Electric Guitar

Electric guitar Construction

• Electric guitars started life as amplified acoustic guitars - Their hollow bodies led to problems with feedback when amplification was turned up

• Solid-body guitar was introduced to combat this problem

Pickups

• A pick up is a transducer.

• First part of process of amplifying the vibration of a string is to convert the vibration into an electrical signal.

• Two main types of pickup are single-coil and humbucker

Pickups - Single-coil

Single-coil pickups are susceptible to interference and hum, but produce a brighter, more cutting

Pickups - Humbucker

-Reduce interference and hum.

-They use two coils of opposite magnetic and electric polarity

-Electromagnetic noise hitting both coils cancel itself out

Tremolo arm

• Allows player to adjust the pitch of the strings, making it possible to add vibrato, ‘divebomb’ effects and ‘screaming’ harmonics

• Although the name suggests tremolo, the effect produced on the guitar is really a modulation in pitch so perhaps ‘vibrato arm’ would be more appropriate

• Because the tremolo arm affects the overall tuning of the guitar, locking nut and Floyd Rose tremolo systems were introduced to reduce the associated tuning problems

Guitar Harmonics

• Harmonics occur naturally when a note is played as an oscillation on a string or tube; whilst you hear one main note, it is accompanied by other, quieter frequency. Rather than hearing these as notes, they form part of the sound’s timbre

• Possible to isolate higher harmonics on stringed and wind instruments, this changes the timbre of the note, sounding ‘thinner’ or ‘cleaner’.

• Harmonics have a clear, ‘bell-like’ tone