Presentation Speaker Notes
Slide 1: N/A
Slide 2: Guitar amplifiers enhanced the amplification techniques used to amplify guitars and made it possible for guitar players to play at bigger venues and along with larger bands. Guitar amplifiers were also the driving force behind the creation of new genres such as rock and metal.
Slide 3: Amplifying the sound produced by guitars using electricity This involved the use of magnetic coils which acted as pick-ups and speakers. The PA system hardware moved away from battery systems and started transitioning to rectifier tubes instead throughout the 1930s. Meanwhile, inventor George Beauchamp and engineer Adolph Rickenbacker formed the Electro String company (Miravalls, n.d.). Together, they engineered an amplifier specifically for guitars, which uses pickups rather than a microphone to get sound out of guitars. They were also designing these pickups for guitars simultaneously (Stafford, 2012). Soon after, Electro String hired a design engineer, Ralph Robertson, to improve the circuitry of the amp design. The improved circuitry put Electro String’s amps far ahead of their competition
Slide 4: Around the time of World War II, It was a time of economic and political instability. Right after the US got involved in the war, most guitar and amp manufacturers halted production. However, this technology shot up in popularity right after the war (Burnett, 2010), with other manufacturers such as Fender pushing their own design of a bigger amp, ushering in their era of "tweed" amplifiers. (Owens, n.d.)
Slide 5: The obvious target market for amplifiers were the guitarists. Amplifiers proved to be extremely useful as it not only increased the sustain in a guitar but also allowed guitar players to play single note solos and riffs with more ease. The guitar amplifiers were first targeted towards big band jazz players. Later as more genres of music started developing guitar amplifiers became very prominent in the rock and metal scenes.
Slide 6: Leo Fender created the first amplifier exclusively for the electric guitar in 1947. However, guitar amplifiers became more and more popular among the ametuer guitarists after many concert musicians started using them. The concept of an “electric” guitar started getting popularised a fair bit before 1947. It started when a prominent Jazz guitarist named Charlie Christian started playing the acoustic guitar with a pickup attached to the body. However, as mentioned earlier, these amplifiers were not exactly meant for guitars.
The Les Paul is the first solid body guitar made, which was meant to be amplified. This guitar was invented in 1952. These guitars along with amplifiers were made popular by artists such as Jimmy Page.
Slide 7: Initially, amplifiers just allowed guitarists to improve their tones at already existing genres such as Jazz. But with time, new genres of music focused on guitar amplifiers were born, such as rock and metal. This shows us that most guitarists really did welcome this disruption.
Slide 8: Most of the skills required of a person who makes guitar amplifiers would have to do with knowledge of the workings of magnets along with some degree of musical knowledge to get an amplifier to sound and function properly.
Amplifiers effectively improve the resonance (audio) of the string(s), thereby increasing the noise.Regarding electrical engineering, concerts had noise levels that exceeded the safe listening limits. Though it did not have a direct ethical impact, listening to amplified guitar sounds for long periods of time was probably not a good idea.
There was no sufficient grounding in any of the early amplifiers. As a result, employing these to play instruments entailed a higher level of risk. This could be construed as an ethical dilemma. Over the years, engineers at Marshall, Gibson, Fender, and many other amplifier and guitar makers have spent a lot of time and effort improving the sound of their amplifiers to give them unique characteristics and tones.
Slide 9: We can all recognise Slash’s guitar tone, Jimi Hendrix's guitar tone, and many other legendary guitar players.
For decades, if guitar players wanted to have the same guitar tone as these legendary guitarists, they’d have to buy similar gear, including guitars, amps, and effects, which is, as we all know, very costly. Now in the digital era, anyone can get the same legendary tone with a cheap guitar.
How? Amp simulators and digital amplifiers
For example, companies like "neuraldsp" have developed plugins to copy the guitar tones of legendary guitarists and give them to us in plugin form for the price of a plugin. So, for example, if I wanted my guitar to sound like John Petrucci, instead of buying the same guitar, amplifier, effects rack, etc., I’d just buy the plugin for $150 and make my guitar sound just like his.
