Electric guitar

Still, like many electric and electronic instruments, the electric guitar remains primarily associated with rock and jazz music, rather than with classical compositions and performances. Ragg is a sturdy wool fibre made into yarn and used in many rugged applications like gloves. The American composers Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham have written "symphonic" works for large ensembles of electric guitars, in some cases numbering up to 100 players. This process was invented in the Heavy Woollen District of West Yorkshire and created a micro-economy in this area for many years. These include Steven Mackey, Lois V Vierk, Tim Brady, Tristan Murail, and Yngwie Malmsteen with his Concerto Suite for Electric Guitar and Orchestra. Such yarns are typically used as weft yarns with a cotton warp. In the 1980s and 1990s, a growing number of composers (many of them composer-performers who had grown up playing the instrument in rock bands) began writing for the instrument. The recycled wool may be mixed with raw wool, wool noil, or another fibre such as cotton to increase the average fibre length.

Examples of such works include Karlheinz Stockhausen's Gruppen (1955-1957); Morton Feldman's The Possibility of a New Work for Electric Guitar (1966); George Crumb's Songs, Drones, and Refrains of Death (1968); Hans Werner Henze's Versuch über Schweine (1968); and Michael Tippett's The Knot Garden (1966-70). As this process makes the wool fibres shorter, the remanufactured fabric is inferior to the original. While the classical guitar had historically been the only variety of guitar favored by classical composers, in the 1950s a few contemporary classical composers began to use the electric guitar in their compositions. To make shoddy, existing wool fabric is cut or torn apart and respun. When two electric guitars are used, one generally plays the role of "lead" guitar and the other is the "rhythm" guitar. Shoddy is recycled or remanufactured wool. In rock music, the electric guitar is generally used in conjunction with electric bass guitar and drum set. Ancient Greeks lined their helmets with felt and Roman legionnaires used breastplates made of wool felt.

It has been used in numerous genres of popular music, as well as (much less frequently) classical music. Wool felt covers piano hammers and it is used to absorb odors and noise in heavy machinery and stereo speakers. The electric guitar can be played either solo or with other instruments. In addition to clothing, wool has been used for carpeting, felt, and upholstery. For example it uses piezoelectric pickups instead of the conventional electro-magnetic ones, and has an onboard computer capable of modifying the sound of the guitar to realistically model many popular guitars. (source). It differs in some fundamental ways from conventional solid-body electrics. These small scale farmers may raise any type of sheep they wish, so the selection of fleeces is quite wide.

Also, in 2003 amp maker Line 6 released the Variax guitar. There is also a thriving 'home flock' contingent of small scale farmers who raise small hobby flocks of specialty sheep for the handspinning market. The guitar also provides independent signal processing for each individual string. In the United States, Texas, New Mexico and Colorado also have large commercial sheep flocks and their mainstay is the Rambouillet (or French Merino). The resulting digital signal is delivered over a standard Ethernet cable, eliminating cable-induced line noise. Breeds such as Lincoln and Romney produce coarser fibres and wool of these sheep is usually used for making carpets. In 2002, Gibson announced the first digital guitar, which performs analog-to-digital conversion internally. Most Australian wool comes from the merino breed.

Some innovations have been made recently in the design of the electric guitar. Australia, China and New Zealand are leading commercial producers of wool. Although there are some obvious advantages to digital and software effects, many guitarists still use analog effects for their real or perceived quality over their digital counterparts. Global wool production is approximately 1.3 million tonnes per annum of which 60% goes into apparel. Today anyone can transform his PC with sound card into a digital guitar effects processor. Australia's colonial economy was based on sheep raising and the Australian wool trade eventually overtook that of the Germans by 1845. There are many free to use guitar effects software for personal computer downloadable from the Internet. German wool—based on sheep of Spanish origin—did not overtake British wool until comparatively late.

These new digital effects attempted to model the sound produced by analog effects and tube amps, to varying degrees of quality. Spain allowed export of Merino lambs only with royal permission. By the 1980s, and 1990s, digital and software effects became capable of replicating the analog effects used in the past. In the Renaissance, Medicis of Florence built their wealth and banking system on wool trade with the aid of the Arte della Lana, the wool guild. Malmsteen, Thurston Moore, Daniel Ash, and Tom Morello, and technicians such as Roger Mayer. In 1699 English crown forbade its American colonies to trade wool with anyone else but England itself. Some important innovators of this aspect of the electric guitar include guitarists Link Wray, Jimi Hendrix, Brian May, Eddie Van Halen, Steve Jones, Jerry Garcia, David Gilmour, Yngwie J. The smuggling of wool out of the country, known as owling, was at one time punishable by the cutting off of a hand.

