Electric guitars are used in various forms and styles of music including pop, country, rock and roll, jazz or blues. These guitars are used largely in rock music, and are a bit more forgiving than are acoustic guitars. Depending on the venue, electric guitars are one of the most common guitars used in the 20th century.

The strings used on electric guitars are steel strings as on acoustic guitars, but usually of a much lighter gauge so they are generally simpler on your fingers. The guitars themselves are much heavier than are acoustic guitars. The wood is heavier and the electronic parts on the inside add weight to the guitar, as well. While the specific wood type for the body, neck and fingerboard is less of a factor in electric guitars, the wood chosen for a particular electric guitar does contribute its distinctive sound and as well as the feel of the guitar in your hands and even in your style of playing. The neck of the electric guitar must also take more stress due to the heavy body of the guitar.

Because of the type of strings used on the electric guitar, they are considered to be simpler to play. The lighter gauge of the strings for the electric guitar makes picking and strumming much simpler. The trade-off, of course, is the weight of the guitar and ability to be heard by larger audiences.

Electric guitars are slightly more expensive than are acoustic guitars but quality electric guitars can be found in the lower price ranges, as well. The vital thing to remember in plotting to buy an electric guitar is that they only sound excellent with an amplifier, so you must count on purchasing one of those as well as the guitar.

While various historians would argue about the time frame, electric guitars became well loved in the 1960’s and 1970′s. At that point, rock n’ roll was the prevailing culture in the world of music. Electric guitars became a necessity in the competition with the amplified instruments used by jazz orchestras. They quickly became well loved, even though there were some difficulties with their construction. The body of the electric guitar would vibrate because of the amplified sounds that came through the speakers, to which they were connected, causing what we know as feed-back. Electric guitars don’t work with microphones, but with special pickups on the body of the guitar that senses the movement of strings. These pickups also tend to pick up the various electrical noises of the room, giving the guitar a bit of a “hum” which can be a very large or very small depending on where the guitar is being played. Several different designs for electric guitars were tried and left unused because of this difficulty in the decades before the 70’s. But, the Les Paul by Gibson and the Stratocaster by Fender rose above the other models to help eliminate some of these difficulties and secured their place in electric guitar history.

There are many types of electric guitars: solid body, hollow body and metal body. The solid body electric guitar is really carved from hardwood and has a lacquer end. The guitars with the metal bodies are affected by the “weight relief” holes that are bored into the solid metal guitars or they are chambered metal so that the guitar will not weigh so much. The hollow bodied electric guitars are said to add resonance and sustain to the guitar while being lighter in weight for the guitarists handling of the instrument. The hollow body electric guitars have the pick-ups mounted in such a way that they convert the combination of the string and the instrument’s body vibration into the electrical signal sent to the amplifier.

Electric guitars are fantastic instruments to have around. They can be played for large audiences and their versatility of style is brilliant. Earphones are a fantastic addition to the guitar and the amplifier for the student who lives in the house with others that don’t necessarily want to hear the instrument played all night or all day. With this one upgrade, the electric guitar is a fantastic addition to the other instruments in my household!

Here are some things to keep in your head when you are going out to buy your first guitar amp. There are different amps to suit different styles of guitar music. Blues, jazz and blues based rock are best served by the so-called “vintage” sound. This is the sound of the sixties, brought to the world by the likes of Led Zeppelin, Hendrix and Cream. You can get that authentic sound by getting yourself an effects program that can replicate many of the vintage amp sounds. For playing heavy metal high gain amps are the way to go. These amps give you greater distortion than the vintage amps.

Let’s go onto the possibility that sometime in the near future you are going to be a professional or semi-professional guitar player. You will be getting paid to play the guitar on stage. People will delight in hearing you play at your gigs but don’t get the thought that your family will be enjoying listening to your guitar practice. The message here is to get a practice amp or an amp that’s small enough to play through without making your family and neighbors mad. Either that or make sure the place you practice is separated by distance or thick walls from the rest of the world. If you must practice in your bedroom, get some headphones.

To use for practice or for small gigs you need a low wattage amp. It’s best to go for a excellent tone so that your relationship with your amp will always be one of mutual respect. Don’t let a guy in a guitar store sell you a huge terrible amp with a boatload of effects. You won’t be needing any of that for quite a while, if ever. You will eventually become disenchanted with loudness but a excellent sound is a joy forever. So get a thirty watt amp and start working on being a serious musician.

The thing that makes the sound of your electric guitar into a nice tone is your pre-amp. You plug your guitar into it and it works on the noise from the strings to give it bass, treble and a number of other qualities that go into a fantastic tone. You will find some pre-amps using MIDI technology to generate your tone. Using this kind of setup you can save your settings and access your preset effects with a pedal. It is best to get yourself a separate effects box. This will give you better quality effects and greater versatility.