–The construction of electric guitars, and the size of electric guitars
Electric guitars are the product of modern science and technology. From appearance to sound, there are obvious differences with traditional guitars. The body is made of new hardwood and is equipped with a volume, tone adjuster and tremolo structure. With the use of effects, electric guitars have a strong expressive power and have a very important position in modern music. The classification of electric guitars is also very diverse. Not only can it be divided in structure, but also in materials, bridges, playing styles, etc. The following small series introduces you to the types of electric guitars. What is the structure of the electric guitar?
What is the size of an electric guitar?
What types of electric guitars are there?
By structure
Bolt-on: The neck is locked on the guitar body with four screws. This type of guitar is represented by Fender.
Set-in: The neck is glued to the body. This type of guitar is represented by Gibson.
Through neck: The neck is fully supported, and the body is made of two pieces of wood. This kind of guitar is more out of Carvin, and there are many ESPs in the early days. But now perhaps the increase in cost, perhaps the difficulty of making technology, has been rare.
Divided by material
The material of the fingerboard: In addition to a few synthetic materials, it can be divided into maple, rosewood, and ebony. The material of the neck: Most are maple and mahogany.
Body material: This is much more. Most Fender-style guitars use Alder, some use Basswood, and most Gibson-style guitars have a maple on top of a mahogany. Poplar is very similar to Alder, so it is often used. Ash is also often used to make the body.
By pickup
According to the pickup, it can be divided into single coil and double coil. Divided by their circuits, they can be divided into active and passive. Although the shape, color and style of electric guitars are different. But usually the following four types are divided into the number and arrangement of pickups:
STRAT pickup: single coil
LES PAUL pickup: Humbucker
HYBRID pickups: Single humbucker
According to the bridge of the electric guitar, it can be divided into fixed type and floating type. According to the type of sound vocalization, it is divided into a body without a resonance box and a body with a sound box. According to the type of performance, it is divided into hardtail guitar, single rock guitar and double rock guitar. Other classifications of electric guitars can be divided according to the width of the fingerboard, the length of the chord, the curvature of the fingerboard, and the size of the guitar.
Electric guitar construction
Sound device
Compared with traditional acoustic guitars, electric guitars lack a resonance box, and the body part is made of solid wood. The electric guitar is pronounced by connecting an audio speaker (speaker) through an electromagnetic pickup device (pickup). Therefore, the volume of the pronunciation can be adjusted. By getting rid of the limitations of the resonance box, the range of the ordinary guitar is enlarged, and the expression of the high position is greatly enhanced. In addition, since the electric guitar volume can be large or small, the sound value can be long or short. Therefore, compared to ordinary wooden guitars, there is more room for maneuver in performance. In terms of performance of portamento, vibrato and percussion (which is the outstanding feature of guitar instruments), it is more than enough. Moreover, the sound of the electric guitar can be changed and modified by various effects to achieve various effects, and to play various styles of music, it is the charm of this instrument.
The electric guitar must be sounded through a sound amplification device, and the cable and the sound reinforcement device can be connected by a cable, or a wireless transmitter can be used to achieve the connection between the piano and the loudspeaker. When playing, you usually have to connect various effects to make a variety of styles of sound. The neck structure is similar to an acoustic guitar, but the character is increased to 22 or 24 frets or even higher.
Compared to the acoustic guitar, the electric guitar’s high-positioned performance is more comfortable and more powerful, using thin, soft and magnetic steel strings. The connection between the neck and the body is generally divided into: Bolt-on, set-in, through-neck. Classified by shape, the neck is also divided into U, C and V to meet the needs of different hand types.
Electric guitar basic structure
Gibson was the first company to produce a solid guitar. At the beginning, of course, most of them are modeled on the traditional structure, and the guitar handle is glued to the body.
