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Quality / Cheap Guitars – You Can Have Both in a Guitar

Author: Tom Borgstrom

In Today’s Market It Is Possible To Own Quality Cheap Guitars Read the rest of this entry »

Basics of Bass Guitars

Author: melvillejackson

The history of bass guitars dates back to 1930s when it was first developed by Paul Tutmarc of Seattle, Washington. A bass guitar looks similar to an electric guitar except it is larger in terms of body and neck length. The guitar is tuned to pitches that are one octave lower than those of the four lower strings of a guitar (E, A, D and G). Like electric guitars, bass guitars are attached to an amplifier or speaker for live performance.

What are bass guitars made of?

The bass guitars usually have bodies made of wood. The body may also be made of other materials like graphite as in some of the Steinberger guitars. Different types of woods are used for the making of the neck, body and the fretboard of the bass guitars. Usually the body is made of alder; the fretboard is made of rosewood and the neck of maple. Other types of woods used are ash, mahogany and maple for bodies, maple and ebony for the fretboard and mahogany for necks. The bass guitars have various flat and curved designs and oil, wax, or lacquer finishes.

What creates the bass effect?

Most of the bass guitars have bodies with hollow chambers to enhance the resonance and tone of the instruments. This design also reduces the weight of the guitars. Acoustic bass guitars usually have piezoelectric or magnetic pick ups and amplifiers. Bass Guitars may also be classified on the basis of the frets. The Fender basses have about 20 frets whereas modern basses have about 24 or more frets. The Fretless basses produce distinct sound due to lack of frets. Usually the bass guitars have four, five or six strings.

You can take formal bass guitars training in a wide range of styles like jazz, rock, Latin, funk and R&B. You may even learn informally from records or CDs. There is a wide variety of brands and styles of bass guitars. You can buy them along with many different accessories according to your individual needs. Some of the accessories that are often required are amplifiers, cables, straps, tuners, headphones, Instructional DVDs and gig bags. You can even shop online. The different websites will offer you the opportunity to make a well informed buy. They can also create personalized packages that contain the accessories that you want to suit your individual tastes and preferences.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/basics-of-bass-guitars-1357853.html

About the Author

At World Music Supply, we offer acoustic guitars in all your favorite models and styles. From Strats (Stratocasters) to Teles (Telecasters), jazzy arch-tops to cool signatures, metal guitars, and even smaller sized guitars for those just beginning, we’ve got something for everyone, in top brands like Fender, ESP, B.C. Rich, and Jackson.

Choose Electric over Acoustic – Guitars

Author: Lisa M

Electric guitars are used in various forms and styles of music including pop, country, rock and roll, jazz or blues. These guitars are used largely in rock music, and are a bit more forgiving than are acoustic guitars. Depending on the venue, electric guitars are one of the most common guitars used in the 20th century.

The strings used on electric guitars are steel strings as on acoustic guitars, but usually of a much lighter gauge so they are generally easier on your fingers. The guitars themselves are much heavier than are acoustic guitars. The wood is heavier and the electronic parts on the inside add weight to the guitar, as well. While the specific wood type for the body, neck and fingerboard is less of a factor in electric guitars, the wood chosen for a particular electric guitar does contribute its distinctive sound and as well as the feel of the guitar in your hands and even in your style of playing. The neck of the electric guitar must also take more stress due to the heavy body of the guitar.

Because of the type of strings used on the electric guitar, they are considered to be easier to play. The lighter gauge of the strings for the electric guitar makes picking and strumming much simpler. The trade-off, of course, is the weight of the guitar and ability to be heard by larger audiences.

Electric guitars are slightly more expensive than are acoustic guitars but quality electric guitars can be found in the lower price ranges, as well. The important thing to remember in planning to purchase an electric guitar is that they only sound good with an amplifier, so you must count on purchasing one of those as well as the guitar.

While various historians would argue about the time frame, electric guitars became popular in the 1960’s and 1970′s. At that point, rock n’ roll was the prevailing culture in the world of music. Electric guitars became a necessity in the competition with the amplified instruments used by jazz orchestras. They quickly became popular, even though there were some difficulties with their construction. The body of the electric guitar would vibrate because of the amplified sounds that came through the speakers, to which they were connected, causing what we know as feed-back. Electric guitars don’t work with microphones, but with special pickups on the body of the guitar that senses the movement of strings. These pickups also tend to pick up the various electrical noises of the room, giving the guitar a bit of a “hum” which can be a very large or very small depending on where the guitar is being played. Several different designs for electric guitars were tried and left unused because of this difficulty in the decades before the 70’s. However, the Les Paul by Gibson and the Stratocaster by Fender rose above the other models to help eliminate some of these difficulties and secured their place in electric guitar history.

