8 Things You Should Know About Your Electric Guitar

The human race has a tendency to avoid basic knowledge about the everyday things. You do not have to know who invented toothbrush, but as a guitarist you should know things like who turned our lives upside down by inventing this awesome instrument or how on earth does it actually work. But we do not try to enlighten ourselves, because for some mysterious reason we believe that being ignorant about things makes us special. Guess what, it doesn’t. So if you want to stand out in the crowd, here are 8 interesting facts that you should know about the instrument you play. Buckle up folks; you are about to become smarter in a world full of ignorant people.

1. Les Paul is not the inventor of electric guitar. An engineer-musician duo is.

Yes, he was indeed the pioneer of the solid body electric guitars; but that does not make him the actual inventor of the electric guitar. According to the Smithsonian, the concept of enhancing stringed instruments’ sounds using electricity was already there by late 19th century. However, the first real electric guitar was created by the united effort of a musician and an electrical engineer. In 1931, Adolph Rickenbacker and George Beauchamp together came up with the Electro A-22 from Rickenbacker, which is also known as the frying pan; which was the very first electric guitar.

2. Acoustic guitar + block of wood = One of the world’s first electric guitars.

In the year 1940, Les Paul did an amazing job by taking a mere solid block of wood and a simple acoustic guitar and combining them into the electric guitar. He did it by putting a 4×4 wood block in the heart of the acoustic guitar. The idea was to minimize body vibration in order to amplify the sound. Pure genius, huh? If only he did it in the 1920’s! The history would have been rewritten.

3. The magic that makes it all happen: electromagnetism.

Turns out, the magic is not magic after all. It is pure science. Electromagnetic signals do all the work when it comes to electric guitars. The pickups of the electric guitar are filled with 6 magnets covered in copper wire, which create a steady magnetic field. The plucking of the strings disrupts this magnetic field. According to the Faraday theory, this disruption in the magnetic field produces electricity, which is transmitted to an amplifier- and voila! You have the loud and clear electric sound.
Then how can we hear different notes when a guitar is played? This is associated with the frequency of the strings. The lower the frequency, the deeper the sound is. The electricity just adjusts itself to the frequency of each string. That is how different notes are produced on the electric guitar.

4. Electric guitars were not always the private properties of the rock bands.

The very first musicians to use the electric guitars were far from the rockers. When it was first introduced in the 1930’s and the 1940’s, artists of various genres including Jazz and Blue singers were the firsts to use electric guitars in their music.

5. Looks matter. A lot more than you think.

You may believe that the looks of the electric guitar does not matter as long as it sounds great. But guess what, for most musicians the appearance of their guitar is almost as equally vital as its sound. By 80’s, guitars were not just for accompanying the songs; they were equally important for the identification of a specific artist. E.V Halen, for instance, used to decorate his own guitars with paints and coloured tapes. He even named his guitars. The first line was called Frankenstein and the second one was known as Frankenstein 2. Together, they were called The Frankenstrats.

6. Bob Dylan 37 years of boycotting the Newport Folk Festival.

In 1965, Bob Dylan used the electric guitar as his accompaniment in the said festival which he boycotted in his later years. He was criticized for his audacity, and the audience booed him. Like all new things, electric guitars were not widely accepted at the time. Using it was considered gaudy and flamboyant. So when Dylan used this controversial instrument, his fans turned their back on him. After that, Dylan boycotted the festival for straight 37 years and did not go back there till 2002.

7. Dylan’s guitar used in 1965 Newport Festival is actually the most expensive one sold at an auction.

In December 2013, the Fender Stratocaster that Bob Dylan used at the infamous 1965 Newport Folk Festival sold for USD 965,000. It broke the record of Eric Clapton’s famous guitar Blackie, which was sold for USD 959,500. Not just that, in addition to Dylan’s guitar, some of the typed and also some handwritten lyric fragments found inside his guitar case were sold too. Amazing what people do out of fandom, right?

8. It is possible to make your own electric guitar.

Many of us love the idea of doing things on our own, but none of us ever tried to make the electric guitar for ourselves. Get ready to be amazed; you can actually do that. All you need is an acoustic guitar and a vinyl recorder. What you will have to do is to just take that needle and the tone arm out of the phonograph and connect them to your guitar. Then the sound of your guitar will come out of the vinyl player. True, the quality isn’t really up to the mark- but something is better than nothing at all!
Now that you know all these magnificent facts about the instrument you play, we are pretty sure that you are definitely standing out in the crowd. A lot of people do not know these fun facts, and the sad part is they don’t even know what they are missing out on. So the next time you go out on the stage and rock the world, throw in some of these facts into your performance. People will never look at you in the same way. So go out there and boggle some minds. And make sure to thank us later.

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