar, a guitar made of solid wood, without resonating airspaces within it.
At least one company,
Audiovox, built and may have offered an electric solid-body as early as the mid-1930s. Rickenbacher, later spelled
Rickenbacker (both are pronounced
Rickenbocker) offered a solid
Bakelite electric guitar, nicknamed "The Frying Pan", beginning in
1935, which reportedly sounded quite modern and aggressive when tested by vintage guitar researcher
John Teagle.
Another early solid body electric guitar was designed and built by musician and inventor
Les Paul in the early
1940s, working after hours in the
Gibson Guitar factory. His "log" guitar (so called because it consisted of a simple 4x4 wood post with a neck attached to it and homemade pickups and hardware, with two detachable Swedish hollow body halves attached to the sides for appearance only) was patented and is often considered to be the first of its kind, although it shares nothing in design or hardware with the solid body "Les Paul" model sold by Gibson.
Fender
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Sketch of Fender lap steel guitar from 1944 patent application. |
In 1950 and 1951, electronics and instrument amplifier maker
Leo Fender, through his eponymous company, designed the first commercially successful solid-body electric guitar, which was initially named the Broadcaster. However, the Gretsch company had a drumset by the same name (Broadkaster), so Fender was forced to change the name, choosing
Telecaster in homage to the new phenomenon of television. Features of the Telecaster included an ash body; a maple 25½
" scale, 21-fret neck attached to the body with four-bolts reinforced by a steel neckplate; two single-coil, 6-pole pickups (bridge and neck positions), with tone and volume controls, pickup selector switch, and an output jack mounted on the side of the body. A black bakelite pickguard concealed body routings for pickups and wiring. The bolt-on neck was consistent with Leo Fender's belief that the instrument design should be modular to allow cost-effective and consistent manufacture and assembly, as well as simple repair or replacement. A variant of the Telecaster, the Esquire, had only the bridge pickup. Due to the Broadcaster trademark issue, the earliest Telecasters were delivered with headstock decals with the Fender logo but no model identification, and are commonly referred to by collectors as "Nocasters".
In
1954 Fender introduced the
Stratocaster, or "Strat", which was positioned as a deluxe model and offered various product improvements and innovations over the Telecaster. These innovations included an ash or alder double-cutaway body design for badge assembly with an integrated
vibrato mechanism (called a
synchronized tremolo by Fender, thus beginning a confusion of the terms that still continues), three single-coil pickups, and body comfort contours. The Stratocaster has become the most-recognizable and most copied electric guitar design ever. Leo Fender is also credited with developing the first commercially-successful
electric bass called the Fender Precision Bass, introduced in
1951.
Gibson
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Les Paul with his "log" solid body electric guitar. |
Gibson, like many guitar manufacturers, had long offered semi-acoustic guitars with pickups, and previously rejected
Les Paul and his "log" electric in the 1940s. In apparent response to the
Telecaster, Gibson introduced the first
Gibson Les Paul solid body guitar in
1952 (although Les Paul was actually brought in only towards the end of the design process for expert fine tuning of the nearly complete design and for marketing endorsement [
1]). Features of the Les Paul include a mahogany body with a carved maple top (much like a
violin) and contrasting edge binding, two single-coil "soapbar"
pickups, a 24¾" scale mahogany neck with a more traditional glued-in
"set" neck joint, binding on the edges of the
fretboard, and a tilt-back
headstock with three tuners to a side. The earliest models had a combination bridge and trapeze-tailpiece design that was in fact designed by Les Paul himself, but was largely disliked and discontinued after the first year. Gibson then developed the
Tune-o-matic bridge and separate stop tailpiece, an adjustable non-vibrato design that has endured. By 1957, Gibson had made the final major change to the Les Paul as we know it today - the
humbucking pickup, or humbucker. The humbucker, invented by
Seth Lover, was a dual-coil pickup which featured two windings connected out of phase and reverse-wound, in order to cancel the 60-cycle hum associated with single-coil pickups; as a byproduct, however, it also produces a distinctive, more "mellow" tone which appeals to many guitarists. The more traditionally designed and styled Gibson solid-body instruments were a contrast to Leo Fender's modular designs, with the most notable differentiator being the method of neck attachment and the scale of the neck (Gibson-24.75", Fender-25.5"). Each design has its own merits. To this day, the basic design of nearly every solid-body electric guitar available today echoes the features of early 1950s originals - the Fender Telecaster & Stratocaster, and the Gibson Les Paul.