There are many types of electric guitars: solid body, hollow body and metal body. The solid body electric guitar is actually carved from hardwood and has a lacquer finish. The guitars with the metal bodies are affected by the “weight relief” holes that are bored into the solid metal guitars or they are chambered metal so that the guitar will not weigh so much. The hollow bodied electric guitars are said to add resonance and sustain to the guitar while being lighter in weight for the guitarists handling of the instrument. The hollow body electric guitars have the pick-ups mounted in such a way that they convert the combination of the string and the instrument’s body vibration into the electrical signal sent to the amplifier.

Electric guitars are great instruments to have around. They can be played for large audiences and their versatility of style is excellent. Earphones are a great addition to the guitar and the amplifier for the student who lives in the house with others that don’t necessarily want to hear the instrument played all night or all day. With this one upgrade, the electric guitar is a great addition to the other instruments in my household!

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/choose-electric-over-acoustic-guitars-940568.html

About the Author

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Popular Types of Guitars

Author: Victor Epand

The list for popular types of guitars can be endless. Guitars come in a variety of shapes, sizes, colors and types. There are acoustic guitars, electric acoustic guitars, semi hollow guitars, electric guitars, twelve string guitars, four string bass guitars, five string bass guitars; the catalog goes on and on.

Acoustic guitars

Acoustic guitar is independent of any external device to be heard. The acoustic guitar is more sober than other instruments commonly found in bands and orchestras. To play within such groups the sound is often externally amplified. Acoustic guitars, which are available today, feature a variety of pickups. This enables the player to increase and adjust the raw guitar sound.

Prominent subcategories feature within the acoustic guitar group

Classical and flamenco guitars; steel string guitars, that comprise the folk or flat top guitar; arch top guitar and the twelve string guitars. There are unamplified guitars also in the acoustic guitar group.

Such types are designed to play in various registers such as the acoustic bass guitar. The tuning of the acoustic bass guitar is similar to that of the electric bass guitar.

Classical guitars
These are normally strung with nylon strings, to be played in a seated pose and are used to play a variety of musical styles together with classical music. The classical guitar is designed in such a way that it allows the execution of solo polyphonic arrangements of music

Portuguese guitar
The Portuguese guitar is a 12 string guitar used in Portugal for the customary Fado songs.

Archtop guitars
Steel string instruments feature a violin inspired f hole design where the top (and often the back) of the instrument are engraved in a curved rather than a flat shape.

Flat top (steel string) guitars
Here the body dimension is typically considerably larger than a classical guitar and it has a narrower, resistant neck and stronger structural design

Resonator, resophonic or Dobro guitars
The hum of the resonator guitar is created by a metal resonator fitted in the middle of the top.

Tenor guitars
Some classical guitarists call the Niibori prime guitar a Tenor Guitar on the grounds that it sits in pitch between the alto and the bass.

Harp guitars
This consists of a usual guitar, with additional harp strings strung on top of the six normal strings. The instrument is generally acoustic and the harp strings are adjusted to lower notes than the guitar strings, for an added bass range.

Acoustic bass guitars
This type has steel strings or guts strings in it and often has the same tuning as an electric bass guitar.

12 string guitars
Instead of having only six strings, the 12 string guitar has six courses made up of two strings each, like a mandolin or f lute.

Electric guitars
Electric guitars are the types, which have solid, semi hollow, or hollow bodies, and generate minute sound without amplification. The electromagnetic vibrations of the strings are converted into electrical signals, which are supplied to an amplifier via a cable or radio transmitter. Sound outputted is regularly modified by other electronic instruments or the natural distortion of valves (vacuum tubes) in the amplifier.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/popular-types-of-guitars-252542.html

About the Author

Victor Epand is an expert consultant for guitars, drums, and synthesizers. You can find the best marketplace for guitars, drums, and synthesizers at these 3 sites: guitars, classical guitars, electric guitars, drums, drum sets, drum kits, and synthesizers, keyboards.