Supervisor: Ulrik Uggerhøj

The Electric guitar was first invented to allow musicians to play louder music, in front of more people. Earlier amplification schemes used microphones, which could pick up an amplify the sound from the speaker system, creating a noise feedback loop. The electric pickup can take the vibrational signal from strings and turn it directly into an electric signal, essentially removing feedback from the equation.  
This colloquium will demonstrate the noise signal of an electric guitar, and how it varies with pickup selection. Then we will look at the parts of a single coil pickup. From this we will construct a simple physical model and use basic electrodynamics to explain how the signal is generated. Using this physical model, we will explorer how background noise (hum) appears, and how it may be cancelled by using two pickups.