What happened here in our John Petrucci example, is that plugins like this will make huge companies like Mesa Boogie sell fewer amps ($1000+), Music Man Guitars sell fewer guitars ($4600), and so on.
Moreover, we have digital (hardware) amps like "THE KEMPER PROFILER", which is an actual digital amp, and it basically simulates other legendary guitar amps, like Fender, for example, and gives us the same tone. This again makes people want to buy these digitally advanced solutions instead of buying the real amp. The Kemper Profiler can imitate any guitar amplifier out there in seconds and give us the same tone.
Slide 10: N/A
Throughout this project, the main aim was to identify and conduct extensive research on one influential historical figure within the industry of music and audio engineering. Our chosen influential historical figure as a group was the amplifier inventor, George Beauchamp and the engineer, Adolph Rickenbacker. Within week 2, upon a conversation with our lecturer, it was approved to base our project on the historical invention of guitar amplifiers and link them to their inventors and engineers. I am personally confident that my group and I were able to successfully achieve our main goal and meet the project's expectations in both the milestone and our group presentation.
We, as a group, were able to successfully apply our previously learned transferable skill of collaboration in order to collaborate together to gather our findings and produce our project presentation while ensuring that all key questions and points were clearly outlined and identified. At the same time, there were also some challenges faced, which were successfully overcome through the application of our transferrable skills of creativity and problem-solving. One of the main challenges faced was finding reliable sources that were able to successfully answer our set questions at an HD (High Distinction) level. This was a particularly difficult challenge when investigating the ethical impact of amplifiers on the audio industry when they were first invented and until the present time. However, as a group, in order to overcome these issues, we decided to collaborate on that section together in order to gather adequate research which reflected on the question "what basic ethical and legal issues were implicated in the change or evolution?".
From the project development process and our group presentation, we were able to gather constructive feedback that will allow us as students to improve our presentational skills for future submissions. One of the feedback statements that were provided to us upon presenting was that our references were required to be arranged in alphabetical order in order to meet the APA and refinancing standards. In further addition, another point that was reflected for future projects was the ability to integrate higher levels of interactive media into our presentations to engage our audience and keep them interested throughout.
I personally feel that this project's one-group research and presentation process was a great experience and allowed me as a student to develop my research skills and knowledge of our chosen historical figure while also shaping my presentation skills.
(2022). Retrieved 27 February 2022, from https://www.fender.com/articles/gear/the-woodies-a-history-of-fenders-first-amps
(2022). Retrieved 27 February 2022, from https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/media/2020/02/Katana-Setup-Guide-Feat-Image-1.png
(2022). Retrieved 28 February 2022, from https://guitar.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Jimmy-Page-Hero-Credit-Michael-Ochs-Archives-Getty-Images@2560x1707.jpg
(2022). Retrieved 28 February 2022, from https://images.ctfassets.net/r1mvpfown1y6/14y5ZjgvFccYO2Suka284i/37a5634c14753f56a5356a3cbf23f9d6/16437-leo-fender-3up.jpg?w=800&q=50
Archetype: Petrucci. (2022). Retrieved 27 February 2022, from https://neuraldsp.com/plugins/archetype-petrucci
Early History of the Amplifier – Mission Engineering. (2022). Retrieved 27 February 2022, from https://missionengineering.com/early-history-of-the-amplifier/
GmbH, K. (2022). Profiler Overview | Kemper Amps. Retrieved 27 February 2022, from https://www.kemper-amps.com/profiler/overview
History of the Amplifier. (2022). Retrieved 27 February 2022, from http://www.acesandeighths.com/amp_evo.html
Mitchell, Neil. “Neil Mitchell.” Orange Amps, Neil Mitchell Https://Orangeamps.com/Wp-Content/Uploads/2018/04/Orange-Pics-Logo-307px.Png, 19 Aug. 2019, https://orangeamps.com/articles/the-orange-graphics-explained/.
Ray. “Home.” ElectroSmash, https://www.electrosmash.com/1wamp.
Topic, O., Lounge, T., LAB, M., LAB, M., & LAB, M. (2022). Ethical Aspects of Amp Cloning. Retrieved 27 February 2022, from https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/ethical-aspects-of-amp-cloning.110691/