Different Guitars

So, their seem to be a lot of different sounding guitars now, all called "electric guitar." What exactly does this mean? What are the differences beetween these guitars? How are they supposedly used and stuff?

Lord Sorasen

Are you asking what an electric guitar is?

I appologize for making my question so incredibly unclear.

My question was simply on the different types of electric guitars, and how they are classified (lead guitar, Distortion guitar, Grunge Guitar.) Also in which, what are their official and slang names, and what is the excpected sound from them.

Yeah, what he said, apart from Acoustic and Electric guitar are different. Just in case you didn't know.

There are also classical guitars, which have nylon strings. Steel guitars too... but you don't hold those like a regular guitar, lol. They're cool though. I used to want to play that in a band of some sort. Umm... no... lol... not anymore. It's cool though, how electric guitars not only have many options available on the amp. My faves are tremolo and flange. Tremolo makes it sound kind of like you're turning the sound on and off way faster than is possible, I suppose. Flange is really pretty and sweet, but not in a classical sense. If I remember correctly, it also wavers the pitch in an interesting style. I have other effects too. On top of that, most electric guitars have a switch on them that has multiple options for tonal quality. My cheap Fender Strat imitation (the squire) has 5, and my other guitars have more. Guitars are customizable too, you can change the tone by changing the pickups, or even just the strings. I love elixir strings. Extra lights... whether acoustic or electric. Just gotta be careful with tuning... especially that high E string. I've only broken one string in the entire 14 years I've played, and it was that one.

K, don't forget pedals, but that was all sort of unrelated, sorry, I jsut felt like saying it.

I can just say what I know

An Eletric guitar is usually what rockers and other e-guitar players call "clean". There's no modification to the sound, it's the exact sound produced by the strings that come through the speakers. The song brave new world by Iron Maiden uses clean guitar in the intro, later they put a little distortion on it.

A distorted guitar have a modified sound (the one used in almost evry rock song there is) the tone is distorted and not "clean" as an acoustic guitar. Usually, if you play rock, the "darker" or "harder" the song is, the more distortion is used. The song "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" by Bruce Dickinson uses dist guitar (a medium distortion, the most common in the rock I listen too anyway)

I play the electric and acoustic some and basically how electric works is it sends the sound through a wire analog signal, so if you put a device inbetween it and the speaker it can change the sound to whatever it fancies for output, for example my effects board I have lets me play things like acoustic sounding, solo lead sound, bass sound, eric clapton guitar type sound, etc. Basically the main factor to the final sound will either be an effects board or other pedal type devices or even the amp itself many times have some basic sound modifiers to do distortion effect, so no different in guitar. What is a main factor are the pickups on the guitar as these are what pickup the vibrations of the strings, if they are a poor quality then the sound will not be a great quality, etc.

Another factor are that some guitars are built to support a whammy bar which provides additional effects to player. My fav. guitar is the fender strat. Hope this helps.