Parts Of The Guitar

In this lesson, we’re going to learn about the parts of the acoustic and electric guitar. Knowing these parts is really important because you need to be able to communicate clearly with other guitar players about your instrument.

We’re going to start with the parts on the acoustic guitar, and most of them actually overlap with the parts on the electric guitar, which we’ll see later. Starting on my left hand side, this end of the guitar is the headstock, which is broken down further into more parts. We’ve got the tuning keys, which are used to tune the strings of the guitar. Connected to the tuning keys are the tuning pegs, or string pegs, and that’s where you attach your strings to the guitar.

Working our way down from the headstock, the narrow white strip is the nut. The strings rest on the nut before they go to the tuning pegs. Next we have the neck of the guitar, which is also broken down into more parts. The skinny metal strips along the neck are called frets, and the frets are connected to the fretboard. The fretboard is the piece of wood that runs all along the neck of the guitar.

Most guitars have fret markers, which can add to the aesthetics of your guitar and also help you keep track of where you are on the guitar. You may have simple dots or something more fancy like the fret markers on my guitar.

The rest of the guitar is the body, and this is where acoustic and electric guitars can vary a little. On acoustic guitars you will usually see a pick guard, which keeps you from scratching your guitar when you strum. Most acoustic guitars have a sound hole in the middle of the guitar, though some guitars may have the sound hole in a different spot or not have one at all.

The black part of the guitar on the other end of the strings is the bridge, and is usually glued on top of the body. The thin white strip on the bridge is the saddle, which is where the strings rest before they go into the holes on the bridge. When you put the strings into the holes, you put bridge pins in the holes to hold the strings in place. Some bridges don’t have pins at all, and those are called pinless bridges.

You can see in the video that I have a strap on my guitar, which is attached to strap buttons on the front and back of the guitar. Your acoustic may not have strap buttons, so you would want to buy a strap that has a shoelace so it can be tied around the neck of your guitar.

An electric guitar has many of the same parts as an acoustic guitar does, but there are also some major differences. Taking a look at my electric guitar in the video, you can see that the headstock, tuning keys, frets, fretboard, neck, and the main body are the same.

Two of the main differences on electronic guitars you should know are the pickups and the controls. The pickups are the microphones of the guitar, picking up the vibrations of the strings and moving them to your amplifier. There are two basic varieties of pickups: humbuckers and single-coils.

The pickups on my guitar in the video are humbuckers, which are generally wider. Underneath the cover of each humbucker, there are two rows of screws that pick up the sound from the strings. Humbuckers got their name because they get rid of the hum that usually comes with single-coil pickups. Single-coil pickups are typically a bit brighter, but have the hum that humbuckers can usually get rid of. Neither humbuckers nor single-coils are better or worse, so it comes down to personal preference and the kind of sound you want for your guitar.

Next, let’s talk about the controls on the body of the guitar, which are volume knobs and tone knobs. You’ll notice my guitar has four knobs, but yours may have one, two, or three, depending on the type of guitar you have. The volume knobs control how much volume or output is coming from your pickups. The first knob on my guitar controls the volume for one of my pickups. The knob beside it controls the tone for the same pickup, meaning I can control how much treble there is.

The second type of control on electric guitar is the pickup selector switch. On my guitar, I have a three-way style toggle switch, and it controls which pickup is active. If I toggle the switch down, the bridge pickup is active, which is naturally has more treble because it is closer to the end of the strings. If the toggle switch is in the middle, both pickups are active which gives a medium tone. If the toggle is up, then the neck pickup is active, which is generally a more mellow tone. There are a couple of different types of pickup selector switch types, including the toggle switch, or if you have a Stratocaster guitar, you may have a 3 or 5-way blade switch.
The guitar is a popular musical instrument classified as a string instrument with anywhere from 4 to 18 strings, usually having 6. The sound is projected either acoustically or through electrical amplification (for an acoustic guitar or an electric guitar, respectively). It is typically played by strumming or plucking the strings with the right hand while fretting (or pressing against the fret) the strings with the left hand. The guitar is a type of chordophone, traditionally constructed from wood and strung with either gut, nylon or steel strings and distinguished from other chordophones by its construction and tuning. The modern guitar was preceded by the gittern, the vihuela, the four-course Renaissance guitar, and the five-course baroque guitar, all of which contributed to the development of the modern six-string instrument.

There are three main types of modern acoustic guitar: the classical guitar (nylon-string guitar), the steel-string acoustic guitar, and the archtop guitar. The tone of an acoustic guitar is produced by the strings' vibration, amplified by the body of the guitar, which acts as a resonating chamber. The classical guitar is often played as a solo instrument using a comprehensive fingerpicking technique. The term fingerpicking can also refer to a specific tradition of folk, blues, bluegrass, and country guitar playing in the US.

