Acoustic Electric Guitar Instruments
Acoustic Electric Guitar Instruments Fast Facts
The front of the guitar is called the “soundboard” and the sides are called the “ribs.” “Linings” are the strips or pieces of wood which provide surfaces for gluing the front, back and sides together. The joints are then concealed by adding “edging.” The fingerboard, into which the frets are hammered, is glued on to the front of the neck. In the case of steel-string acoustics, the fingerboard is often curved – which some guitarists prefer. All acoustic guitars are fitted with some form of “truss rod” to strengthen the neck and counteract the pull generated by the tension of the strings. This may be a strop of hardwood or a steel rod.
A Brief History of Acoustic Electric Guitar Instruments
In recent years, Ovation has been responsible for by far the most significant new development in the design and construction of acoustic guitars. The Ovation Company, a division of the Kaman aerospace organization, was founded by Charles Kaman in the 1960s. Kaman believed that guitar design could be radically improved if he and his engineers could apply to it some of the principles of vibration and acoustics that they had learned from their wok with helicopters and other aircraft. Aware of the fact that in a conventional guitar much of the sound is either “trapped” in the corners of the soundbox or absorbed by thewood, he began building instruments whose back and sides were replace by a one-piece, rounded bowl made of a fiberglass material called “Lyrachord”. This shell-like, molded back has no corners, requires no struts and reflects more of the natural sound. Ovation guitars have wooden soundboards made of Sitka spruce tapered from the neck to the bridge. The bracing pattern varies from one model to another and is specially designed to give the sound best suited to the style of music for which the guitar is intended. The neck is built up from separate pieces of mahogany and maple integrated with a steel tension rod set inside an aluminum channel.
Since its first model, the Balladeer, was introduced in 1966, Ovation has produced from polyurethane and aluminum a complete range of different 6 and 12 string instruments. All of these are also available in “acoustic-electric” versions with Ovation’s own built-in Piezo-electric pickups and batter-operated pre-amp.
The “Adamas” model is Ovation’s most expensive. The soundboard is made from a sheet of birch veneer sandwiched between two layers of “carbon pre-preg” (carbon fibers embedded in epoxy resin). The conventional soundhole is replaced by 22 smaller holes set on either side of the upper bout. This design is intended to minimize feedback when the guitar is amplified. There is also an acoustic-electric version of the Adamas.
Ovation guitars have been very successful. Their distinctive tone – together with their strength and the versatility of the acoustic-electric models – appeals to many guitar players and more and more performers are using them both on-stage and in the studio.
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