Most electric guitars are fitted with six strings and are usually tuned from low to high E - A - D - G - B - E, the same as an acoustic guitar, although many guitarists occasionally tune their instruments in a different way, including "
dropped D", various transposed and open
chord tunings, usually to simplify fretting of some chord inversions in a certain key. Some guitarists also tune to very low tunings, almost 4 whole steps down from E - A - D - G - B - E.
Electric guitars are not usually amplified by using a
microphone, but with special pickups that sense the movement of strings. Such pickups tend to also pick up the ambient electrical noises of the room, the so-called "
hum", with a strong 50 or 60
Hz component depending on the
frequency used in the local
power transmission system. Hum is annoying, especially when playing with
distortion, so "
humbucker" pickups were invented to counter this. Normal pickups are single-coil; humbuckers are essentially like twin microphones arranged in such a way that electrical noise cancels itself. A similar effect may be achieved using a guitar with multiple single coil pickups with an appropriate selection of dual pickups.
The physics of electric guitars and other electric
string instruments is fairly simple, since they are based on induced currents (see the
electromagnetism article for more details).
Magnets are located under each string, which make the strings behave as magnets themselves. When a string is played, it oscillates at a certain frequency, causing the magnetic field it creates to oscillate with it.
Solenoids (electromagnetic coils) are wrapped around each magnet, giving a periodic induced current (at the same frequency) [
2].
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Detail of a Squier-made Fender Stratocaster. Note the tremolo arm, the 3 single-coil pickups, the volume and tone knobs. |
Some electric guitars have a tremolo arm or
whammy bar, which is a lever attached to the bridge that can slacken or tighten the strings temporarily, changing the pitch or creating a
vibrato. Tremolo properly refers to a quick variation of volume, not pitch; however, the misnaming (probably originating with Leo Fender printing "Synchronized Tremolo" right on the headstock of his original 1954 Stratocaster) is probably too established to change.
Eddie Van Halen often uses this feature to embellish his playing, as heard in
Van Halen's "Eruption". Early tremolo systems tended to cause the guitar to go out of tune with extended use; an important innovator in this field was
Floyd Rose, who introduced one of the first improvements on the vibrato system in many years when in the late 1970s he began to experiment with "locking" nuts and bridges which work to prevent the guitar from detuning even under the most heavy whammy bar acrobatics.
An
acoustic guitar's sound is largely dependent on the vibration of the guitar's body and the air within it; the sound of an electric guitar is largely dependent on a magnetically induced
electrical signal, generated by the vibration of metal strings near sensitive pickups. The signal is then
shaped on its path to the
amplifier. By the late
1960s, it became common practice to exploit this dependence to alter the sound of the instrument. The most dramatic innovation was the generation of
distortion by increasing the
gain, or
volume, of the
preamplifier in order to clip the electronic signal. This form of distortion generates
harmonics, particularly in even multiples of the input frequency, which are considered pleasing to the ear.
Beginning in the
1960s, the
tonal palette of the electric guitar was further modified by introducing an
effects box in its signal path. Traditionally built in a small metal chassis with an on/off foot switch, such "
stomp boxes" have become as much a part of the instrument for many electric guitarists as the electric guitar itself. Typical effects include
stereo chorus,
fuzz,
wah-wah and
flanging,
compression/sustain,
delay,
reverb, and
phase shift. Some important innovators of this aspect of the electric guitar include guitarists
Frank Zappa,
Jimmy Page,
Link Wray,
Jimi Hendrix,
Brian May,
Eddie Van Halen,
Jerry Garcia,
Slash,
David Gilmour,
Yngwie J. Malmsteen,
Steve Vai,
Joe Satriani,
Daniel Ash, and
Tom Morello, and technicians such as
Roger Mayer.
