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Acoustic Electric Guitars

Acoustic electric guitars: is this not a contradiction in terms? After all, “acoustic†describes music, or a musical instrument that is not electronically amplified; “electric†however, implies that the music or musical instrument is electronically amplified. Well actually, the wonderful thing about acoustic electric guitars is that they combine both the qualities of the acoustic, which is to control, absorb, and carry sound, as well as the qualities of the electric which is to amplify the sound. Acoustic electric guitars give the player and the listener alike the full benefit of both acoustic and electric qualities.

Acoustic guitars have a hollow body (or at least a portion of the body is hollow) like acoustic instruments, but they also have electric pickups mounted directly onto the body. The purpose of an acoustic electric guitar is to get the tones of an acoustic, but with an increased volume. The most basic and original kind of acoustic electric guitar is an acoustic that has been fitted to include pickups. When these were first introduced, the major problem was with feedback. The electronic pickups couldn’t handle all the vibrations of the instrument and the electrical currents, so a screaming feedback often resulted. In addition, the acoustic sound was often compromised as well because the electric pickups simply could not manage the high frequency sounds.

Today, most acoustic electric guitars have piezoelectric pickups which require a preamplifier made directly into the body of the guitar. The more advanced acoustic electric guitars of today have eliminated these problems and enhanced the quality of sound as they are designed to be truly acoustic-electric as opposed to being acoustic guitars with an electric add-on.

There are two kinds of acoustic electric guitars: the acoustic-electric classical guitar, and the basic acoustic electric guitar. The acoustic-electric classical guitar was designed to amplify the sound. This guitar is first an acoustic instrument, and the electric component is added. This idea was then improved upon, thus the invention of the acoustic electric guitar. Generally speaking, you can remember that acoustic electric guitars are primarily regarded as acoustic instruments because the pickups produce a signal from the vibration of the guitar’s body rather than from the vibration of the strings.

The most valued benefits of an acoustic electric guitar are 1) the ability to plug your instrument into a console without the need for expensive microphone equipment, and 2) the ability to play at very loud volumes while still maintaining the clear, sharp, beautiful tones of the acoustic guitar. These guitars produce both clarity of tone as well as volume and are an excellent choice for many musicians.

The term acoustic electric guitars is not at all a contradiction of terms, rather it refers to the type of guitar that produces an incredible sound at concert levels by its innovative design.

 

About the Author

My name is Peter Suhm and i have played music since i was 9 years old.
Visit my website about electric guitars here:

http://www.find-electric-guitars.info

Can anyone help with the feedback I'm getting from my acoustic guitar?

The thing is, I have a Hohner HW-300 electro-acoustic guitar. It is equipped with a Shadow P3-Pro pickup. When I plug it in my guitar amp, it gets this really loud feedback. Also, there is a Phase switch on the pickup control, next to the EQ, what does that do ? has it anything to do with noise reduction. And one last question: does playing your acoustic guitar through an overdrive pedal damage the guitar amplifier(20w valve amp)?

P.S: when i was referring to the loud feedback, the guitar was on clean, no distortion.
Many thanks!

It doesn't necessarily take much for an acoustic to feed back. You need one of those sound hole caps, its a round rubber "plug" that fits into your guitars sound hole. This should eliminate the feedback.

Gain (ie distortion) and being too close to the amp or speakers are the biggest causes of feedback, but with an acoustic guitar you've got that big ol' body, ie lots of room in there to set up all kinds of resonances. It may not require barely any volume at all before it starts feeding back!

*after some thought*

Have you checked the level of your onboard pickup? Try pulling the level down, and putting all of your EQ controls at mid-range. With active electronics, *usually* 5 = neutral.... so if you're turning them up past that, you may be boosting the output, and that means gain/distortion, which could easily be the culprit of that feedback. This is especially the case with your "mud zone" frequencies, ie 300 - 800 hz, and your mids, anywhere from 700 hz - 3 khz depending on the instrument.

Same thing goes for the EQ controls on your amp. Put 'em all at 5, and put the volume on its lowest audible setting. If you still are getting feedback, then it isn't feedback - you've got some other issue going on, maybe a ground loop or a bad connection or a battery that's going dead or even a bad tube (a tube gone microphonic, for instance, can sound very similar to feedback).

My advice would be to plug your guitar straight into the amp and go item by item through every signal component, and see if you can find that culprit. Put all EQ settings at neutral, and one by one raise each one to 10, drop it to 0, etc, and see if you can turn that feedback off. If you tap one of the tubes (when the amp is on, its safe) lightly with a chopstick and hear the clear bell-like sound coming through the amp, then you've got a bad tube.

The phase switch ... the simplest way to put this is that it flips your signal upside down. This won't make it sound any different to our ears on its own, but if you're recording the guitar via pickup *and* mic'ing it, there is a chance that the signal from your mic will be out of phase with the signal from your pickup. Combining two out-of-phase signals results in a weak, hollow tone. The phase switch inverts the pickups output, which would help solve this dilemma, ie the phase switch can help align the phase of the pickups signal to the phase of the mic's signal.

Gee, I hope that made sense.

You pretty much can't damage your amp by plugging any instrument or pedal into it, unless you do something silly like plug the output of a power amp into it, that would be bad times. What you can damage is your speakers (as the other answerer mentioned).... this is basically from turning the amp up too loud. Your speakers should always be rated for as much or more than the output of your amp to avoid this. Once you start adding distortion, especially, the output of a tube amp really climbs, so higher-rated speakers are a Good Thing.

If you want more thoughts on the matter, feel free to email, okay?

Good luck!

Saul

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