Electric Guitar Sounds

The electric guitar is a musical instrument based on electrical sound pickup. In contrast to a classical concert guitar, which works by amplifying the string vibrations through the acoustic sound body, the electric guitar has a solid wooden body and works purely electromagnetically.

Over the decades, electric guitars from certain brands have become established in various music genres, sometimes even individual models. There are an endless number of brands, types and models on the market. This raises the question: How different do the guitars really sound? And which factors of the player, or the guitar itself, influence the sound?

In order to clarify these questions a series of tests were carried out with professional guitarists and a wide selection of guitars. The tests examined how the guitars themselves differ from each other in terms of sound, what influence the playing style and possibly changed picks have, and how the instrument cables can influence the sound. In addition, the influence of the microphones used to record the amplifier was also investigated, as well as the positioning of these microphones in front of the loudspeaker cabinet.
The procedure and results are documented in the subpages.

The electric guitar primarily consists of a solid body and a neck made of wood, a fretboard, six strings, control knobs, pickups, and potentially a vibrato bar.

Construction

Most electric guitars have a solid wooden body. The wood can be carved in all kinds of shapes and sizes. High-quality woods are often used to build the electric guitar, even if the sound properties of the wood are not relevant to the sound of an electric guitar.

There are also semi-acoustic electric guitars, which have a hollow body and (mostly two) sound holes.

Types
Today's guitar market is mainly divided into three electric guitars (and all their successors, signature editions, modifications and replicas from other companies): the Fender Telecaster, the Fender Stratocaster and the Gibson Les Paul.

The Fender Telecaster was built by Leo Fender in 1950 and was the first commercially successful electric guitar. As a competing product, Gibson developed the Les Paul guitar in 1952. Its success was surpassed in 1954 when the Fender Stratocaster came onto the market.

Pickups
There are basically two different types of pickups: single coil and humbucker.
A single coil pickup consists of a single coil wound around a permanent magnet. The string vibration above this pickup induces an alternating voltage with the frequency of the string vibration. The voltage is approximately 0.1V.

A humbucker (also hum compensation coil) pickup consists of two single coils wound in opposite directions, which thereby generate magnetic fields in opposite directions. The string vibration induces a phase-twisted voltage in both coils, which is compensated for by the opposite winding. This structure reduces the susceptibility to hum. This type of pickup is typically installed in Gibson Les Paul guitars.

The Fender Stratocaster, see the picture on the right, has three single coil pickups.
The positions of these pickups are called neck, middle and bridge. The neck pickup is positioned directly under the neck.

Switches and Knobs
Electric guitars can have several switches and knobs to change the sound or volume.

The pickup selector switch allows you to select individual pickups or combinations of pickups. For example, with the Fender Stratocaster, this allows five possible configurations of the three pickups:

In the intermediate positions, the two pickups involved act like a humbucker.

For a guitar with two humbucker pickups, 3 configurations are possible:

In addition, there is a volume control and one or more "tone" controls, which have a high-cut function and/or dampen electrical resonance in the upper frequency range (see influence of instrument cables).

Amplifiers
The motivation for developing electric guitars was to amplify the electrical signals so that the guitar is loud enough in a band context. This amplification is done with the guitar amplifier (short form "amp") and a loudspeaker box connected to it. Amp and speaker in one housing exist as a so-called combo amplifier. Interestingly, amplifiers with tubes are still preferred to this day.
The selection and combination options for amplifiers on the market are endless. The products from Fender and Marshall can be named as market leaders, but other brands are also preferred depending on the genre. In the age of digital signal processors (DSP), all amplifier sounds can be emulated very realistically.

Effect devices that cover a very broad spectrum of sound shaping are often put by guitarists into the signal path between the guitar output and amplifier input. All of these devices are connected with so-called patch cables, short instrument cables.

In recording sessions with professional guitarists, several sound recordings were made under controlled conditions.

In a guitar comparison, the influence of each guitar on the sound was recorded. All other parameters were kept as constant as possible. By changing the pickup selector switch position, at least three recordings were made for each guitar and genre.

Playing style has a very important but not technically measurable influence on the sound of an electric guitar. Therefore, acoustic comparisons based on recordings are crucial. The influence of playing style is examined in this subsection.

In the pick comparison, the tonal impact of different picks was analyzed. Various shapes and thicknesses of picks were considered.

Instrument cables are used for signal transmission between the guitar and the amplifier. The length of this cable affects the sound heard at the speaker output. This test describes the influence of instrument cables.

Guitar loudspeakers have a significant influence on the sound due to their irregular frequency response. Instead of taking signals directly from the amplifier output for recording (as is quite common with electric basses), microphones are used that are positioned in front of the speaker membrane. The choice of microphones is described in this microphone comparison (electric guitar).

The positioning of the microphone in front of the speaker has also a significant tonal influence. The microphone comparison at the guitar amplifier illustrates this.

Additionally, there are other sound-forming elements that could not be investigated in these recording sessions: