The Parts of an Electric Guitar

The electric guitar’s music is passed through a pickup and an amp before it gets to our ears. Pickups used to be made using a single coil of wire but many guitarists disliked the hum they produced. Pickups with two coils were developed in the nineteen fifties. These got rid of the hum and were called “humbuckers”. There are many variations that can be made with pickups and their configuration which produce different qualities of sound.

There are solid body electric guitars that derive their sound almost exclusively from the pickups and electronic circuitry and there are hollow body and semi-hollow body guitars whose bodies make a big contribution to the quality of the sound.