Typical effects include stereo chorus, fuzz, wah-wah and flanging, compression/sustain, delay, reverb, and phase shift. Over the centuries, various British laws controlled the wool trade or required the use of wool even in burials. Traditionally built in a small metal chassis with an on/off foot switch, such "stomp boxes" have become as much a part of the instrument for many electric guitarists as the electric guitar itself. English wool exports - which bordered on European monopoly - were a significant source of income to the crown. Beginning in the 1960s, the tonal palette of the electric guitar was further modified by introducing an effects box in its signal path. In medieval times, the wool trade was serious business. This form of distortion generates harmonics, particularly in even multiples of the input frequency, which are considered pleasing to the ear. Prior to invention of shears - probably in the Iron Age - they probably plucked the wool out by hand or by bronze combs.

The most dramatic innovation was the generation of distortion by increasing the gain, or volume, of the preamplifier in order to clip the electronic signal. As the raw material has been readily available since the widespread domestication of sheep and similar animals, the use of wool for clothing and other fabrics dates back to some of the earliest civilizations. By the late 1960s, it became common practice to exploit this dependence to alter the sound of the instrument. . The signal is then shaped on its path to the amplifier. The finer diameters are generally more valuable. An acoustic guitar's sound is largely dependent on the vibration of the guitar's body and the air within it; the sound of an electric guitar is largely dependent on a magnetically induced electrical signal, generated by the vibration of metal strings near sensitive pickups. The fibre diameter of wool varies from 15 micrometres (superfine merino) to 30 or more micrometres for the coarser wools.

Solenoids (electromagnetic coils) are wrapped around each magnet, giving a periodic induced current (at the same frequency) [1]. The quality of fleece is determined by a technique known as wool classing, whereby a qualified woolclasser tries to group wools of similar gradings together to maximise the return for the farmer or sheep owner. When a string is played, it oscillates at a certain frequency, causing the magnetic field it creates to oscillate with it. The latter four are packaged and sold separately. Magnets are located under each string, which make the strings behave as magnets themselves. After shearing, the wool is separated into five main categories: fleece (which makes up the vast bulk), pieces, bellies, crutchings and locks. The physics of electric guitars and other electric string instruments is fairly simple, since they are based on induced currents (see the electromagnetism article for more details). The grease is generally removed for processing by scouring with detergent and alkali.

Country musician Junior Brown uses a custom-built instrument of his invention, the guit-steel, which has one neck that is a steel guitar, and one standard electric guitar neck. In this state it can be worked into yarn or knitted into water-resistant mittens, such as those of the Aran Island fishermen. (See main articles on pickups and humbuckers.) Another instrument, the pedal steel guitar, does not look like a guitar at all, but resembles a small rectangular table with one or more sets of strings on top. Wool straight off a sheep contains a high level of grease (thus "greasy wool") which contains valuable lanolin. A similar effect may be achieved using a guitar with multiple single coil pickups with an appropriate selection of dual pickups. Wool is generally a creamy white colour, although some breeds of sheep produce natural colors such as black, brown (also called moorit) and grey. Normal pickups are single-coil; humbuckers are essentially like twin microphones arranged in such a way that electrical noise cancels itself. The relative amounts of kemp to wool vary from breed to breed, and make some fleeces more desirable for spinning, felting or carding into batts for quilts or other insulating products.

Hum is annoying, especially when playing with distortion, so "humbucker" pickups were invented to counter this. On sheep, the hair part of the fleece is called kemp. Such pickups tend to also pick up the ambient electrical noises of the room, the so-called "hum", with a strong 50- or 60-Hz component depending on the locale. Hair, by contrast, has little if any scale and no crimp and little ability to bind into yarn. Electric guitars are not usually amplified by using a microphone, but with special pickups that sense the movement of strings. A fine wool like merino may have up to a hundred crimps per inch, where the coarser wools like karakul may have as few as one to two crimps per inch. Early tremolo systems tended to cause the guitar to go out of tune with extended use; an important innovator in this field was Floyd Rose, who introduced one of the first tremolos which allowed the guitar to stay in tune, even after heavy use. The amount of crimp corresponds with the fineness of the wool fibres.

