Comment by jacquesm
9 hours ago
That's not because of the frequency of the guitar but because the guitar functions as a very nice antenna (long piece of metal (the strong) + a coil forming a tuned circuit), what happens is that your hands create a very temporary partial diode where you touch the strings!
Such naturally occurring diodes are an interesting phenomenon (in this case: the salt in your sweat interacting with the steel of the strings) and were the basis of the very first radio receivers after the 'Coherer' (which is a word that has fallen out of use so far that it registers as a spelling error on my browser!).
That may be one explanation, but more broadly with analog audio it is actually quite difficult NOT to end up with an AM receiver.
Hehe. That's a very good point.
Of course, if you want to build a proper AM receiver you will find that it is quite hard ;)
Same with oscillators and amplifiers. You always get the other one first.
Oh, and it is also very hard not to build a microphone. Except...
Yup, pretty much any nonlinearity will demodulate AM.
Too late to edit: strong => strings. sorry!