First of all, I am a guitar player. Even after I received my masters degrees in physics and electronics engineering (MSEE) and working in industry for decades, I did not put much thought into how the guitars I was playing really worked. Now that I retired from industry with these high level degrees, a ton of experience and a hand full of patents, I realized that I have a lot of time on my hands to think further and that got me into this! Well, that and the huge amount of misinformation on YouTube and other places….and if you are looking for my email, it is down this page a bit.
I got my first guitar at 12 years old, which is so far back that rock ‘n’ roll was in its infancy. I had been interested in electronics a few years before that. It was also the time of beginning of solid state components (transistors etc) making an overture in electronics, and I had a little kit so that you could build simple circuits. This pretty much cemented my future career in electronics engineering and science.
Back when I started playing guitar, it was pretty much all Elvis Presley. There were others like Buddy Holley that really shaped rock n roll. This was before The Beatles and the British “invasion”, before things got really crazy. I get a kick out of telling about the first time I heard The Beatles on the radio, it was actually the first time they were on the radio! Same thing with a lot of bands that have now become household names.
With my piece of shit $10 guitar, I started taking lessons with a guy that played in a band, it was dance music, not exactly rock since it was fairly new. Did not learn much, but I got a new Framus jazz guitar through my teacher, later we electrified this guitar adding a neck pickup. This guitar, I played for awhile starting to play in bands. I had quit guitar lessons, but I got my first electric guitar lesson playing through my first amp in form of the fact that bronze strings do not work well with a pickups. I can be seen playing this guitar in the picture below, behind the mic stand (made out of an old lamp). Well, times back then (mid-1960ies) were very far from the way it is now! After playing in bands for some time, I finally stepped up to a real electric guitar. I got a three-pickup Hoffner strat style guitar with a thousand switches, wheels and buttons. I got my memories stirred not long ago when a guitar exactly like it showed up on YouTube bugging the hell out of the guy trying to repair it!
At the start of the 70es, and most of that decade was occupied with military service and college from which I exited with a couple of master’s degrees around the middle of the decade. Playing was sort of on hold, I had traded my rig for an acoustic 12-string that I played from time to time with different people. Mostly blues, it felt like the most natural with that kind of guitar and blues is great, of course! By the way, I still have that guitar!
In the early eighties, I got back into playing seriously, I started to educate myself on guitar as more and more information and equipment was becoming available. No internet available yet, but I got enough information to realize how little I actually knew. I learned the fundamentals of rock and blues and practiced daily for hours on end. I also had a little time to play with bands, but spent a lot of time recording with, among other things, a drum machine, pretty advanced one, too.
At the same time, I worked full time doing something that had nothing to do with music. Almost my entire career I have been in research and development mostly concerning variable speed drives for AC motors, basically been in that from its infancy. For a scientist that is pure heaven, delving into uncharted territory. These drives ranged from a few hundred watts to a couple of million watts. From 12V DC via 480VAC to 4160VAC, yes, you read correctly. For the latter, the DC bus voltage is around 7000 Volts. An endless number of books and articles have been written about this subject, variable speed drives also called VFDs. Very rewarding to be a part of, to constantly being on the forefront of technology. I can even say that this has resulted in a few patents with my name on. Furthermore with a bit of experience in magnetics…. not to forget EMI!
Now that I am done with that, and I have gotten totally immerged in guitar technology, hopefully I can contribute to a much better understanding of it….
Finally, I do not mind comments and questions concerning my writings, but please do not send me angry messages saying I am wrong on this or that. It is great if you can prove me wrong on something I have stated, but in the spirit of this endeavor, it is not acceptable to claim something without substantial documentation to back up your claim, that is what we in science call professional courtesy. That said, I never claim something that has not been verified one way or another. I visit and revisit issues several times before being sure that I am stating it correctly. Everyone should do so as well, YouTube would look a whole lot different!
I am Hank and my email is gesmag@guitarelectroscience.com
Here is an alternative email: ngchank@msn.com
On YouTube I am known as Hank GESMAG and I will be starting to upload more videos at this point there is one up about guitar shielding.
“Ground”
I admit that I can be somewhat opinionated, but you may see why reading my credentials above, I think that I have earned that right! It is not to be arrogant, but after a long career designing high voltage and high power industrial devices, especially motor controls you do learn various things about which standards products have to meet in order for customers to accept them (as in buying them). This is where my issues with the word “Ground” come in. As I have explained, I have also be involved with EMI and CE-mark certification for these products, as I have mentioned on the Shielding page. In connection with EMI, Grounding means something very specific even if for a regular product operating at a voltage over 50V, you have to be extremely concerned with Ground because it also becomes safety ground. In many DC power supplies you will see that the negative output is connected to Ground, which means that the negative is connected to the chassis of the power supply AND to the third prong on the power plug, that per code must be connected to a real Earth Ground which is a copper rod rammed into the ground outside your house or plant. Sometimes it is separate. So the term Ground is related to two specific things, Safety and EMI. The first is very serious and the second one is very helpful, luckily they are in most cases one and the same.
There are a long line of products where you have to be very, very specific and careful about the term “Ground”, mainly because it is so important to the safety of the people operating the equipment. As mentioned, I have been designing high voltage motor drives and for these products there is no way that you can connect parts to the circuit to Ground, so safety has to be addressed in a different way, such that the parts a person can touch are isolated from the main circuit which sits at a high voltage at all times to operate correctly. Grounding these parts would cause a disaster and render the equipment useless!
Now you know why I am so specific about the word Ground and that it bothers me that you hear it everywhere, “grounded here and grounded there” or “this connected to ground and that is connected to ground”. So if you see a piece of equipment that has “GND”, which is the typical way of designate real Ground, you gotta be very careful, because people will take it as it was connected to GND and consider it safe, even though it is not. You see my point?
That is why I say that there is no ground in your guitar, your guitar amplifier better be providing a non disruptable connection to real Ground, the third prong of the power cord. Not even that is necessarily grounded, but it s CODE to be that way. To boil it down, there is no such thing as Ground in a stand alone circuit, it is only that way when properly connected to Ground! Hence, you are not allowed to call it Ground, but is has become a bad habit of doing so. Call it Common (or COM), a term generally used in electrical engineering. Also, be very careful with symbols in circuits. Unless it is actually Earth Ground, a rod rammed into the ground, do NOT use the designated symbol that is very well known. Please use a triangle “pointing” down, a connection to a short horizontal line.
Just remember all the lawyers out there and you know there are a lot of them just waiting for a handout, if you imply the the wrong thing or use a symbol that is misleading, they will break down your door faster than you can say the word “ground”.
OK, I think I have made my point. Time to get off my soap box!