Electric guitar

An electric guitar uses pickups to convert string vibrations into electrical signals, which are usually amplified through a speaker. Its sound depends on the strings, pickups, electronics, amplifier, and playing technique.

Magnetic pickup: A transducer that converts motion of ferromagnetic strings into an electrical signal through electromagnetic induction. Its magnetic field and coil turn vibrating strings into the guitar’s output signal.
Guitar string: A tensioned wire or filament that vibrates when plucked or struck to produce musical tones. Its motion is the physical input detected by the guitar’s pickups.
Jazz guitar: A guitar style and tradition associated with jazz performance, often using amplified hollow-body instruments. Its warm amplified tone and chordal vocabulary helped shape the guitar’s role in jazz.
Rickenbacker Frying Pan: An early electric lap steel guitar developed by George Beauchamp and Adolph Rickenbacker in the 1930s. Its electromagnetic pickup design helped demonstrate practical electric string amplification.
Acoustic guitar: A guitar whose hollow body projects string vibrations acoustically, without requiring electronic amplification. Its sound is produced primarily by body resonance rather than an amplified pickup signal.
Single-coil pickup: A magnetic pickup with one coil of wire, typically producing a clear tone and susceptibility to electromagnetic hum. It is one common pickup design, prized for brightness but vulnerable to mains-frequency noise.
Fret: A raised metal strip across a guitar fingerboard that sets the vibrating length of a stopped string. Pressing a string against a fret changes its vibrating length and therefore its pitch.
Solid-body electric guitar: An electric guitar built around a solid wooden or composite body rather than a hollow resonating chamber. This common construction supports high amplification with less feedback than hollow designs.
Les Paul: An American guitarist and inventor whose experiments helped shape electric guitar design and multitrack recording. His prototype work and later signature guitar influenced the instrument’s development.
Electro-acoustic guitar: An acoustic guitar fitted with a pickup or microphone system for connection to amplification. It retains an acoustic soundboard while adding an electrical output.

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