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6 - Even in the Quietest Moments: Amplifying the Electric Guitar

from Part II - Technology and Timbre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2024

Jan-Peter Herbst
Affiliation:
University of Huddersfield
Steve Waksman
Affiliation:
Smith College, Massachusetts
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Summary

The electric guitar is often presented as a novel but straightforward solution to a particular problem: amplification. It is remarkable, then, that histories of the instrument focus mainly on the iconic six-string itself. No electric guitar is complete without an amplifier, and no companion to the electric guitar is complete without a corresponding history of electronic amplification. This chapter is about certain tendencies and possibilities that have existed around electric guitar amplification. It covers the historical development of the amplifier, focusing less on a loudness teleology than the instrument’s social and political construction. It also discusses the history of amplification in relation to recent scholarly interests in signal chains and supply chains. The chapter concludes with a discussion of electric guitar amplification and the problem of electricity—suggesting that the power of the amplifier has never been found in loudness alone.

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Chapter
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Selected Bibliography

Doyle, Peter, “Ghosts of Electricity: Amplification,” in The SAGE Handbook of Popular Music, edited by Bennett, Andy and Waksman, Steve (SAGE, 2015), pp. 532548.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, Matthew, “George Beauchamp and the Rise of the Electric Guitar up to 1939,” unpublished PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh (2013).Google Scholar
McSwain, Rebecca, “The Social Reconstruction of a Reverse Salient in Electrical Guitar Technology: Noise, the Solid Body, and Jimi Hendrix,” in Music and Technology in the Twentieth Century, edited by Braun, Hans-Joachim (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), pp. 186198.Google Scholar
Waksman, Steve, “California Noise: Tinkering with Hardcore and Heavy Metal in Southern California,” Social Studies of Science 34/5 (2004): 675702.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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