Electric guitar.

An electronically amplified guitar.

1. Introduction.
There are two main kinds of electric guitar: the hollow-bodied or semi-
acoustic; and the solid-bodied, in which the body provides little resonance
but simply serves as a mounting-block to accommodate the bridge and the
electronic apparatus, and to bear the strings under tension. Standard
electric guitars have six strings (normally tuned E–A–d–g–b–e') and the
Electric bass guitar usually has four (E'–A'–D–G); there are 12-string
instruments (in which the top two strings are doubled in unison, the rest
being doubled at the upper octave) and other variants with different
numbers of strings, as well as hybrid instruments with two necks (for
example, one with six and the other with 12 strings, or one standard and
one bass neck). Electric steel guitars for the lap and free-standing electric
steel guitars, both designed for Hawaiian-style playing, have also been
made (see §3 below; see also Hawaiian guitar and Pedal steel guitar).
The electric guitar has found a place in virtually all forms of popular music.
The early instrument was introduced or popularized by players such as T-
Bone Walker (blues), Charlie Christian (jazz), Chuck Berry (rhythm and
blues), Merle Travis (country and western) and Buddy Holly (rock and roll).
Today it enjoys widespread use in these forms and in modern Western
popular hybrids, including pop, rock, jazz-rock and reggae. Since the 1950s
the art of electric guitar playing has been taken forward by a number of
talented and musically gifted performers, including Chet Atkins, who
defined the sounds of Nashville country picking through work with Elvis
Presley and the Everly Brothers, as well as on his own abundant
recordings; Wes Montgomery, whose affecting 1960s Riverside recordings
amount to some of the finest jazz playing; Jimi Hendrix, who in his brief
career combined rock, blues and soul into the most astonishing and
influential electric guitar playing; John McLaughlin, probably the most
influential jazz guitarist since Montgomery; and Eddie Van Halen, whose
playing in the 1980s contained a range of fresh styles and a lucid
flamboyance.
Outside popular music the electric guitar has been little used, with certain
notable exceptions, such as Tippett’s The Knot Garden (1966–9),
Stockhausen’s Gruppen (1955–7), Previn’s Guitar Concerto (1971, which
uses electric guitars in the orchestra), Berio’s Allelujah II (1956–7) and
Boulez’s Domaines (1968); it has a solo role in David Bedford’s Star’s End
(1974) and Proença (1977) by John Buller.
2. Technical aspects.
The electric guitar is an essentially simple device: the energy of the
vibrating strings, struck by the player with plectrum or fingers, is transferred
into electrical energy by the pickup or pickups; this energy is in turn
amplified by an external amplifier and loudspeaker.
A guitar pickup usually has six magnetic polepieces surrounded by a coil of
wire, or two such coils wired for hum rejection. The pickup is a transducer,
converting one form of energy (the vibrations of strings) into another form
of energy (an electrical signal). The guitar’s metal strings vibrating in the
pickup’s magnetic field induce a current in the coil of wire in that field, the
voltage of the current varying according to the frequency at which the
strings vibrate.
The degree and type of amplification of the electric guitar depends largely
on musical idiom. Amplification equipment ranges from small combination
or ‘combo’ units, which house amplifier and loudspeakers in one cabinet, to
large ‘stacks’ of separate loudspeaker cabinets and amplifier units.
Amplifiers are based either on valves or transistors, and can produce
output power ranging from a few watts to many hundreds of watts rms. In
rock music electric guitarists often ‘overdrive’ valve amplifiers to distort the
signal; such distortion, together with the uneven frequency response of
valve amplifiers, gives the instrument a characteristic sound quality. The
first transistorized amplifiers had a ‘cleaner’ sound, less well liked by most
rock musicians. In response to their requirements, some manufacturers
introduced transistorized circuitry that emulated the behaviour of valve
amplifiers.
Some amplification units incorporate devices for special effects, but more
often such devices – developed chiefly for use in rock and pop music – are
contained in purpose-built boxes or ‘pedals’, plugged between the
instrument and the amplifier, and sometimes interconnected within ‘racks’
or ‘pedalboards’. They are designed to enhance, distort or change the
electrical signal to produce the desired effects on the sound. A ‘wah-wah’
pedal modifies the tone of the sound by boosting a particular band of
frequencies, which changes according to the degree to which the pedal is
depressed. ‘Fuzz’ or distortion (and more recently the ‘pre-amp’ pedal) is
the electronic simulation of the sound from an overdriven amplifier,
achieved by feeding the signal from the guitar pickup through a unit that
alters the waveform, usually to an approximation of a ‘square wave’. Echo
or ‘delay’ is produced by electronic means, or mechanically by slightly
delayed playback of taped sounds. ‘Phasing’ is the electronic re-creation of
the sweeping effect produced mechanically by running two tape recorders
with the same programme slightly in and out of time with each other;
‘flanging’ is an enhanced version of phasing. The ‘chorus’ effect, which
makes a single instrument sound like a group of instruments, is produced
by time-delay electronics. ‘Octave dividers’ divide or multiply the frequency
of a signal by a factor of two, to give parallel octaves below or above the
note being played on the instrument; more sophisticated possibilities of this
effect are given by the ‘harmonizer’. In addition to special devices, units
found in the recording studio have been adapted for use with the electric
guitar: for example, the ‘compressor’, which smoothes out sound peaks,
the ‘noise gate’, which reduces the noise content of the signal supplied to
the amplifier, and ‘parametric’ and ‘graphic’ equalizers, which are
sophisticated forms of tone controllers. The amplifier itself often includes a
‘reverb’ effect that simulates natural acoustic reverberation by mechanical
or electronic means.
