subject: The Difference Between Acoustic And Electric Guitar [print this page] The differences between acoustic and electric guitars are myriad. In addition to one requiring electricity to be heard and the other one not requiring anything but a skilled set of hands, the way in which each one is made and the uses of each one stand in stark contrast to one another.
An acoustic guitar is a hollow-bodied, six-stringed instrument. The sound produced by an acoustic guitar comes from the vibrations created by a note or notes being plucked or strummed on the strings and echoing throughout the hollow inside of the instrument's body. Steel-stringed acoustic guitars are made of wood, and the tops of acoustic guitars are usually made from spruce, although some are made from rosewood or maple. Other acoustic guitars are nylon-stringed, or classical, guitars. These are usually smaller, and the strings are tied to the bridge in a knot rather than held in with a peg like on steel-stringed acoustic bridges. Classical guitars are used in a variety of musical applications from jazz, traditional latin folk music, to, of course, classical guitar compositions. Classical guitars are most often played with the fingers, but a plectrum may be used to play either steel-stringed or classical acoustic guitars. Blues, rock, and most Western folk music is played on steel-stringed acoustic guitars. While acoustics are traditionally played without the need for electric amplification, acoustic-electric models--acoustic guitars equipped with electric pickups--are quite popular for acoustic artists whose professional needs call for amplification.
Electric guitars, on the other hand, can be hollow-bodied or solid. In the twenty-first century, hollow-bodied electric guitars are less commonly-used than solid-body variations, but a number of rock, blues, and jazz musicians still prefer the tones they produce. Hollow-bodied electric guitars usually have f-holes (like a violin or cello) as opposed to the single, large, circular hole in an acoustic guitar body. The first solid-body electric guitar, the famous Les Paul model, was introduced in the 1950s, and since then the solid-body electric guitar has become a staple for guitarists involved in all genres of popular music. Solid-body electrics feature either a bolt-on neck (like the Fender Stratocaster) or a set-in neck (the Les Paul, for example), and can make use of either single-coil pickups for use with clean channel amplification or humbucker pickups for use with distortion. Electric guitars, unlike acoustics, are rarely manufactured with natural finishes. The bodies can be made from a number of different woods, but the most common are alder, ash, or mahogany. The mahogany bodies of most Gibson guitars are credited for the warm tones their guitars produce. There are, however, a limited number of electric guitars that make use of synthetic materials since all the guitar requires to be heard is amplification as opposed to a hollow cage of wood. Even so, the most popular electric guitars are made from wood and are believed to provide superior tonality than those made from anything else.
