History

• Electric guitars rose to prominence in the late 1930s, where the increased volume allowed them to be heard in a band setting. They quickly moved to the forefront of many groups.
  
  

Body Types

• Some guitarists prefer a completely hollow bodied guitar fitted with pickups, although they tend to feed back at higher volume. Adding a solid block down the center, creating the more common semi-hollow body helps, but most electric guitars are solid-body, with no interior chambers.
  
  

Whammy Bar

• Many electric guitars have a tremolo arm, also known as a whammy bar, attached to the bridge. Moving this arm produces a vibrato effect. Some guitarists prefer models without the arm, as this improves sustain.
  
  

Pickups

• Pickups transmit string vibrations to the amplifier. Most electric guitars have several, and switches to select. Most pickups are either single-coil, which produces a clean sound with character, but produce hum, or the dual-coil humbuckers, which eliminate hum and have a fatter, beefier sound.
  
  

Fender and Gibson

• Although there are many brands of electric guitar, two brands dominate the market with their iconic guitars: Fender, with the Telecaster and Stratocaster brands, and Gibson, with the Les Paul and SG brands.