On the other hand, the guitar’s surface is arched in the same way as the structure of the violin, so this type of guitar is also called Arch top. This type of guitar is more expensive to make, so the Gibson guitar has always been more expensive. In response to the needs of most poor guitarists, Leo Fender was the first to design a guitar with a screw to lock the handle. Originally called Broadcaster, it was quickly changed to Telecaster because of the name copyright issue.
Because the handle locked with a screw can be easily replaced, this greatly reduces the manufacturing cost. Since then, guitarists have had good and cheap guitars available.
Leo Fender is really a big contributor to modern guitar music. Fender guitars don’t just lock the guitar’s handle with screws. The head is an anti-traditional one that doesn’t use the usual 13 to 15 degree elevation angle, but a flat guitar head. This of course reduces the cost, but the most important thing is that it reduces the pressure on the string pillow, and the sound becomes clear due to the lack of sustain, which is very popular with the country musicians at that time. Soon after, Leo Fender designed the Stratocaster with double concave body, called Strat. This guitar is popular with musicians, such as Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, and Richie Blackmore. It also laid the foundation for the Strat-style guitar. Fender’s guitar is mainly clear, everyone said that its sound is thinner, and Gibson’s guitar is better because of its thicker sound. Between thick and thin, only after listening can decide which one is what you like.
It is worth mentioning that the steel bar in the guitar handle was invented by Gibson. The principle is to dig an arched groove in the middle of the guitar handle with a steel bar in the middle. One end of the steel bar is fixed, and one end is screwed to the handle. When the screw is locked, the handle is bent backwards, so that the tension of the string can be balanced.
Most of the guitar’s grooves are dug from the side of the fingerboard. When the fingerboard is attached, the groove is not visible. Fender’s guitar was dug from the back of the handle and then covered with a wooden strip. So Fender is often laughed like a stinky mole. But the advantage of this method is that the entire handle can be made from a whole piece of wood.
This sounds brighter and crisper. Of course, the price is also more expensive. In addition, Gibson’s scale length is 24-3/4 inches, while Fender’s scale length is 25-1/2 inches. This allows the same string to be tightened on the Fender compared to Gibson. This is one of the reasons why the two guitars are different. In addition, Gibson’s fingerboard has a nut width (1-3/4″) wider than the Fender (1-11/16″) at the nut, but opposite at the lower nut. Therefore, the pickups of the two guitars are not interchangeable.
1.Material
The following are some of the woods commonly used for guitars.
Maple: The wood for the fingerboard is almost all maple except mahogany. The characteristic of maple is that the sound is bright, but it must be painted to protect it, otherwise it will be cracked easily. The fingerboards of a few special guitars are not painted, but are protected by oiling (Tung oil). Maple is rarely used for the body, because it is too bright and too heavy. Many Fender guitar fingerboards are made of maple, which sounds brighter. Because maple must be painted, so when the bullets are actually only touched the paint, the smooth transparent paint makes people feel very fast. But the downside is that the paint will wear out, and the unprotected maple will turn black, hard to see, or even chapped. This is said to be the reason why Leo Fender originally changed the maple fingerboard to red sandalwood.
Rosewood is the most popular fingerboard wood. The sound is much softer than maple because it contains a lot of oil. Because of this, it does not require lacquer protection and requires almost no maintenance. It is more expensive and has become increasingly out of stock in recent years. Because it is very heavy, no one uses the red sandalwood to make the body.
Ebony: Another piece of wood used as a fingerboard. It was originally a material for the piano black keys. Its wood is very smooth, almost no wood grain, sound dry, and a dull feeling.
Often used as a fingerboard for classical guitars and acoustic guitars. The biggest disadvantage of ebony is that it needs regular maintenance, otherwise it will chapped. The lemon oil should be enough last year. No one used ebony to make the body.
