Frederik Makláry Jørgensen

How a guitar amplifier works

Supervisor: Ulrik Uggerhøj

Date student colloquium: 03.04.2017

Since the invention of the electric guitar, amplification and management of signals from the instrument has been a vital part of the music industry.
In modern times, alternating voltages generated from the guitar are put through a complicated amplifier circuit to not only be amplified, but distorted in all sorts of manners in order to generate a fitting sound to the genre of music that is played.
These manipulations include but are not limited to noisy overdrive effects, tremolo effects, tone controls, echoes, reverb, and of course simple signal amplification.
This talk is focused on the qualitative workings of this signal manipulation with a focus on how the circuits looked in the sixties and early seventies, and is based on Jack Darr's book, Electric Guitar Amplifier Handbook, on the subject.