Saturday, November 10, 2007

the physics of electric guitars


I have always had this great passion for listening to electric guitars and have gone to the extent of even worshipping guitar Gods like Steve vai, Slash, Santana,
Joe Satriani even though i have never played an electric guitar.I still remember the first time i heard 'For the love of God' guitar solo by Steve vai.I must have heard that song more than 50 times that day.Being a student of science and technology understanding the physics of guitars apparently seems more easy to me than learning the electric guitar itself.So i did some queries here and there and this is what i assembled.
The idea of how the electric guitar works is very similar to phonographs and many other audio devices that have been around since the early 1900s if not the late 1800s. The idea is that a magnetic field is disturbed by something, be it the vibration of a string or the rough shape of the vinyl album, which is then translated by some device into sound.
The laws of physics governing electric currents and magnetic fields are not easily summed up, but knowing just a few is enough to understand how it all works.
When a string is plucked, the string oscillates. The oscillations then affect the flux of the magnetic field produced by the pick-up. Flux can be summed up as the amount of flow through a surface or region. So, therefore, the amount of flux, or flow of magnetic attractions are disturbed. Faraday's law states that when there is a change in the flux of a magnetic field, an electric field is produced. The oscillation of the string continually changes the flux of the magnetic field, therefore creating different patterns of electric fields which produce the current that flows through the wire to the amplifier, which then produces a sound wave with the frequency proportional to the current.
The actual current in a wire doesn't just flow in one direction, it actually flows in both, backwards and forwards. Current that comes from most normal wall outlets is alternating current. The name implies exactly that, the current alternates in direction. The oscillation in the string directly effects the rate at which the current alternates

5 comments:

Rojit said...

nice one dude... keep it up.. write more abut life and love..hee hee

james said...

thanks ..ok i will try on that as well

Deepa Khomdram said...

Dude.. u seem to have researched quite a lot on it.. keep it up..

monkey said...

hey man,i understand ur feeling dude..chill up buddy lets rock the world together..

Deepak said...

nice one yaar ,i liked the love and life part the most and the poem was beatiful ,Hope to see more of that from your side, good work.