3. History.
The first experiments with the electrical amplification of guitars took place
in the USA in the 1920s and 1930s. Guitarists were looking for ways of
making their instruments match the volume of the ensembles in which they
played, especially big dance bands. The principal problem was to find a
suitable pickup.
The engineer and musician Lloyd Loar, who worked for the Gibson
company, began in the 1920s to try out crude magnetic pickups; he left
Gibson in 1924 and, with Lewis Williams, started the Vivi Tone Co. (and a
sister company, Acousti-Lectric) in 1934, which manufactured electric
violin-family instruments as well as electric fretted instruments. Other
Americans experimenting with magnetic instrument pickups at the time
included Rowe and DeArmond, who formed an eponymous company early
in the 1930s to manufacture them, and George Beauchamp and Paul Barth
who joined forces with the Californian businessman Adolph Rickenbacker
to form the Ro-Pat-In Company (see Rickenbacker). In 1932 their company
produced some of the very first commercially made electric guitars, the
Rickenbacker A22 and A25 models. These guitars, nicknamed ‘Frying
Pans’ because of their circular bodies and long necks, were ‘lap steel’ (or
Hawaiian) guitars – that is, instruments played resting on the guitarist’s lap,
the strings being stopped by a steel bar held in the left hand. Around this
time the National company (see Resonator guitar) produced one of the
earliest electric Spanish-style (as opposed to lap steel) guitars, followed
shortly by Rickenbacker with the Electro Spanish model. The Gibson
company, by now a well-established name, entered the electric guitar
market in 1935 with an Electric Hawaiian guitar, the EH–150, and an
electric Spanish guitar, the ES–150. The latter had a spruce top with f-
holes, a maple body and a mahogany neck; it featured a distinctive pickup
designed by Walt Fuller, later called the Charlie Christian pickup after the
pioneering electric jazz guitarist had used it.
It was in the late 1940s that one of the most significant developments for
the future of the electric guitar was made, leading to the introduction of the
solid-bodied electric guitar. The Californian engineer Paul Bigsby built a
solid-bodied electric guitar for the country guitarist Merle Travis in 1948
(this instrument is now in the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville,
Tennessee), but the first commercially manufactured solid electric guitar
was the Fender Broadcaster, designed by Leo Fender and others and
introduced in 1950. The Broadcaster’s body was a solid plank of ash with
rounded corners; a cutaway underneath the joint with the solid maple neck
aided access to the high frets. At the top of the neck was a stylish peghead
with machine heads ranged along one side only, while on the body there
were two single-coil pickups, one close to the neck join, the other built into
the simple bridge assembly and slanted to accentuate the treble
frequencies of the higher strings. (An early prototype called the Esquire
had only the bridge pickup.) A brass plate supported two control knobs –
for volume and tone (originally volume and pickup ‘blend’) – and a three-
way switch that allowed the player to select either of the two pickups
individually or both together. The Broadcaster was renamed the Telecaster
in 1951. It initially found favour with country-and-western players, but it has
continued to be popular in various musical forms and is still made virtually
unchanged.
The next important solid-bodied electric guitar was Gibson’s Les Paul
guitar, introduced in 1952 (fig.1). Paul, a well-known country, jazz and pop
guitarist, had approached Gibson some years earlier, having experimented
with solid electric guitar designs over a long period. The guitar that was
eventually marketed under his name was developed by Gibson designers
and endorsed by Paul. Various models including the ‘Gold-top’, Custom
and Standard have been produced, and are still made.
In 1954 Fender introduced the Stratocaster, the first solid-bodied electric
guitar to have three pickups, the first with Fender’s ‘tremolo arm’ system for
vibrato effects, and the first Fender guitar to have a contoured body (fig.2).
It also had a double cutaway where the body joined the neck, to allow even
easier access to the upper frets. It is still made.
These three 1950s designs – the Telecaster, the Les Paul and the
Stratocaster – formed the basis for much that was to follow from other
electric guitar makers in the USA, Europe and Japan. Countless copies
and variants have been produced since the 1950s and, particularly,
following the pop music boom in the early 1960s, which established the
electric guitar as the basis of the pop sound.
