Acoustic Electric Guitars Acoustic electric guitars are not much different from your normal acoustic guitar. The main difference is the addition of a pickup. In an acoustic guitar, there is no built-in pickup. If you want to amplify the signal, you need to either stick a pick up under the bridge, or sit close to the microphone. With an acoustic electric guitar, however, the pickup is built right into the guitar body. This has obvious advantages. It makes it easier to amplify signals since you can just plug in to a guitar cable. It also means that you have less gear to carry around. You don't have to keep an extra pick up on hand for playing a gig. Of course there are some people who do not like using the amplifiers built into acoustic electric guitars. They would rather sit near to a microphone and pick up the guitar that way. This gives a dryer, sparser sort of sounds more suitable to rhythmic playing. But I've always liked acoustic electric guitars even when I want to amplify with a normal microphone. The reason is, having an acoustic pickup built in doesn't stop you from using other means to pick up the sound. You can still use a normal mic to record the sound of your guitar. You simply have the option of adding the onboard guitar pickup. This is also nice if you like to experiment with sounds. A lot of people I know who play acoustic electric guitars like to mix sounds from different sources. You can use a bridge pickup and mix it with a microphone pickup, for example. Some people even take it a step further, adding contact mics on to the guitar body at various points. Depending where you pick up a signal, you will get all sorts of sounds from the guitar. This allows you to tweak your sound, getting just the right signal for whatever project you are working on. It also gives your sound mixer more options when you are playing a live show and trying to compensate for whatever peculiarities the club has in its acoustic performance. Of course, sometimes you run into problems of availability. Some high-quality models simply aren't available as acoustic electric guitars. Fortunately, portable pickups have gotten so good at this doesn't have to be a big obstacle. You can simply stick a pick up under the bridge and mix in the signal as if you were using a normal acoustic electric guitar. Of course, you won't have an onboard mixer like acoustic electric guitars do, but you can always add a mixer into your signal line. It may be a little bit less convenient, but you can still get the sound you like. Summary Acoustic electric guitars offer a lot of different sound options for musicians. You can use standard equipment to come up with the classic sound of acoustic guitars and add a microphone nearby, or you can go electric by adding on an onboard guitar pickup to send the sound to a nearby amplifier. Related Articles Acoustic Bass Guitars Gibson Epiphone Guitars Related Sites