Beginners' Guide to Guitar Companies

Ever lost in the sea of guitar brands, unable to choose one out of them all to be your permanent playing companion? Look no further (or just read right over this), this post's aim is to give a few details on the most popular guitar manufacturers in America.

First up: Gibson
Gibson has established a long history in America, being renowned as one of the most popular and high-quality guitar manufacturers in the country, as well as being one of the most iconic. When people think of guitars, it's either the Gibson Les Paul that pops into their head, or the Fender Stratocaster (more later!).

Gibson's guitars are usually known by guitar players as having a thick, dirty sound; many of the classic rock artists such as Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones utilized Gibson guitars to create a hard, rebellious tone. The signature sounds of the guitar come from the dual-coil pickups in the guitar, called humbuckers. By winding two pickups close together, the hum generated by normal single-coil pickups are cancelled, as they are winded opposite of each other. Gibson isn't the only brand to do this, but almost all of their guitars are equipped with humbucking pickups.

Fender Stands as the other other guitar manufacturing standard; Fender produces perhaps the most iconic guitar of all time: the stratocaster. As a polar opposite to Gibson guitars, almost all Fender guitars have single-coil pickups; the sounds that emintate from this style are usually cleaner and crisper, giving strats their signature "quack". Stratocasters and Telecasters are most often used with cleaner, calmer songs, but they're defnitely not exempt from hard rocking sound. In addition to having two single coils on most models, some stratocasters have a humbucker mounted in the treble (back) position, allowing for cruchy rhythms such as Stevie Ray Vaughn's blues-driven riffing and Jimi Hendrix's also-blues-inspired melodies. The twang of the stratocaster may be more familiar in country-esque songs, like in the southern rock song Sweet Home Alabama, a tune almost everybody is familar with; in order to get such a sound, stratocasters produced after 1977 have a five-way pickup switch, allowing a combination of the back and middle/front and middle pickups to be active. Before this incorporation, players would put the switch in between the original first and second, temporarily wedging the selector in place.

Aside from the main two companies in my mind, many others exist: Ibanez. ESP, PRS, and also the sub-brands within the major manufacturers such as Epiphone and Squire (stratocasters). This next section won't be as thorough as the previous, but I'll try and put a few points in for each.

Ibanez and ESP are both used primarily for metal genres, and as such, I'm not as well-informed about them. From what I do know, the guitars are usually emphasized by two humbuckers pickups with one single-coil between both. EMG is a popular brand of pickups used by these guitars. Most ESP and Ibanez guitars are also fitted with some sort of tremolo bar system, usually some sort of Floyd Rose bridge.

PRS stands as kind of a mix of the other brands. Prices are usually high on the guitars, so I haven't ever came into contact with many, if any at all. Most of the PRS guitars feature a two-cut design, meaning they look similar to stratocasters. Being high-end guitars, PRS guitars have wonderful sound, usually being nice and warm while using two humbuckers.

Some PRS guitars are also fitted with a piezo pickup, which picks up sound in a different way than normal electro-magnetic pickups. Instead of translating disturbances in the magnetic field around the strings, piezoelectric pickups work by interpreting vibrations into electric signals. Piezoelectric pickups are commonly used on acoustic guitars, as some acoustic strings don't have the metal cores to disrupt magnetic fields.

But back to guitars; both Gibson and Fender give the option of lower-priced guitars, in exchange for lower quality materials and overall quality. Despite how this sounds, the guitars from Epiphone and Squire are still very good instruments to play, being nowhere near as bad as a random off-brand model (although you might find a good one every now and then; I'll cover one later). Instead of being produced in America, the guitars are produced in areas where labor is cheaper, such as Mexico and Korea. This is turn lowers the price of the guitar, in case you don't want to pay $3,000 on your first guitar (not guilty >_>)

Just as an additional side(ish) note, there are some off-brand companies that produce fairly high-quality guitars. My own personal guitar is produced by a small, family-owned company, and yet still is of good quality. Link here > http://ravenwestguitar.com/ Most of this comany's guitars are basically copies of other major-brand guitars, but they still perform well; the only complaint I've had so far is about the paint on the hardware. The paint on the harware finish seems to wear off easily, but it's not a major altering feature.