Guitar Guide Book

Electric Guitar Guide

An electric guitar has six strings and is tuned like any other guitar. The difference is that volume is increased by transferring string vibrations electrically through pickups and then sent to an amplified speaker. All other acoustic guitars use a wooden resonating chamber as well as the pulsation of front and back panels called sound boards to make the string vibrations more audible. The first electric guitars were used in jazz bands in order to be heard above the loud horn sections. Now it is used in all styles of music including rock and roll, pop, blues and Latin.

The initial electric guitars in the 1930s were actually just archtop hollow bodies with a magnetic pickup attached. The 30s also saw the invention of the first steel body guitar which embodied the blues sound of the day. The first professional pickup was called “tungsten’ which was manufactured by Electro and was first installed on Rickenbacker guitars. Les Paul was the creator of the first electric solid body guitar with pickups in the 40s. Then Fender came out with the first commercially successful electric guitar called the Esquire and followed up in the 50s with their famous Stratocaster. The jazz legend Charlie Christian is known as the first guitarist to make the electric popular.

Vibrating plucked strings alone do not make much sound. That’s why pickups were developed to literally ‘pick up’ a small bit of electricity from the vibration of the steel. Then a wire inside a guitar cord transfers the electric current to the guitar amp. A pickup called a “humbucker” was invented to help reduce some of unwanted electric currents that the original “single coil” pickups absorb and turn into an undesirable humming sound. The humbucker pickup is also known for having a warmer more full tone.

Another feature unique to the electric guitar is what is known as a whammy or tremolo bar. This is a short bar which screws into the bridge which you can press down on or pull up to tighten or loosen the strings to make the pitch go up and down which creates a vibrato. Most whammy bars make the guitar go out of tune rather quickly so it’s best to use the effect sparingly. The only exception is the Floyd Rose whammy bar which uses a lock on the tuning pegs and dial tuners on the bridge and holds tune exceptionally well. Eddie Van Halen was the electric guitarist that made this effect famous.

Adding effects to the sound of the guitar before it is amplified is another major innovation. Distortion was one of the first effects and was first used in the 1960’s. The fuzzy sound was basically an exaggeration of what happens when you turn a speaker up louder than it can handle. Then effects were packaged in small pedal boxes that you could plug into on the way to the amp. By the end of the 60s you could buy these so-called “stomp boxes” to add echo, vibrato, fuzzy distortion and many other tonal alterations. Now effects can be modeled digitally to replicate almost any sound including that of various amps.