In the 1970s, as effects pedals proliferated, their sounds were combined with power-tube distortion at lower, more controlled volumes by using
power attenuators such as Tom Scholz' Power Soak as well as re-amplified dummy loads such as Eddie Van Halen's use of a variac, power resistor, post-power-tube effects, and a final solid-state amp driving the guitar speakers. A variac is one approach to power-supply based power attenuation, to make the sound of power-tube distortion more practically available.
By the
1980s, and
1990s, digital and
software effects became capable of replicating the analog effects used in the past. These new digital effects attempted to model the sound produced by analog effects and tube amps, to varying degrees of quality. There are many free to use guitar effects software for personal computer downloadable from the Internet. Today anyone can transform his PC with sound card into a digital guitar effects processor. Although there are some obvious advantages to digital and software effects, many guitarists still use analog effects for their real or perceived quality over their digital counterparts.
Some innovations have been made recently in the design of the electric guitar. In
2002, Gibson announced the first digital guitar, which performs analog-to-digital conversion internally. The resulting digital signal is delivered over a standard
Ethernet cable, eliminating cable-induced line noise. The guitar also provides independent signal processing for each individual string.Also, in 2003
amp maker
Line 6 released the
Variax guitar. It differs in some fundamental ways from conventional solid-body electrics. For example it uses
piezoelectric pickups instead of the conventional electro-magnetic ones, and has an onboard computer capable of modifying the sound of the guitar to model the sound of many popular guitars.
The electric guitar can be played either solo or with other instruments. It has been used in numerous genres of popular music, as well as (much less frequently) classical music.
Contemporary classical music
While the
classical guitar had historically been the only variety of guitar favored by classical composers, in the 1950s a few contemporary classical composers began to use the electric guitar in their compositions. Examples of such works include
Karlheinz Stockhausen's
Gruppen (1955-1957);
Morton Feldman's
The Possibility of a New Work for Electric Guitar (1966);
George Crumb's
Songs, Drones, and Refrains of Death (1968);
Hans Werner Henze's
Versuch über Schweine (1968);
Michael Tippett's
The Knot Garden (1966-70);
Michael Nyman's
opera,
Facing Goya (2000); and countless works of
Ástor Piazzolla.
In the 1980s and 1990s, a growing number of composers (many of them composer-performers who had grown up playing the instrument in rock bands) began writing for the instrument. These include
Steven Mackey,
Omar Rodriquez,
Lois V Vierk,
Tim Brady,
John Fitz Rogers,
Tristan Murail,
Randall Woolf,
Scott Johnson and
Yngwie Malmsteen with his
Concerto Suite for Electric Guitar and Orchestra. The American composers
Glenn Branca and
Rhys Chatham have written "symphonic" works for large ensembles of electric guitars, in some cases numbering up to 100 players. Still, like many electric and electronic instruments, the electric guitar remains primarily associated with rock and jazz music, rather than with classical compositions and performances.
*
B.C. Rich*
Behringer*
Carvin*
Cort*
Danelectro*
Dean*
Epiphone*
ESP*
Fender*
Gibson*
Gretsch*
Ibanez*
Jackson*
Johnson*
Peavey*
PRS*
Rickenbacker*
Schecter*
Squier*
Synsonics*
Washburn*
Yamaha*
Godin*
Guitar/synthesizer*
5.1 surround guitar*
Bass guitar*
Guitar effects*
Guitar amplifier*
Distortion (guitar)* General
**
Wiki Guitar - Wiki based Guitar Resource with tablature archive, lessons, articles, and resources.
**
The Revolution of the Electric Guitar - The Revolution of the Electric Guitar
* Music
**
Lemelson Center - Includes an interactive history of the electric guitar
**
NewMusicBox.org: Composers Toolbox: Composing for the Electric Guitar by Nick Didkovsky © 2004
**
HowStuffWorks - Includes a thorough article about how electric guitars work
