I would not recommend plugging the guitar directly to the wall outlett without an amp between the wall and the guitar. You may get the shock of a lifetime. I was just saying you can play without any electricity...aka acoustic. It is not as loud as an acoustic guitar, but you can hear the notes as you play.

RK

I live in a duplex with fairly thin walls and I also have 2 young daughters so cranking it up is rarely an option What I do is play on my amp at a reasonable level and stuff a towel under the door or I'll play on my Pocket POD with some headphones. IMO the POD is a cool little gadget that allows you to a lot of stuff and it's portable too.

lol, something like that. But when you play without the amp you don't plug the guitar in to anything. It doesn't have a power cord, just a patch cord to the amp.

Speaking of apartments, here is a question for all of you big apple residents. Why are they so expensive there? I rent a good sized 2 bedroom/2 bath for a little over 900 dollars a month here in Vegas yet you guys and gals pay much more for a small studio.

Here's hoping that was all a joke...

but in case it is a misunderstanding of what an electric guitar actually is, and how it works...

basically a guitar (or any other stringed instrument) is a platform upon which to mount strings which are placed under tension. The vibration of these strings creates your sound.

An electric guitar needs an amplifier to make the sound loud, but how it basically works is that on the surface there is a device(or 2 or 3,) called pickups. They are an electromagnet ( a bar magnet with wire wrapped around it.) One property of an electromagnet is that it can turn electrical energy into motion, or they can turn motion into electrical energy. it is this secondary property which is employed in an electric guitar. when the metallic strings are struck, and start to vibrate, they move through the electrical field of the pickup this motion also vibrates the electrical field of the pickup, creating a corresponding vibrating current( this is called induction.). it is this vibrating current that travels from your guitar to the amplifier.

your amplifier is the actual electrical appliance, in that it draws current from your electrical outlet, in order to 'amplify' ,or make bigger, the signal from the guitar, in order to drive the speaker.

in short, electrical current only moves away from your guitar,and at that only the very small amount created by the strings movement. no current from your wall outlet travels through the guitar. (unless your amp has a serious grounding problem, which is very very very unlikely to happen with modern amps with a 3 prong plug.)

The guitar itself doesn't need electricity to operate. You will acoustically hear the strings but because your guitar will be a solid hunk of wood it will be very quiet.

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I'm not an expert, but I play one on the internet.

TWELVEBAR---Thank you very, very much...and RK too, and Joe in Vegas, and everyone who has shared their knowledge here.
12-bar, no, it was not a joke, altho it would certainly make for a good situation comedy series, considering what makes it to air these days....but, really, I don't know ANYTHING AT ALL about electric guitars, so i appreciate all the info 12Bars. I'll be saving that for sure! LOL really.....And I am grateful I won't be getting any electrical shocks!! Thanks to you!

There is stuff that I do know about, but I just really don't know about electric guitars.....I could talk to you about chocolate, shoes, food, NYC restaurants, and people in general, and some other stuff, but I am here to learn from all of you about the guitar.....

hmmm, I guess you could say, I would be the target audience if there was a book "Electric Guitar for Dummies", but I'd rather learn it all from all of you. So, thank you all.

My parent's made sure my first real working amp (a Roland Micro Cube) had a headphone jack. They didn't object to a computer interface for practicing with headphones either. I use the headphones 90% of the time for practice, and since my brother's room and my parent's room are right next to mine (paper thin cheap house walls...) I sometimes get in trouble for making too much noise even with the headphones on. So I'm regulated to practicing only when everyone's awake. But on the rare occasion that I have the house all to myself, I crank my amp all the way up, bring out the fuzz pedal, the wah and the octavia and go all crazy Hendrix until someone shows up.

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Welcome to the Forum NYCgal! I live in a studio apartment, without an amp I can hear the guitar and pick as hard or soft as needed. Singing is different, my voice isn't that strong so I have to stay on top of the mic, I am hopefully not disturbing any one without a mic.

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you can save the world with your guitar one love song at a time it's just better, more fun, easier with a fender solid body electric guitar or electric bass guitar.

Thank you Solid Body Love Songs--that was good news....I won't worry about an amp for a while...as long as I can simply use the electric guitar to practice w/and still hear some sound without electricity. If I happen to purchase a 'pkg' and it has an amp, great. Thanks!!

Texasguitarslinger....thanks. And somehow, I can picture you cranking up the volume and having a next door neighbor like (actor) Matthew McCauneghy (sp?)...he llikes to play drums. Bongos are drums.

anytime here , if the wife is in i just play unplugged unless it's a friday night when i crank the marshall up a wee bit and rock out

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Generally, the more desirable the location, the more expensive it is - supply and demand. New York is a highly desirable place to live and in the "city" (Manhattan), there's not much, if any room for growth -- high demand + low supply = very expensive. It's the same in San Francisco.

I can do you one better tho' - I rent a decent-sized house (3 br, 2ba, 2 car garage), for $675 per mo! Why is it so cheap? Because it's a small town in the middle of Oklahoma. (i.e., low desirability - no one wants to live here, lol) This same house where I'm from on the coast of Southern Calif would be close to triple that.

As for practice, I do it pretty much any time I want in the living room. Not having a spouse/kids does have it's advantages! I don't crank my amps though - mostly because I don't want to subject my neighbors to my sucky playing. My cat gets annoyed sometimes but I figure that makes us even. lol

I thought I would use headphones a lot but I found hearing the clicks of the pick while playing helps me to keep time so I don't use them unless I want to record.

-phil

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Then again, what do I know ... I've only been playin' for 6 months ... !

Anytime....There's always a couple Strats in their stands, ready to grab and go.......... Mike

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The blues ain't nothin but a good man feelin bad.

I may face a firing squad for suggesting this one, there's some hardcore musicians here that call them junk but there is a "German engineered/made in China" amp that I have and love and it's got a lot of "nice for the price" features.

It's a 5 watt tube amp. The Bugera Vintage 5. It's small, has a headphone jack, reverb, also will attenuate from 5 watts to 1 watt to 0.1 watt (louder than you might think)! You might find one used for about $140-$150 in great condition. I think they retail for $220. With an 8 speaker you can get a lot of sound out of it. http://www.bugera-amps.com/EN/products/V5.aspx

Oh, I live in a house in Vermont. I'm retired and crank the snot out of my amps any time my wife is at work. The dogs hi-tail it to the back bedroom. Else... I just practice at normal volumes.

I usually grab the guitar as soon as the better half goes through the door. She bought me a Vox Pathfinder 15R for Father's Day so I could practice in silence but even a solid body electric like a Strat can be quite audible when she's watching TV or on the phone so I just move to another room.I don't have to worry about bothering the neighbours as I live in a rural setting and my nearest neighbours are well out of ear shot.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

pbassBob--thanks. I like the idea of portable & being able to not depend on electricity all the time for an amp--options of either are great....and, I always think, oh--I could go to Central Park & practice under a tree w/that battery powered amp and not bother anybody....but, in reality, I don't know if I'd actually do that....altho, I'd like to....

VTBlack Strat--thanks!

And PbassBob---I listened to your Blueprint Album....I really liked it, and I intend to purchase for my iPod Nano. I have a new laptop, so I think now that I've downloaded a new ITunes store, I think if I just plug in my iPod Nano in to my laptop, and save, it should all be there....and then, I can purchase new stuff like your album....I've got spending $$$ waiting for me at my iTunes store.