by Jeff Dray

Created on: February 01, 2009

The electric guitar came about many years ago, during the era of the big band. There was usually a guitar player who would mainly strum chords but, because of the nature of the instrument, was often drowned out completely. Enterprising players worked on methods to amplify themselves so that they could be heard. Early electric guitars were simply acoustic guitars with microphones dropped into the sound hole but this lead to a lot of problems with feedback, when the microphone picked up the sound from the amplifier and amplified it again, gradually allowing the sound to degenerate into a howl.

The invention that really set the electric guitar on the road to sucess was the pick up.

Here comes the science bit:

If you introduce a vibrating string into a strong magnetic field you will generate an electrical frequency in that field. Pick ups are magnets surrounded by coils of wire which can be used to detect that electrical charge that is generated and pass it to the amplifier, where it is boosted and outputted to the speaker. The disturbance in the magnetic field generates an electrical charge that goes by the name of Induction. The frequency of the string's vibration governs the frequency that is generated in the pickup. The signal passes through volume and tone controls before passing along the lead and into the amplifier.

Over the years the guitar changed radically, the bodies got smaller and the cavities got smaller. Feedback was a constant problem. a young guitarist by the name of Les Paul experimented with various guitar configurations, coming up with a wierd looking instrument which was nicknamed "The Log", as it was a solid lump of wood (Actually a piece of a railway sleeper) which wasn't pretty but demonstrated the viability of the solid bodied guitar. Even then, he was forced to add on dummy 'wings' to make it look like a normal guitar.

Les Paul finally started to work with the Gibson guitar company and now the world's most desirable electric guitar bears his name. as an aside, Les Paul is still playing, he is in his 90s and still plays regularly in a New York club.

Nowadays you can still buy hollow bodied or semi-acoustic guitars, they mostly overcome the problem of feedback by having a solid timber core, to which the pickups are mounted, thus cutting out unwanted resonances. most people's idea of an electric guitar is the solid bodied type, typified by the Gibson Les Paul or Fender Stratocaster, which are basically solid planks of wood with the pickups, controls and wiring recessed into them. Because they work by the effects of magnetism electric guitars have to be fitted with metal strings, making them unsuitable for very young fingers.

After a while players' fingers become hardened and most people who play electric guitars regularly will have hard skin on their left fingertips.

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