Mahogany: All Gibson Les Paul guitars are made of mahogany. This wood sound is softer than maple and the color is darker than maple. But because the sound lacks high pitch, a piece of maple is attached to the Les Paul guitar to increase brightness. Its weight is not light, which is why Les Paul guitar is better. The source of mahogany is very rare and cannot be farmed. So the price is much more expensive than other woods that make the body, and one day it will not be used for guitars, so if you want to buy it, buy it early. Alder: The Fender guitar uses the most wood, it’s light weight, sounds good, the color is a bit yellowish, and the smooth wood grain is well painted. Poplar: Nature is very similar to alder wood, but the color is whiter. It is also often used as the wood for guitar bodies. Basswood: Another wood that is often used by Fender, is light in weight, soft in sound, and white in color. However, because there are often green wood grain, it is not suitable for clear paint. Ash: Many of the Fenders of the 1950s were made of red oak. It has a brighter, slightly heavier color and is suitable for clear lacquer. Koa: This kind of wood that grows only in Hawaii is now also used as a guitar. Carvin, the color is dark brown, and it is not painted to maintain its special color.
2.Pickup
The principle of pickup is very simple. First, a magnet is used to generate the magnetic field, and then a coil is placed in the magnetic field. When the string vibrates, the magnetic field is changed. At this time, an induced voltage is generated in the current circle, and the amplifier is used to amplify it as the electric guitar we hear. The sound is gone. Basically, the pickup is represented by a single coil commonly used by Fender humbucker commonly used by Gibson.
Early pickups were made by winding a layer of coils around a strip of magnets. Fender first replaced the magnet with six separate small magnets, so that each magnet has a magnet that provides a strong magnetic field. Therefore, high-pitched teaching is easy to appear, which is another reason why Fender’s piano is clear. But this has to pay a price. First, a strong magnetic field tends to block the vibration of the string, which is why Fender’s sustain is poor.
Therefore, when adjusting the Fender’s pickup, you must not adjust it too close to the string, otherwise you will not be able to vibrate first. The second disadvantage is that when the string is pushed, the string is pushed away from the magnet, so that the magnetic field is weakened, the output signal is weakened, and the guitar sound is different in size. The third drawback is the biggest drawback. Single-pin pickups are easy to receive outside noise, especially 60 Hz.
As long as it is too close to the expansion of the fluorescent light, the noise of the guitar will be unbearable. But many people think that this is the feature of Fender, not a single coil.
To solve the noise problem, Gibson’s Seth Lover invented a humbucker that cancels noise in 1955. The pickup uses a row of magnets placed on the bottom of the pickup, and is clamped to both sides of the magnet with two rows of six screws and a coil is placed on top of the magnet. The magnetic field passing through the two coils is just the opposite. However, if the two coils are wound in opposite directions, the signals produced by the strings themselves are just added together. However, the external noise cancels each other because of the opposite direction of the coils. So the noise is naturally much less. But this also offset some of the high notes, which is one of the reasons why Gibson’s voice sounds thicker. In addition, since only one strip magnet is used, the magnetism is small and the vibration of the string is not hindered. Therefore, the sustain of the double coil is longer, and the output of the double coil is much larger than that of the single coil, which makes it easier to distort the expander.
