Electric guitar

An electric guitar is a type of guitar with a solid or semi-solid body that utilizes electronic "pickups" to convert the vibration of the 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. In contrast to the acoustic guitar and most other acoustic string instruments, the solid-body electric guitar does not rely as extensively on the acoustic properties of its construction to amplify the sound produced by the vibrating strings; as such, the electric guitar does not need to be naturally loud, and its body can be virtually any shape. Since all the sound produced by the amplifier comes from string vibrations detected by the electronic pickups, an electric guitar that produces minimal acoustic sound may have maximal sustain, since less of the energy from the string oscillations is radiated as sound energy. For this reason, electric versions of almost all other similar string instruments have also been produced.

File:Electricguitars.jpg

Left: Rosa Hurricane, a heavy metal-style solid-body guitar.
Right: Maton Freshman, a hollow-body guitar.

The electric guitar is used extensively in many popular styles of music, including blues, rock and roll, country music, pop music, jazz, rap and even contemporary classical music.

History

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

Electric guitars were originally designed by an assortment of luthiers, electronics enthusiasts, and instrument manufacturers, in varying combinations. Some of the earliest electric guitars used tungsten pickups and were manufactured in the 1930s by Rickenbacker. The electric guitar was first made famous in performance by jazz legend Charlie Christian.

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. One of the first solid body electric guitars was 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, two Swedish hollow body halves attached to the sides, and homemade pickups and hardware. It was generally considered to be the first of its kind until recently, when research through old trade publications and with surviving luthiers and their families revealed many other prototypes, and even limited production models that fit our modern conception of an 'electric guitar.'

At least one company, Audiovox, built and may have offered an electric solid-body as early as the mid-1930s. Rickenbacher (later spelled Rickenbacker, pronounced Rickenbocker) offered a solid Bakelite electric guitar beginning in 1935 that, when tested by vintage guitar researcher John Teagle, reportedly sounded quite modern and aggressive. Mick Jones mastered the guitar in 1976.

Fender

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. Pink Floyd's guitarist, David Gilmour, owns one of the first Fender Stratocasters ever made. Leo Fender is also credited with developing the first commercially-successful electric bass called the Fender Precision Bass, introduced in 1951.

Gibson

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 solidbody guitar in 1952, designed at least in part with input from Les Paul. Features of the Les Paul included 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 deemed unsuitable by Les Paul himself. 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 produced a distinctive tone but also offered the advantage of elimination of the 60-cycle hum associated with single-coil pickups.

The more traditionally designed and style Gibson solid-body instruments were 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 it 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.

Types of electric guitar

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. Seven-string models exist, most of which add a low B string below the E. Seven-string guitars were popularized by Steve Vai and others in the '80s, and have been recently revived by some nu metal bands. Jazz guitarists using a seven-string include veteran jazzman Bucky Pizzarelli and his popular son John Pizzarelli. There are even eight-string electric guitars, such as the Novax played by Charlie Hunter, but they are extremely unusual. The largest manufacturer of 8- to 14-strings is Warr Guitars, and their models are used by Trey Gunn and King Crimson.

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". 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 - 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.

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.

Pickups

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 locale. 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. (See main articles on pickups and humbuckers.) Another instrument, the pedal steel guitar, does not look like a guitar at all, but resembles a small rectangular table with one or more sets of strings on top. Country musician Junior Brown uses a custom-built instrument of his invention, the guit-steel, which has one neck that is a steel guitar, and one standard electric guitar neck.

The physical principle

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) [1].

Electric guitar sound and effects

File:Godin LG-Squier Strat.jpg

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.

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, Link Wray, Jimi Hendrix, Brian May, Eddie Van Halen, Steve Jones, Jerry Garcia, David Gilmour, Yngwie J. Malmsteen, Thurston Moore, Daniel Ash, and Tom Morello, and technicians such as Roger Mayer.

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 realistically model many popular guitars.

Uses

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); and Michael Tippett's The Knot Garden (1966-70).

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, 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.

Common Brands

• Epiphone
• Fender
• Gibson
• Ibanez
• Schecter
• Jackson
• ESP
• B.C. Rich
• Dean
• PRS
• Yamaha
• Washburn
• Peavey
• Gretsch

See also

• Guitar/synthesizer
• Bass guitar

External links

• 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
  • Buying a good, cheap electric guitar - One player surveys over 20 different inexpensive guitars to find one to buy
  • Learn about guitar tone - A primer on electric guitar sound

• Guitar Lessons
  • Electric-Guitar.co.uk - Electric guitar lessons for all abilities and chord dictionary.
  • Free Guitar Lessons - Beginner guitar lessons for free, including tablature to the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and other classic rock songs, chords, and more.
  • Guitar Players Toolbox - Practical guitar playing tips, tools, and ideas.