What Affects The Sound Of An Electric Guitar?

There are differences between acoustic and electric guitars, the most obvious being one uses electrical power and the other doesn’t. Beyond that, getting the best sound possible from electric guitars still depends on many variables working together.

The type of wood and basic construction, the age and condition of the strings play a role in the sound quality of electric guitars as do the quality and length of the guitar cord that connects the guitar to an amplifier. The type and placement of the pickups have a large affect as well as the design and tone of the amplifier itself.

Back in the 1950s, the Gibson Guitar Company found that by placing a small electrical coil close to a vibrating guitar string, the sound could be played through loudspeakers, thus giving birth to electric guitars.

However, the problem with these early examples was that the coils designed to pick up sounds in the 60 Hz range, also produced a hum from the 60 Hz current that supplied power to the amplifier.

More work and designed produced pickups with two counter coils that virtually eliminated the humming sound, a design called hum bucking. These hum bucker pickups remain extremely popular today for those playing electric guitars.

Adding Sound Effects

With the growth in popularity of electric guitars came the production of special effects such as the “Wah” pedal, tremolo, harmonics and distortion, among many others and these helped musicians produce a wide variety of different sounds.

Stompboxes began appearing in the 1960s which may have had one or several different special effects built into one box, turned on and off by a spring switch operated by pressing it with the foot, hence the name.

One of the earliest and most common effects for electric guitars is the tremolo bar which was attached to the bottom string attachment. When pressed it would lessen the tension of the strings uniformly, “bending” the sound. While still widely used today, most tremolo effects are gained through the amplifier which produces the same effect more uniformly.

As electric guitars evolved over the years, so have the amplifiers, especially with the sound evolution from valve driven (tubes) systems to solid state transistors. Since one of the first amplifiers was designed by an RCA technician who grew up designing sound systems using tubes, it was only natural for his amplifier for electric guitars to employ tubes. Many guitar players today still prefer valves over transistors, contending they produce a cleaner sound with less clipping at the higher sound range.