An electric guitar is a guitar that uses pickups to convert the vibration of its steel-cored strings (sometimes nickel) into an electrical current, which is made louder with aninstrument amplifier and a speaker. The signal that comes from the guitar is sometimes electronically altered with guitar effects such as reverb or distortion. While most electric guitars have six strings, seven-string instruments are used by some jazz guitarists and metal guitarists (especially in nu metal),[1] and 12-string electric guitars (with six pairs of strings, four of which are tuned in octaves) are used in genres such as jangle pop and rock.The electric guitar was first used by jazz guitarists, who used amplified hollow-bodied instruments to get a louder sound in Swing-era big bands. The earliest electric guitars were hollow bodied acoustic instruments with tungsten steel pickups made by theRickenbacker company in 1931. While one of the first solid-body guitars was invented byLes Paul, the first commercially successful solid-body electric guitar was the Fender Esquire (1950). The electric guitar was a key instrument in the development of many musical styles that emerged since the late 1940s, such as Chicago blues, early rock and roll and rockabilly, and 1960s blues rock. It is also used in a range of other genres, including country music, Ambient (or New Age), and in some contemporary classical music.
