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 electric 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.
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.
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.
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.
|
|
|