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The Electric Guitar

Guitarschools electric guitarists also play at Rockschools

Jazz and big bands of the early 1930s identified a need for an amplified guitar that could compete with brass instruments. The first electric guitars had acoustic bodies and electromagnetic pick ups.

The modern solid body electric guitar owes much to the popularity of Hawaiian music during the 1920s and 30s. The Hawaiian guitar at that time was a solid body solo instrument played with a metal slide and amplified electrically rather than acoustically.

Early electric guitars were made by Rickenbacker (1932) and Gibson (1935). Fender and Les Paul joined the melee a little later and set the standard for solid body guitars with improvements to pickups, reduced feedback and innovative design features.

There are several main categories of electric guitar:

Solid Body Electric Guitar
The solid body electric guitar is made from wood, hardwoods are generally preferred. Beyond that there is massive variation in materials, construction, shape and set-up according to personal preference.

The sound relies on an electromagnetic pickup and the vibration of the guitar strings to create small electrical voltages which are amplified and played through speakers. Different types of magnetic pickup create different effects and sounds.

There are hybrid versions of the solid-bodied electric guitar which use non-magnetic pick ups (piezoelectric) to convert vibrations in the bridge of the instrument into the required electric signal.

Semi Acoustic Guitar
Semi-acoustic guitars have the hollow body of the acoustic guitar onto which are mounted electromagnetic pickups. These pick up the string vibrations as in the solid body electric guitar and also the vibration of the guitar's body and the air within it as in the acoustic guitar. The combination of the two types of vibration are converted into an electrical signal.

Electric acoustic guitar
Electric acoustic guitars use non magnetic pickups in place of a microphone. These pick ups convert the vibrations of the body (and the air within it) of the instrument into an electronic signal. They do not produce a signal directly from the vibrations of the strings as do the electric and semi-acoustic instruments.

The standard electric guitar has six strings but versions from 4-string to 13 string and even 18 strings are known. Electric guitars are fretted instruments; the frets divide the fingerboard into semitone divisions and allow consistent stopping of the strings. Lead guitarists often use thicker frets to enable them to 'bend' notes more easily. Chords are more easily played using thinner frets.