Anybody ever tried this?

Tonart

Tonart

Tone of the Art......or is that backwards?
Joined
Jan 4, 2018
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Cos silly as it is, therein lies a secret of the electric guitar I reckon.

Plug your guitar in, dampen the strings completely with a cloth or pillow so they don’t vibrate at all. Cover the body near the pickups with a cloth. Turn the amp up really loud.

Press your face into the guitar body near the pickups. There must be good contact between your face and the guitar. The cloth helps to achieve that.

Now hum or sing as loud as you can. You’ll hear your voice coming out from the amp. Very clearly so. And it sounds exactly like your voice.

I would think that the voice is vibrating the guitar body and the guitar body in turn is vibrating the pickups. When the pickups are vibrated, they detect and replicate the vibrations very accurately. Call it self induction or inducement, whatever. Notice how little vibration is needed to produce this effect.

One additional funny thing I realised, is that high gain does not seem to distort the sound of the voice. It still comes out sounding like the original.

Of course, everyone has experienced the same thing with knuckle raps and accidental knocks. But nothing demonstrates this effect as lucidly as hearing your own voice coming out of a system you’d least expect it to come out from. Certainly blurs the line between acoustics and electrics, doesn’t it?
 
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Acoustics in themselves are microphones by design hence the sound hole. Best way to change the tone of an electric is to change the pickups, on an acoustic change the guitar to a different wood (otherwise change guitars) as the guitar is the pickup.
 
Tonart said:
Plug your guitar in, dampen the strings completely with a cloth or pillow so they don’t vibrate at all. Cover the body near the pickups with a cloth. Turn the amp up really loud.

Press your face into the guitar body near the pickups. There must be good contact between your face and the guitar. The cloth helps to achieve that.

Now hum or sing as loud as you can. You’ll hear your voice coming out from the amp. Very clearly so. And it sounds exactly like your voice.
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As Greywolf said, pickups are microphones. Yes, they primarily work by the metal string vibrating through the magnetic field, generating a small electrical charge. But they also "hear" too - that's why the same pickup sounds different in a Hollowbody than in an otherwise identical Solidbody. The pickup is "hearing" the same thing your ears hear if you play both guitars unplugged.
 
I reckon the magnets and coil are made to move relative to each other in a minuscule way when the pickups are vibrates by the guitar body. That induces the current and signal. What is amazing is how little energy it takes for that to happen and how faithful the replication of the vibrations!

The implications here are quite interesting. When the guitar is played, we can feel it vibrating, especially the really good ones. That’s the guitar body vibrating in tandem with the string vibrations. What would be the equivalent effect on the pickups, if they’re that sensitive?

What happens when you mount pickups on a thin piece of plastic, like a Stratocaster? Could that be why a strat sounds the way it does?
 
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ViperDoc said:
I have never done this.

I just watched an interview with Ty Tabor where he claims to routinely record backup vocals through the pickups of a certain guitar he has. Weird. He also LOVES solid state amps, go figure. Can’t argue with his Gretchen tone though, Good Lord.
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Love Ty!
 
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