Eddie Van Halen often uses this feature to embellish his playing, as heard in Van Halen's "Eruption". Insulation also works both ways; bedouins and tuaregs use wool clothes to keep the heat out. Tremolo properly refers to a quick variation of volume, not pitch; however, the misnaming (probably originating with Leo Fender printing "Synchronized Tremolo" right on the headstock of his original 1954 Stratocaster) is probably too established to change. Because of the crimp, wool fabrics have a greater bulk than other textiles and retain air, which causes the product to retain heat. Some electric guitars have a tremolo arm or whammy bar, which is a lever attached to the bridge that can slacken or tighten the strings temporarily, changing the pitch or creating a vibrato. They help the individual fibres attach to each other so that they stay together. Guitar virtuoso Steve Vai occasionally uses a triple-neck guitar; one neck is twelve string, one is six string, and the third is a fretless six string. Both the scaling and the crimp make it possible to spin and felt the fleece.

Rick Nielsen, guitarist for Cheap Trick, uses a variety of custom guitars, many of which have five necks - more for comic effect than for actual usefulness. Most of the fibre from domestic sheep has two qualities that distinguish it from hair or fur: it has scales which overlap like shingles on a roof and it is crimped; in some fleeces the wool fibres have more than 20 bends per inch. English progressive rock bands such as Genesis took this trend to its zenith using custom made instruments produced by the Shergold company. Wool is the fibre produced as the outer coat of sheep. Such a combination may come handy when playing ballads live, where the 12-string gives a mellower sound as accompaniment, while the 6-string may be used for a guitar solo. This article deals with the wool produced from domestic sheep. The purpose is to obtain different ranges of sound from each instrument; typical combinations are six-string and four-string (guitar and bass guitar) or, more commonly, a six-string and twelve-string. Wool is the fibre derived from the hair of animals of the Caprinae family, principally sheep and goats, but the hair of other mammals such as alpacas may also be called wool.

These are commonly known as double-neck (or, less commonly, "twin-neck") guitars. United States: .77%. Jimmy Page, an innovator of hard rock, used and made famous custom Gibson electric guitars with two necks - essentially two instruments in one; in his case, a 6-string and 12-string guitar, to replicate his use of two different guitars when playing live "Stairway to Heaven". South Africa: 1%. The largest manufacturer of 8- to 14-strings is Warr Guitars, and their models are used by Trey Gunn and King Crimson. Sudan: 2%. There are even eight-string electric guitars, such as the Novax played by Charlie Hunter, but they are extremely unusual. India: 2%.

Jazz guitarists using a seven-string include veteran jazzman Bucky Pizzarelli and his popular son John Pizzarelli. United Kingdom: 2%. Seven-string guitars were popularized by Steve Vai and others in the '80s, and have been recently revived by some nu metal bands. Iran: 2%. Seven-string models exist, most of which add a low B string below the E. Turkey: 2%. Most electric guitars are fitted with six strings and are usually tuned from low to high E - A - D - G - B - e, the same as an acoustic guitar, although many guitarists occasionally tune their instruments in a different way, including "dropped D", various transposed and open chord tunings, usually to simplify fretting of some chord inversions in a certain key. Argentina: 3%.

To this day, the basic design nearly every solid-body electric guitar available today echoes the features of early 1950s originals - the Fender Telecaster & Stratocaster, and the Gibson Les Paul. New Zealand: 11%. Each design has it own merits. China: 18%. The more traditionally designed and style Gibson solid-body instruments were contrast to Leo Fender's modular designs, with the most notable differentiator being the method of neck attachment and the scale of the neck. Australia: 25% of global wool clip (475 million kg greasy, 2004/2005). The humbucker, invented by Seth Lover, was a dual-coil pickup which produced a distinctive tone but also offered the advantage of elimination of the 60-cycle hum associated with single-coil pickups.

By 1957, Gibson had made the final major change to the Les Paul as we know it today - the humbucking pickup, or humbucker. Gibson then developed the Tune-o-Matic bridge and separate stop tailpiece, an adjustable non-vibrato design that has endured. The earliest models had a combination bridge and trapeze-tailpiece design that was deemed unsuitable by Les Paul himself. Features of the Les Paul included a mahogany body with a carved maple top (much like a violin) and contrasting edge binding, two single-coil "soapbar" pickups, a 24¾" scale mahogany neck with a more traditional glued-in "set" neck joint, binding on the edges of the fretboard, and a tilt-back headstock with three tuners to a side.

