It
is important for you to have a working knowledge of what happens to the signal
from your guitar as it passes through the process of amplification. Each stage
of amplification is referred to as a “Gain” stage. On first entering the amp,
your signal enters the pre-amp, or the first gain stage. This is where the distortion
that we as guitarists love occurs. The signal here is very weak. This is not a
bad thing as the signal from the guitar must be made compatible with the signal
in the amp. The pre-amp stage must be ultra sensitive to a weak signal; therefore
the output signal is correspondingly weak.
