How do you get an aoustic-electric guitar to sound like an electric guitar?

3 Comments

1. Charlie says:

   February 13, 2010 at 10:13 pm

   Small answer – you can’t.

   Longer answer – acoustic guitars rely on sound waves and need a microphone to be amplified. Electro-acoustics use a piezo-transducer or a microphone (or a combination of both) to change those sound waves into an electical circuit. The sound must travel from your strings to your saddle, your saddle to your bridge, your bridge to your soundboard, and your soundboard to the open air for a mic, and from strings to saddle to piezo/bridge. All of the elements above interact with one another, giving you a warm, very complex tone and sound wave. This complex tone does not play nicely with distortion or other effects.

   Electric guitars use a different way to make sound – the vibration of the strings moves electrons in the pickup’s coil, making a direct connection between the vibration of the strings and the amplifier. This gives you a much simpler sound wave, and thereby is much more compatible to effects.

   Acoustic guitars also feature a much higher action (string height) than electrics, heavier strings, and very low sustain. As a result, the acoustic cannot be played like an electric to start with. Anything featuring hammer -ons/pull offs, quick playing, effects, ect will be more hard to do with an acoustic.

   BUT you can buy electric pickups and have them installed in your acoustic. The problem with this will be the space between the strings and the pickup – the farther, the less output. The less output, the less distortion.

   The best way to get the sound of an electric – save your cash (which is hard now I know) and get yourself a decent electric guitar.
2. Caleb W says:

   February 13, 2010 at 11:05 pm

   Absolutly. If you want to sound electric, get an electric. you are going to run into a lot of crazy noise if you try to go that way and you still wont sound electric even if you can clean it up.