In apparent response to the Telecaster, Gibson introduced the first Gibson Les Paul solidbody guitar in 1952, designed at least in part with input from Les Paul. Gibson, like many guitar manufacturers, had long offered semi-acoustic guitars with pickups, and previously rejected Les Paul and his "log" electric in the 1940s. Rickenbacher (later spelled Rickenbacker, pronounced Rickenbocker) offered a solid Bakelite electric guitar beginning in 1935 that, when tested by vintage guitar researcher John Teagle, reportedly sounded quite modern and aggressive. His "log" guitar, so called because it consisted of a simple rectangular block of wood with a neck attached to it, was generally considered to be the first of its kind until recently, when research through old trade publications and with surviving luthiers and their families revealed many other prototypes, and even limited production models, that fit our modern conception of an 'electric guitar.' At least one company, Audiovox, built and may have offered an electric solid-body as early as the mid-1930s.

One of the first solid body electric guitars was built by musician and inventor Les Paul in the early 1940s, working after hours in the Epiphone Guitar factory. The version of the instrument that is most well known today is the "solid body" electric guitar: a guitar made of solid wood, without resonating airspaces within it. Leo Fender is also credited with developing the first commercially-successful electric bass called the Fender Precision Bass, introduced in 1951. Pink Floyd's guitarist, David Gilmour, owns one of the first Fender Stratocasters ever made.

The Stratocaster has become the most-recognizable and most copied electric guitar design ever. These innovations included an ash or alder double-cutaway body design for balance, a bridge assembly with an integrated vibrato mechanism (called a "tremolo" by Fender), three single-coil pickups, and body comfort contours. In 1954 Fender introduced the Stratocaster, or "Strat", which was positioned as a deluxe model and offered various product improvements and innovations over the Telecaster. Due to the Broadcaster trademark issue, the earliest Telecasters were delivered with headstock decals with the Fender logo but no model identificaton, and are commonly referred by collectors as "Nocasters".

A variant of the Telecaster, the Esquire, had only the bridge pickup. The bolt-on neck was consistent with Leo Fender's belief that the instrument design should be modular to allow cost-effective and consistent manufacture and assembly, as well as simple repair or replacement. A black bakelite pickguard concealed body routings for pickups and wiring. Features of the Telecaster included an ash body; a maple 25½" scale, 20-fret neck attached to the body with four-bolts reinforced by a steel neckplate; two single-coil, 6-pole pickups (bridge and neck positions), with tone and volume controls, pickup selector switch, and an output jack mounted on a control plate on the body top.

However, the Gretsch company had a drumset by the same name, (Broadkaster) so Fender was forced to change the name, choosing Telecaster. In the 1930s, steel guitar and instrument amplifier maker Leo Fender, through his eponymous company, designed the first commercially successful solid-body electric guitar, which was initially named the Broadcaster. Some of the earliest electric guitars used tungsten pickups and were manufactured in the 1930s by Rickenbacker. Electric guitars were originally designed by an assortment of luthiers, electronics enthusiasts, and instrument manufacturers, in varying combinations.

Initially, electric guitars consisted primarily of hollow "archtop" acoustic guitar bodies to which electromagnetic transducers had been attached. The popularity of the electric guitar began with the big band era because amplified instruments became necessary to compete with the loud volumes of the large brass sections common to jazz orchestras of the thirties and forties. The electric guitar is used extensively in many popular styles of music, including blues, rock and roll, country music, pop music, jazz, rap and even contemporary classical music. For this reason, electric versions of almost all other similar string instruments have also been produced.

Since all the sound produced by the amplifier comes from string vibrations detected by the electric pickups, an electric guitar that produces minimal acoustic sound may have maximal sustain, since less of the energy from the string oscillations is radiated as sound energy. In contrast to the acoustic guitar and most other acoustic string instruments, the solid-body electric guitar does not rely as extensively on the acoustic properties of its construction to amplify the sound produced by the vibrating strings; as such, the electric guitar does not need to be naturally loud, and its body can be virtually any shape. . The signal may be electrically altered to achieve various tonal effects prior to being fed into an amplifier, which produces the final sound.

An electric guitar is a type of guitar with a solid or semi-solid body that utilizes electronic "pickups" to convert the vibration of the steel-cored strings into electrical current. Gretsch. Peavey. Washburn.

Yamaha. PRS. Dean. Rich.

B.C. ESP. Jackson. Schecter.

Ibanez. Gibson. Fender.