Electric guitar peak output voltage

[zane9000]

Does anyone know what the peak output voltage of an electric guitar is? Or rather what is the peak voltage input you can feed into an average amp without it clipping?

[Paul Marossy]

Check out this article: http://www.muzique.com/lab/pick.htm
Not sure on the guitar amp design part...

[niftydog]

Totally depends on the guitar and the amp!

For instance, my passive bass puts out a 1V peak to peak if I really whack it - on the other hand, with some EQ boost, my active bass will happily output 8V peak to peak! Now, I realise that's extreme, but it wouldn't surprise me to see significant variation between guitars (especially single coils to humbuckers.)

A decent indication of a peak input voltage on your amp would be if you could find the input stage and measure the supply rails. Take something like 70% of that and that'd be in the ball park.