Instrument Amplifier

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An instrument amplifier is an electronic amplifier designed for use with an electric or electronic musical instrument, such as an electric guitar, an bass guitar, or an electric keyboard.

A wide range of instrument amplifiers are now available, some general purpose and some designed for specific instruments and even for 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 "vibrato" units. These amplifiers, such as the Fender "Tweed"-style amps, are often used by traditional rock, blues, and country musicians.
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. 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 optimised for bass guitars (or more rarely, for upright bass). Higher-end bass 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 instrument amplification are often provided with external metal heat sinks or fans to help keep the amplifier cool.
Keyboard amplifiers, with very low distortion and extended, flat frequency response in both directions. Keyboard amplifiers often have a simple onboard mixer, so that keyboardists can control the tone and level of several keyboards.
Acoustic amplifiers', similar in many ways to keyboard amplifiers but designed specifically to produce a "clean," transparent, "acoustic" sound when used with acoustic instruments with built-in transducer Pickup (music)s and/or microphones. (Note that there was once also a brand of guitar and bass amplifier called Acoustic Control Corporation, still seen second-hand.)

Role of Amplifier Instrument amplifiers are designed for a different purpose than 'Hi-Fi' (high fidelity) stereo amplifiers used for radios and home stereo systems. Hi-fi home stereo amplifiers are designed to accurately reproduce the source sound signals from pre-recorded music, with as little harmonic distortion as possible.

In contrast, instrument amplifiers are often designed to add additional tonal coloration to the original signal or emphasize certain frequencies. For electric instruments such as electric guitar, the amplifier helps to create the instrument's tone by boosting the input signal gain and distorting the signal, and by emphasizing frequencies deemed to be desirable (e.g., low frequencies) and de-emphasizing frequencies deemed to be undesirable (e.g., very high frequencies).

The two exceptions are keyboard amplifiers and acoustic amplifiers which are used for amplifying acoustic instruments such as acoustic guitar, violin, and mandolin. Acoustic amplifiers typically aim for a relatively flat response.

Size and Power Rating In the 1960s and 1970s, high output power amplifiers were preferred for instrument amplifiers, especially for large concerts, because public address systems were generally only used to amplify the vocals. However, by the 1980s and 1990s, as public address systems became more powerful, the electric guitars, basses, and keyboards were also amplified through the public address system.

As a result, musicians were able to use smaller instrument amplifiers with lower wattage ratings. The switch to smaller instrument amplifiers makes it easier for musicians to transport their equipment to performances. As well, it makes concert stage management easier at large clubs and festivals where several bands are performing in sequence, because the bands can be moved on and off the stage more quickly.

See also

References

External links

Duncan's amp pages - all sorts of information, especially, but not only, on valve guitar amplifiers
Choosing an Amp - What's a good guitar amp for a beginner?
Amp Tube Charts and Transformer info - Amp Tube Charts and Transformer chart used for dating tube amps
Introduction to Guitar Amplifiers, Bass Guitar Amplifiers and Keyboard Amplifiers
List of books about guitar amplifiers and guitar amplifier tone
Tons of Tones !! : Technical site for Guitar Amplifier Modelling on Digital Multi-effect units
Celtic Harp Amplification Series - using guitar amps with folk harps

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