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Guitar Amps
A guitar amplifier is required to play any kind of electric guitar. The amplifier traces its roots back to 1930's with the introduction of electrolytic capacitors and rectifier tubes which allowed for the production of economically sized and priced power supplies that could be plugged directly into wall sockets. This freed up performaners as previously all forms of guitar amplifier were incredibly heavy and bulky due to their reliance on multiple battery packs for power. Initially the amplifier was used to increase the volume of the acoustic guitar, but with the invention of the electric guitar a marriage of two pieces of equipment was made. The early guitar amplifier was very simple with a single tone and a single volume control to help shape the output of the amp. They were also relatively low powered due to limitations in speaker technology (typically 15 watts maximum). It was not long until basic effects began to be added to the ampincluded spring loaded reverb and a tremelo unit.
The 1960's saw people experiment with overloading the amplifier in an affort to produce a distorted sound, now popularised in rock and heavy metal music. The Kinks guitarist Dave Davies produced early distortion effects by
connecting the output of one amplifier into the input of another, an
abuse that the designers could never have imagined. Later, most types of guitar amplifier were provided with preamplifier distortion controls, and "fuzz
boxes" and other effects units were engineered to safely and reliably
produce these sounds. Today, distortion has become an integral part of
many styles of electric guitar playing. As technology improved larger and more powerful guitar amplifier styles were developed with more features, and the iconic "head" amp that was plugged into a large speaker stack of multiple speakers was born. This has become a staple of stage performances across the world and the guitar amplifier has continued to grow and evolve thanks to solid state technology.
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