A Historical and Technical Analysis of the Guitar Pickup

The evolution of instruments mirrors changes in technology, culture, and society. In the early twentieth century; engineers, inventors, and tinkerers started to experiment with ways of using advances in mechanics and electronics to record, enhance, and produce sound. Concrete examples of this phenomenon can observed in devices such as: the Telharmonium, a device which transmitted sequences of tones over the phone lines; the phonograph and gramophone, devices which mechanically transduced sounds onto cylinders and later onto discs; and the radio, a device which transmits and receives modulated sound waveforms as electromagnetic radiation. Often, these new technologies emerge as means to overcome technological limitations; however, with these innovations come even more problems to overcome. With the introduction of electrical amplification and its application to the guitar, many interesting design issues emerged, whose solutions led to the robustness of modern-day guitar technology. The guitar is one of the oldest known instruments, tracing its roots back to the Oud of Ancient Mesopotamia. How the guitar works is relatively simple: a set of strings is stretched and tensed over the body of the guitar. The body of the guitar consists of a hollow cavity. When one of these strings is plucked, the string vibrates at a certain frequency, producing sound. The cavity resonates and amplifies certain frequencies, producing the signature guitar sound. Other stringed instruments work in a similar fashion. The cavity of the instrument and where the strings of the instrument are generally plucked determines the harmonics and identifiable sound of stringed