Why would you discuss electric guitars and amplifiers in the same article?  And why would you include electric guitars and amplifiers on the same web site?  Shouldn’t you keep them separate and write about them separately?  Well, the answer is no.

When you discuss electric guitars, of necessity you must discuss amplifiers as well.  That is simply because an electric guitar and an amplifier, together, are really one instrument. You just don’t have an electric guitar without an amplifier, and an amplifier without an electric guitar won’t play any music.  Although you can sing without an amplifier and be heard fairly well, you can’t play an electric guitar without an amplifier and be heard very well.

Okay, yes, if you strum the strings of an electric guitar without an amplifier, especially an acoustic electric guitar, you will hear some sound, something akin to what you would hear if you strummed a stretched rubber band.  The acoustic electric guitar has a partially hollowed body and provides some additional resonance.  But a solid body electric guitar would provide very little. You will indeed hear sound, possibly just loud enough to be heard in a quiet environment, but certainly not the sound of the electric guitar with which we are familiar.

The electric guitar works essentially by electromagnetism.  The strings of the guitar vibrate through a magnetic field produced by one or more pickups under the strings of the guitar.  The electric pulses thus generated are fed to an amplifier to be . . . amplified, of course.  If the strength of the signal is insufficient for the amplifier, a preamp boosts the signal so that it is able to drive the speaker which emits the sound of the electric guitar.

There are many things to consider when purchasing an electric guitar and an amplifier.  The style of body and the number of pickups an electric guitar has will partially determine the sound that will be produced.  For the electric guitarist, plain reproduction of sound is not really desired. The amplifier with a signal modulator will give the guitarist numerous options, such as the amount of distortion, equalization, and reverberation to choose.    The amplifier and modulator allow the guitarist to produce the rock and roll sounds we have come to know, jazzy, twangy, funky and more or less heavily distorted.

Though this has been a very brief explanation of the electric guitar and amplifier, it is, none the less, accurate.  If you are an electric guitar enthusiast, I would recommend you do further research on the more technical aspects of the introductory information in this article.