Electric guitars, introduced in the 1930s, use an amplifier that can electronically manipulate and shape the tone. Early amplified guitars employed a hollow body, but a solid body was eventually found more suitable, as it was less prone to feedback. Electric guitars have had a continuing profound influence on popular culture.

The guitar is used in a wide variety of musical genres worldwide. It is recognized as a primary instrument in genres such as blues, bluegrass, country, flamenco, folk, jazz, jota, mariachi, metal, punk, reggae, rock, soul, and many forms of pop.Classical guitars; also known as Spanish guitars are typically strung with nylon strings, plucked with the fingers, played in a seated position and are used to play a diversity of musical styles including classical music. The classical guitar's wide, flat neck allows the musician to play scales, arpeggios, and certain chord forms more easily and with less adjacent string interference than on other styles of guitar. Flamenco guitars are very similar in construction, but are associated with a more percussive tone.

In Portugal, the same instrument is often used with steel strings particularly in its role within fado music. The guitar is called viola, or violão in Brazil, where it is often used with an extra seventh string by choro musicians to provide extra bass support.

In Mexico, the popular mariachi band includes a range of guitars, from the small requinto to the guitarrón, a guitar larger than a cello, which is tuned in the bass register. In Colombia, the traditional quartet includes a range of instruments too, from the small bandola (sometimes known as the Deleuze-Guattari, for use when traveling or in confined rooms or spaces), to the slightly larger tiple, to the full sized classical guitar. The requinto also appears in other Latin-American countries as a complementary member of the guitar family, with its smaller size and scale, permitting more projection for the playing of single-lined melodies. Modern dimensions of the classical instrument were established by the Spaniard Antonio de Torres Jurado (1817–1892).All three principal types of resonator guitars were invented by the Slovak-American John Dopyera (1893–1988) for the National and Dobro (Dopyera Brothers) companies. Similar to the flat top guitar in appearance, but with a body that may be made of brass, nickel-silver, or steel as well as wood, the sound of the resonator guitar is produced by one or more aluminum resonator cones mounted in the middle of the top. The physical principle of the guitar is therefore similar to the loudspeaker. The original purpose of the resonator was to produce a very loud sound; this purpose has been largely superseded by electrical amplification, but the resonator guitar is still played because of its distinctive tone. Resonator guitars may have either one or three resonator cones. The method of transmitting sound resonance to the cone is either a "biscuit" bridge, made of a small piece of hardwood at the vertex of the cone (Nationals), or a "spider" bridge, made of metal and mounted around the rim of the (inverted) cone (Dobros). Three-cone resonators always use a specialized metal bridge. The type of resonator guitar with a neck with a square cross-section—called "square neck" or "Hawaiian"—is usually played face up, on the lap of the seated player, and often with a metal or glass slide. The round neck resonator guitars are normally played in the same fashion as other guitars, although slides are also often used, especially in blues.Electric guitars can have solid, semi-hollow, or hollow bodies; solid bodies produce little sound without amplification. Electromagnetic pickups convert the vibration of the steel strings into signals, which are fed to an amplifier through a cable or radio transmitter. The sound is frequently modified by other electronic devices or the natural distortion of valves (vacuum tubes) in the amplifier. There are two main types of magnetic pickups, single- and double-coil (or humbucker), each of which can be passive or active. The electric guitar is used extensively in jazz, blues, R & B, and rock and roll. The first successful magnetic pickup for a guitar was invented by George Beauchamp, and incorporated into the 1931 Ro-Pat-In (later Rickenbacker) "Frying Pan" lap steel; other manufacturers, notably Gibson, soon began to install pickups in archtop models. After World War II the completely solid-body electric was popularized by Gibson in collaboration with Les Paul, and independently by Leo Fender of Fender Music. The lower fretboard action (the height of the strings from the fingerboard), lighter (thinner) strings, and its electrical amplification lend the electric guitar to techniques less frequently used on acoustic guitars. These include tapping, extensive use of legato through pull-offs and hammer-ons (also known as slurs), pinch harmonics, volume swells, and use of a tremolo arm or effects pedals.

The first electric guitarist of note to use a seven-string guitar was jazz guitarist George Van Eps, who was a pioneer of this instrument.[citation needed] Solid body seven-strings were popularized in the 1980s and 1990s in part due to the release of the Ibanez Universe guitar,[citation needed] endorsed by Steve Vai. Other artists go a step further, by using an eight-string guitar with two extra low strings. Although the most common seven-string has a low B string, Roger McGuinn (of The Byrds and Rickenbacker) uses an octave G string paired with the regular G string as on a 12-string guitar, allowing him to incorporate chiming 12-string elements in standard six-string playing. In 1982 Uli Jon Roth developed the "Sky Guitar," with a vastly extended number of frets, which was the first guitar to venture into the upper registers of the violin. Roth's seven-string and 33-fret "Mighty Wing" guitar features a six-octave range.