Therefore, Gibson guitars with Marshall amplifiers are often standard equipment for rock guitarists. In addition to the most basic single-double coil problem, the thickness of the copper wire and the number of turns are greatly affected. The more the number of turns, the larger the output, but the weaker the treble. If you want to test a new pickup before you put it on the guitar, you can use a three-meter meter to measure it. Usually the resistance of a pickup is between 4K and 14K. The lower the resistance, the brighter the book is, but the smaller the book is, the more boring it is, but the output is large. In order to match the resistance of the coil, the single-coil guitar usually has a high-pitched tuning button of 250K and a double-coil with 500K. In addition, the value of the capacitor used to eliminate the treble will also affect the sound of the pickup. Generally use .02μF to .047μF, the larger the capacitance value, the more the treble is cut, so it becomes more and more stuffy. Some guitars don’t have a capacitor, so they sound particularly sharp. Now there are two-coil pickups that can switch the series and parallel of the coils, and the sound is brighter when connected in parallel. But still different from the real single coil. In addition, Fender is looking for the guitarist’s request to reverse the output of the Strat middle pickup and the other two pickups. This way, when the selector of the pickup is dialed to 2 or 4, a special sound can be generated in which the two pickups cancel each other out of the signal, which is a bit like an automatic doll. Some double-coil guitars also offer this option with a phase selector switch
3.Tremolo
The earliest electric guitar was a violin. So there is a tail behind the bridge. Later, Gibson invented the commonly used fixed bridge called Tunamatic bridge. The rear of the bridge is fixed by a metal strip called stop tail piece, so the tail of the violin is short. Each string has its own independent bridge that can be chord-length, and Gibson’s guitars have used this bridge until now. Some Gibson guitars, especially jazz guitars, use the Bigsby tremolo. This kind of tremolo does not fix the bridge to a piece of iron, and then achieves the effect of vibrating by pulling the iron to lower the tension of the string, that is, winding the string on a cylinder and then rotating the cylinder. Achieve the same effect. This type of tremolo is not practical. It sounds like a shake, and most of it just looks good. Fender’s Telecaster fashion is a hardtail bridge. However, there is no metal rod behind the bridge to fix the string, and the string is passed through the body. Each of the six strings shares a saddle. After the launch of the stratocastor, each string has a separate string saddle, and the entire bridge is fixed to the guitar with six screws. When using the rocker to lift the iron plate forward, the string can be loosened to achieve the effect of vibrating. This tremolo is very popular after its launch, which is another great contribution of Leo Fender in the history of modern guitar. With the evolution of modern guitar music, Fender-style joysticks can’t stand the abuse of guitarists. After a while, the strings often go through the friction of the upper and lower strings. To solve this problem, Floyd Rose designed the Double Lock tremolo. The upper nut locks with three screws. The lower nut has a similar device to lock the upper nut, which makes the fine adjustment device even more. The entire bridge is basically similar to Fender. But the biggest difference is that unlike Fender, which uses six screws, Floyd Rose uses two, and the entire rocker is “floating.”
In other words, the rocker can be pressed down to relax the string, or it can be pulled back and tighten the string. This rocker created the special voice of Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and others. This kind of floating rocker is not without cost. First, the winding pillow is made of metal, which is enough to make the guitar sound sharper, and in order to fit the string pillow, you must drill a hole in the guitar handle. This will definitely weaken the already weak guitar head. The floating device reduces the contact between the bridge and the body, thus affecting the sustain and making the sound brighter. So, if you have a big rocker on your Les Paul and you find that the original thick voice is gone, don’t be surprised. But like any guitar, as long as you think it’s good.
How big is the size of an electric guitar?
The folk guitars are mainly available in 40-inch and 41-inch models. Although the length is only one inch apart, the design of the case is completely different. The width of the guitar body is about 4 cm, and the visual difference is relatively large. The average girl is suitable for 40-inch, and the men are suitable for the 41-inch acoustic guitar. If you have higher requirements for the sound, then it is best to use a 41-inch acoustic guitar. The sound of this model is the best.
Classical guitar size standard
The standard version of the classical guitar is 39 inches, no other style. Since the classical guitar is a more professional instrument, in order to achieve the best sound, the surface of the body is basically wood color, not too much decoration, and no decorative paint. Electric guitar size standard The electric guitar is sounded through the pickup. Since there is no speaker in it, it is small in size and volume, and there is no requirement for size. The price of electric guitar is not expensive.
Again, the 38-inch model is an exercise guitar. The guitar was invented by a foreigner and belongs to a Western musical instrument. The original model does not have a size of 38 inches.
The 38-inch guitar is unique to our guitar manufacturers in order to cater to the needs of beginners for low-cost guitars. Therefore, the 38-inch model is mostly made of low-quality materials, and is decorated with exquisite paint technology. Its quality and tone are relatively inferior.