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Thursday, 22 September 2011

Some Fundamentals Of The Electric Guitar

By Jason Briggs


The electric guitar is a stringed musical instrument designed with electric capabilities. The electric guitars work on the principle of electromagnetic induction where electromagnets are responsible for converting the string vibrations into electric signals. The electric signals produced by the electromagnets are weak. Hence amplifiers are used to amplify these electric signals before they are sent to the loudspeaker. Are you looking for a teisco guitar?

Electric guitars are usually made of six strings and also have a range of frets on the neck. Most of the electric guitars contain solid bodies, while a few of them are designed with hollow or semi-hollow bodies. Magnetic induction along with the amplification is what makes the electric guitars work. Magnetic pickups produce the sound in the guitars and this sound is controlled by various knobs. When an electric guitar is not plugged in, if a string of the guitar is struck, the sound produced is almost inaudible.

Electric guitars generally have longer necks which can be of two types i.e. set neck or a bolt-on neck. The top of the neck is called headstock. The headstock contains machine heads or tuners which when rotated change the string tension and hence help in tuning the guitar. Between the headstock and the neck are the nuts over which the strings of the guitar pass.

The Fretboard or the fingerboard is the playing area of the guitar. Frets are the bars which are located horizontally at appropriate distances on the fingerboard. When the string is pressed down, the frets stop the string at the right pitch to produce appropriate tones. All electric guitars have control knobs to adjust the volume of the tones. Truss rods are metallic cylinders used for adjusting the tension on the neck of the electric guitar.

Electric guitars are made of various materials and construction techniques. The material used in making the body of the electric guitar has an impact on the sound quality of the guitar although solid body guitars are not much affected by the material used. Some of the commonly used woods in making the body are alder, swamp ash, poplar, mahogany, maple and basswood. Materials such as cardboard and plastic are also used in making the bodies. For the soundboard, the commonly used material is rosewood, koa, and ebony. The neck is commonly made of mahogany, maple and basswood.

The strings of the electric guitars are not intended for producing louder tone and hence the materials used for electric guitar strings are different than that of acoustic guitars. These materials include stainless steel, nickel plated steel and pure nickel strings.

Electric guitars, though initially not widely recognized, have now gained huge fame in the music industry. They are being used as the major instruments in many musical shows and are used to play almost all types of music like rock n roll, heavy metal, punk, and pop.




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