Friday, November 11, 2016

Electric Guitar Parts – Pickups And Controls For Beginners

For a beginner, the different electric guitar parts present on his or her instrument can seem confusing. What are the different parts called, and what do they do? You can find lots of information on-line on what each part is called, and cursory descriptions of the different pieces are easy to come by, too.
However, it can be more difficult to find good information on how specific parts actually function. In this article, we will focus on explaining some of the electronic parts of an electric guitar. Specifically, we will focus on describing to a beginner the functions of the pickups and the controls.

Pickups

The pickups are some of the most important electric guitar parts. Not only are they vital for the instrument to work at all, they are also some of the most important parts of electric guitar tone.
Poor quality pickups can severely deteriorate your sound. A pickup is also known as a transducer, and it converts the movement of magnetic strings into an electric current. Pickups can use different materials in their construction, and they can also be wound with different wire. These properties change how the pickup affects the sound.
Typically, a low output pickup will be cleaner and brighter sounding, while a higher output pickup will sound deeper and will drive an amplifier into harder distortion.
Note that pickups do not create sound. They simply add color to the inherent sound of the guitar. For this reason, a poor guitar will not always be improved by pickups that are more expensive.

Controls

Your guitar almost certainly has a number of knobs and at least one switch. Different models vary in the exact number of each. The switch allows you to choose which pickups you hear. Even if each pickup is the same, they will sound different because they are picking up different parts of the string. Most switches allow combinations of pickups, which typically offer a slightly more acoustic timbre. The knobs control volume and tone. The former is self-explanatory; the latter should be set on ten by default and can then be reduced to mellow the sound.
Electric guitar parts vary a great deal between models. The parts of an electric guitar will be tailored to suit a particular player and a particular style of music.
Remember that the guitar itself is only one of the parts of electric guitar tone; the amplifier and any effects pedals will play vital roles in shaping your sound.

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