The principal features of the electric guitar have remained unchanged, but
several refinements and developments have been introduced since the
early 1950s. In 1955 Gibson’s Seth Lover patented the ‘humbucking’
pickup, which uses two coils to eliminate noise and interference; it also
affects the sound by reducing response to high frequencies. Humbucking
pickups have been used on most Gibson electric guitars since the mid-
1950s and are largely responsible for the difference in sound between
these and Fender guitars, which have largely continued to use single-coil
pickups. Gibson introduced their first twin-necked electric guitar – one neck
with six strings and the other with 12 – in 1958, and in the same year
launched the Flying-V, which was at the time unsuccessful but has given
rise to many outlandishly shaped models. Also that year, Gretsch were the
first to offer stereo guitars, achieved by splitting the output of the strings
and feeding them to two separate amplifiers. The first Rickenbacker 12-
string electric guitar was made in 1963 and was used effectively by Geroge
Harrison of The Beatles and Roger McGuinn of The Byrds.
Experiments with materials other than wood have occurred sporadically.
Rickenbacker made an electric guitar from Bakelite in the 1930s, while
National produced a series of models with fibreglass bodies in the 1960s.
In 1971 Ovation created an electric-acoustic hybrid by adding a bridge-
mounted peizo pickup assembly to their plastic-backed acoustic guitar.
Carbon graphite has been used occasionally for necks.
Attempts have been made to link guitars with synthesizers, primarily by the
Japanese company Roland, since the late 1970s, but without widespread
success. ‘Locking’ vibrato systems appeared in the 1980s, largely due to
the efforts of Floyd Rose in the USA. They were designed primarily to
improve on Fender’s original tremolo system and to enable a more extreme
use of the effect by the strings being locked into position at the nut and the
bridge. These systems often appeared on a new breed of instrument
nicknamed the ‘superstrat’, a slimmed-down, 24-fret, Stratocaster-inspired
design with a distinctive ‘pointed’ headstock, popularized by US makers
Jackson and Charvel. Ibanez emerged as the leading Japanese
manufacturer at this time.
In the 1990s there was a return to simpler, backward-looking ‘retro’
designs, and the classic 1950s trio of Telecaster, Les Paul and
Stratocaster remained as popular as ever.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
D. Brosnac: The Electric Guitar: its History and Construction (San
Francisco, 1975)
K. Achard: The History and Development of the American Guitar (London,
1979)
T. Wheeler: American Guitars: an Illustrated History (New York, 1982,
2/1992)
T. Bacon and P. Day: The Ultimate Guitar Book (London, 1991)
G. Gruhn and W. Carter: Gruhn’s Guide to Vintage Guitars (San
Francisco, 1991)
T. Bacon and P. Day: The Fender Book (London, 1992, 2/1998)
T. Bacon and P. Day: The Gibson Les Paul Book (London, 1993)
T. Bacon and P. Day: The Rickenbacker Book (London, 1994)
A. Duchossoir: Gibson Electrics: the Classic Years (Milwaukee, 1994)
G. Gruhn and W. Carter: Electric Guitars and Basses: a Photographic
History (San Francisco, 1994)
R.R. Smith: Fender: the Sound Heard ’Round the World (Fullerton, CA,
1995)
T. Bacon, ed.: Classic Guitars of the Fifties (London, 1996)
T. Bacon and P. Day: The Gretsch Book (London, 1996)
S. Chinery and T. Bacon: The Chinery Collection: 150 Years of American
Guitars (London, 1996)
P. Trynka, ed.: Rock Hardware: 40 Years of Rock Instrumentation
(London, 1996)
T. Bacon, ed.: Classic Guitars of the Sixties (London, 1997)
T. Bacon: Electric Guitars: the Illustrated Encyclopedia (San Diego, 2000)
TONY BACON

Electric organ.
A term used of certain types of Electronic organ that are not fully electronic.
It is sometimes applied indiscriminately to all electronic and electric organs,
or more accurately to those instruments that include either electroacoustic
or electromechanical elements, in order to distinguish them from
instruments in which the sound-generating system consists of electronic
oscillators with no moving parts. Most precisely it describes only those
electroacoustic organs, in which – like the electric guitar and electric piano
– the acoustic sounds of the vibrating mechanism are reduced and made
audible by means of special pickups or transducers; the sound sources
have usually been free reeds, as in the reed organ. The most successful
example was the Everett Orgatron (1934), on which the first Wurlitzer
models were based; subsequent instruments include the Minshall-Estey
(c1950) and several models marketed by Farfisa from the late 1950s. In the
Orgatron and Wurlitzer electric organs the permanently vibrating brass
reeds are enclosed in a case which prevents their being heard acoustically;