How Guitar Amplifiers Work

Video Transcript

"On behalf of Expert Village my name is Jim Dufresne and I'm here to talk about amplifiers. You'll see that this amplifier has a pre-amp section, another pre-amp section, and a master section just like our PA system did. This amp was called channel switching, so what that means is you can set up this channel to be different than this channel. 'Cause this particular amplifier has a reverb switch you can push in and out, and then the master section has a master reverb, distortion, and a master volume. Guitar amplifiers are voiced differently than PA systems. They have a built in mid-range bump, or hump. It's like raising the middle slider on the equalizer. It's built into the guitar amp and they're made to sound that way. That's why when you play your microphone into your guitar amp, it sounds strange... and you never can get it to sound right, nor can you ever get it to sound right because it's not made for a microphone. You can plug your microphone into a guitar amp but it's just not going to sound very good. But you plug an electric guitar into it, and that's when it comes alive. And normally we'll have two or three channels, or sometimes more, two channels is plenty for an electric guitar amp. Typically, you'd have one set up for a nice clean sound, and then when it's time for a solo, step on your foot switch, and you go over to your overdrive channel, and it lets you add distortion to your sound. Sometimes you want to play rhythm guitar with distortion so then both channels with have distortion on them. Generally speaking, if you're playing rhythm guitar with distortion, you want to go for a bright sound. Generally speaking, if you're playing a lead line then you want to go to your neck pickup. Generally speaking. That's not a hard fast rule. You tailor these sounds to what suits you or what suits the song that you're playing."