Electro Acoustic Guitar

I've been thinking about getting hold of a new electro acoustic guitar, and have been doing a little research to jog my memory, as it's been a while since I purchased a new instrument.  This hub contains information on what I'll be looking for in my new guitar, and what you may want to take into account if you're thinking of buying one.

If you're a guitarist, and especially if you're a performer (rather than a solely home-based guitarist), it's likely you'll have come across an electro acoustic guitar at some point.  No doubt if you are a professional guitarist, you'll own one (or several) already.  This hub really isn't for the experienced guitarist; it's intended as simple, but necessary, advice for the beginner.

So for the uninitiated, electro acoustic guitars are basically acoustic guitars, but specially fitted with one or more “pickups”. A pickup is used to detect (or pick up!) the resonance of the strings and send the sound as an electric signal to an amplifier or wall speakers. A traditional acoustic guitar would generally be amplified with a microphone. This means that for performing, the electro acoustic guitar easily wins in terms of ease-of-use, but it also means that the sound, when amplified, won't always be an exact reproduction of the non-amplified sound. However, they can be great for performing acoustic covers.

This is a tough question to answer, because they range in value so much, depending on manufacturing method, wood quality, etc.  My apologies to you Americans, but I'm British, so my advice will have to be in pounds.  I'm not really qualified on advising how much to spend on a guitar in the US, simply because I've never needed to research their prices there.

If you're a beginner, don't feel you need to spend huge amounts.  Rather than looking at the quality of the pickups etc., it's best to choose a guitar that sounds nice (so you don't get sick of it!), but is also easy to play.  Something with “low action”, which means stings close to the fretboard can make the guitar playing easier.  However, the danger of that is that if the action is too low, it can produce more buzzing and feedback when played through an amp.  A good quality neck can also really help and ensure it's easier to learn the correct fingerings for chords etc.  When you're a beginner everything else should be a secondary concern.  However, ask the music shop owner for advice and perhaps a demonstration when you go down to the shop.

There is no best electro acoustic guitar for the beginner, but a decent entry-level one doesn't need to cost any more than £150, and really could be as low as £110 → £120 (again this is for a beginner).  Brands such as Yamaha and Ibanez produce good quality, but entry-level instruments.  If you're a professional, advice on what guitar you should buy is definitely out of the scope of this article!  You need to carefully decide on an instrument based on its sound, the music you'll be playing, where you'll be playing it etc.  Professional instruments can cost well over £1000.

This is really down to personal preference.  I actually don't perform often, and quite often will just play on an acoustic guitar.  If you do like to perform, or if you're  beginner and intend to perform at some point down the line, it can be a worthwhile investment.

A lot of beginners want to emulate their favourite bands, who are usually some flavour of rock.  This is fine; great even.  However, it also means their initial thoughts when deciding to play the guitar are to go out and buy a great electric guitar and amp.  For the absolute beginner, I caution against this. 

The problem is that (1) if you're playing through an amp, it can be harder to concentrate on one aspect of your technique when it's so hard at first to produce a really clean sound; and (2) electric guitars are often much easier to play that their acoustic counterparts.  If you learn only on the electric, it's possible to become (slightly) lazy.  If you begin to learn on an acoustic, and only when the technique starts to fall into place you switch to an electric, you'll find the whole thing much easier. 

It's a mistake to think you'll never play an acoustic; if you want to be any good at all, you need to learn the instrument thoroughly and learn all the diverse ways of playing it – this is how you'll slowly begin to master the instrument.  This is my opinion on the matter, and I know there are many varying thoughts.  Please do feel free to leave comments if you disagree!

So firstly, what is a pickup? Well technically it's a device (called a transducer) that converts one type of energy into another. In the case of a musical instrument, it converts the energy released from the vibrations of the strings into electrical energy (it usually does this by detecting the magnetic resonance in the steel strings). All you really need to know is that it converts the sound of the guitar into an electric signal ready to be amplified.

Different guitars utilise different types of pickup. In an electro acoustic classical guitar, the pickup generally consists of specially made microphones. This is because a classical guitar will have mostly nylon strings, and a traditional transducer won't be able to detect the resonance using a magnetic field. This means that, if it's a good quality pickup, and indeed a good quality guitar, the sound when amplified will often be very true to the guitar's natural sound.

These days the most common pickup for a standard electro acoustic guitar or electro acoustic bass guitar will be either a magnetic pickup (as mentioned above), or more and more commonly, the piezoelectric pickup. A good quality piezoelectric pickup can give a very true sound, and can also be found on many electric violins and cellos. Guitars with a piezoelectric pickups will generally also have a “pre-amp” (a bit of circuitry that processes the signal before being sent to the main amp) built in. Due to this, they usually have tone and gain controls on the guitar - very useful!

If you're a natural musician, you may also like to learn to play violin (although you'll need a lot of time on your hands for its study).