Types of guitar amplifiers

Guitar Amplifiers

There are wide range of guitar amplifiers is available, which designed for specific or particular sounds. These include:

• "Traditional" guitar amplifiers, with a clean, warm sound, a sharp treble roll-off at 5 kHz or less and bass roll-off at 60–100 Hz, and often built-in reverb and tremolo ("vibrato") units. These guitar amplifiers, such as the Fender "Tweed"-style amps, are often used by traditional rock, blues, and country musicians. Traditional amps have more recently become popular with
musicians in indie and alternative bands.

• Hard rock-style guitar amplifiers, which often include preamplification controls, tone filters, and distortion effects that provide the amplifier's characteristic tone. Users of these amplifiers use the amplifier's tone to add "drive", intensity, and "edge" to their guitar sound. Guitar amplifiers of this type, such as Marshall amplifiers, are used in a range of genres, including hard rock, metal, and punk.

• Bass amplifiers, with extended bass response and tone controls optimized for bass guitars (or more rarely, for upright bass). Higher-end bass guitar amplifiers sometimes include compressor or limiter features, which help to keep the amplifier from distorting at high volume levels, and an XLR DI output for patching the bass signal directly into a mixing board. Bass amplifiers are often provided with external metal heat sinks or fans to help keep the amplifier cool.

Guitar amplifiers are manufactured in two main forms. The "combination" (or "combo") amplifier contains the amplifier head and guitar speakers in a single unit which is typically housed in a rectangular wooden box. The amplifier head or "amp head" contains the electronic circuitry constituting the preamp, built-in effects processing, and the power amplifier. Combo amps have at least one 1/4" input jack where the patch cord from the electric guitar can be plugged in. Other jacks may also be provided, such as an additional input jack, "send" and "return" jacks to create an effects loop (for connecting electronic effects such as compression, reverb, etc), an extension speaker jack (for connecting an additional speaker cabinet). Some smaller practice amps have stereo RCA jacks for connecting a CD player or other sound source and a 1/4" headphone jack so that the player can practice without disturbing neighbours or family members.


Guitar Amplifiers