Guitar Buyer's Guide To Electric Guitars

Knowledge is preparation when you want to buy a good electric guitar. We've already looked at the parts of the acoustic guitar so we'll just concentrate on the parts that are specific to the electric guitar.

Parts of the Electric Guitar

First of all, the electric guitar produces sound differently from an acoustic. Magnetic pickups convert the vibrations of the strings into an electrical signal, which is then amplified. The input jack is where you plug in a cord that connects to an amplifier. Sound along the length of the vibrating string differs due to the amount of movement of the string. Pluck a string close to the bridge and it sounds brighter and thinner, pluck it closer to the neck and it sounds more full. The placement of the pickups reflects this. A pickup closer to the bridge picks up that brighter tone, and one closer to the neck the fuller tone. The pickup selector lets you switch pickups singly or in combination to achieve different tonal qualities.

The vibrato or tremolo bar smoothly alters the pitch of the strings by releasing or adding tension. Unlike the saddle of an acoustic, the electric guitar has separate adjustable saddles for each string.

Because they use pickups, electric guitars don't need to have a hollow body, though there are hollowbody and semi-hollo body electric guitars, and many manufacturers offer solid body models with resonance cavities in order to make them lighter and give them better resonant characteristics.

Hollowbody electric guitars commonly have an arched top, hence the nickname archtops. These are prized by jazz guitarists for their full tone and bass response, but they have problems with uncontrollable feedback when played at high volume. A semi-hollowbody has a solid center below the pickups to allow cranking up the volume without feedback.

Electric guitars have three different kinds of pickups, single-coil, humbuckers, and piezo. Sometimes a guitar has only one type, sometimes two, and sometimes all three. The single coil is pictured above, with humbuckers shown on the hollowbody guitars shown below. Single-coil pickups produce a bright, sharp tone that is preferred by many guitarists. The simplest type can produce a hum due to interference with some electrical fields. Humbuckers are designed to cancel out that hum by combining two coils wrapped opposite each other. The two coils produce a more powerful signal and a tone that's more smooth and round. Some humbuckers allow you to use only a single coil in order to get a brighter sound. Piezoelectric pickups are typically found in the guitar's saddle. They have a weak signal that requires an onboard preamp to boost the signal to the amplifier. They can be used in combination with magnetic pickups or separately, and produce a unique sound. The signal is often modified for synthesizer effects or to make the electric guitar sound like an acoustic.

A Hollowbody Guitar

Note the sound holes on the sides of the guitar's top. These are known as f-holes, and are similar to the sound holes of instruments in the violin family.

A Semi-Hollowbody Guitar

The distance between the guitar's bridge and the nut is called the scale length. Many manufacturers, including Fender, ESP, and Ibanez, produce guitars with a scale length of 25 1/2". This longer distance requires higher tension in the strings, which causes a high, trebly tone. Lighter strings are commonly used to compensate for the playing difficulties of the higher tension. Gibson, Dean, and other manufacturers produce models with a scale length of 24 3/4" with lower tension, easier playing, and a fuller, more bassy tone. There are other scale lengths, such as the 25" on PRS guitars.

Electric guitars may have a bolt-on neck, a set neck, or a neck-through design. Bolt-ons, such as on most Fender guitars, set the neck in a slot and hold it there with screws. It makes repair and replacement of the neck easier, as well as being cheaper to produce. Set necks, used by Gibson guitars and others, are glued into the body, normally with a tenon extending far into the body. Neck-through guitars use a single piece of wood from the head all the way to the tail. This design produces incredible sustain, and is generally more expensive.

The two types of bridges on an electric guitar are called tremolo and non-tremolo or hardtail, and the bar on a tremolo bridge that is used to create a pitch variation is often called a tremolo bar or whammy bar. Tremolo is correct because of common usage, but the term is actually misapplied. Tremolo is a regular, repeated variation in volume, not pitch. The proper term for regular variation in pitch is vibrato. The tremolo bridge is designed to allow the player to smoothly vary the tension of the strings. It's quite an engineering marvel to allow that slackening and tightening of tension and have the strings come back in tune when you release the whammy bar. Some popular systems incorporate a locking nut where the neck meets the head of the guitar to help keep the instrument in tune.

So that's a look at what goes into the construction of an electric guitar. These are some of the things you should look for, so you know what options are available when you're deciding which guitar you should buy.