Electric Guitars
August 16th, 2006 by Gene
We’re going to listen to the music. Today, on Engineering Works!
Guitars, especially electric guitars are an important part of modern popular music. Imagine the Beatles without George Harrison’s guitar. Or Jimi Hendrix without distortion. Electric guitars made it work.
Guitar players started experimenting with electricity to amplify their instruments during the 1930s, when big band swing was big. The guitar was getting lost in all that brass.
The first pickups for guitars were pretty simple – a magnet the size and shape of a tube of lipstick wrapped lengthwise with wire. Simple, huh? But basically, that’s it.
Here’s how it works. The magnet is surrounded by a magnetic field. Think elementary school science class: Iron filings; a magnet; and a sheet of glass.
Put that wire-wrapped magnet under the steel strings of a guitar and you’re ready to go. As the strings vibrate, they disturb the magnetic field and create a small electric current in the wires wrapped around the magnet. Feed that tiny signal into an amplifier and you’ve got the sound that made electric guitars with names like Fender, Gibson and Rickenbacker famous.
The sound those early pickups produced wasn’t that great. They tended to pick up noise from room wiring, too, but they worked. And engineers and musicians have made them lots better over the years, since. The pickups on today’s guitars provide cleaner, stronger sound, but they’re still basically magnets and wire.
It’s time to wrap up this gig. See you later.
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