Electric Guitars

An electric guitar is a type of guitar that uses pickups to convert the vibration of its steel-cored strings into an electrical current, which is made louder with an instrument amplifier and a speaker. The signal that comes from the guitar is sensed by the pickup (a magnet with fine copper wire wrapped around it) . This creates an electric signal which is then fed into the amplifier which converts the signal into a loud sound . The signal can be altered using various effects pedals such as reverb, chorus, wah or distortion. The use of these effects allows the guitarist to obtain an endless number of unique tones and sounds.

The electric guitar was first used by jazz guitarists, who used amplified hollow-bodied instruments to get a louder sound in Swing-era big bands. The earliest electric guitars were hollow bodied acoustic instruments with tungsten pickups made by the Rickenbacker company in 1931. These instruments created a clean, bright tone that was extremely good for jazz and blues playing, but also sounded thin at times. It was not until 1950 that the first solid body guitars were built by Leo fender. These innovative guitars were louder, more streamlined, and gave a much wider range of tonal possibilities. Gibson soon followed with their own solid body guitar, the Les Paul. These two companies, Gibson and Fender, have continued to dominate the guitar market since the early fifties, and there are countless copies of their designs.

The electric guitar has been a crucial part in the development of many styles of music, including blues, rock, rockabilly, metal, and even country music. Without the electric guitar, music would not be as we know it today: loud and dangerous!