Guitar Instruments - Solid Body Electric

Solid body electric guitars have no hollow internal cavity to accommodate vibration and no sound holes such as those used to amplify string vibrations in acoustic guitars. Solid body instruments are generally made up of hardwood with a lacquer coating. The wood is dried for 3 to 6 months in heated storage before being cut to shape. The sound that is audible in music featuring electric guitars is produced by pickups on the guitar that convert the string vibrations into an electrical signal. The signal is then fed to an amplifier (or amp) and speaker.

One of the first solid body guitars was invented by Les Paul. Gibson did not present their 'Les Paul' guitar prototypes to the public, as they did not believe it would catch on. The first mass-produced solid-body guitar was Fender's Broadcaster (later to become the 'Telecaster') first made in 1948, five years after Les Paul made his prototype. The Gibson Les Paul appeared soon after to compete with the Broadcaster.

electric fender

Guitar Instruments - Guitar Amplifier

A guitar amplifier (or guitar amp) is an electronic amplifier designed to make the signal of an electric or acoustic guitar louder so that it will produce sound through a loudspeaker and modify the tone by emphasizing or de-emphasizing certain frequencies and adding electronic effects.

Amplifiers consist of one or more circuit stages which have unique responsibilities in the modification of the input signal. The power amplifier or output stage produces a high current signal to drive a speaker to produce sound. This stage is the only necessary stage for a guitar amplifier and is frequently seen in inexpensive amplifiers with solely a volume control. One or more preamplifier stages precede the power amplifier stage and modify the guitar signal to a level that is suitable for the power stage. There may be one or more tone stages which affect the character of the guitar signal: before the preamp stage (as in the case of guitar pedals), in between the preamp and power stages (as in the cases of effects loop or many dedicated amplifier tone circuits), in between multiple stacked preamp stages, or in feedback loops from a post-preamp signal to an earlier pre-preamp signal (as in the case of presence modifier circuits). The tone stages may also have electronic effects such as equalization, compression, distortion, chorus, or reverb. Amplifiers may use vacuum tubes (in Britain they are called valves), or solid state (transistor) devices, or a mixture of both.

guitar instruments