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THE PARTS OF THE GUITAR

A Beginner’s Guide To Know Your Guitar

These are the main parts of the acoustic guitar

Back: The part of the body that holds the sides in place; made of two or three pieces of wood.

Body: The box that provides an anchor for the neck and bridge and creates the playing surface for the right hand.

Bridge: The wooden plate that anchors the strings to the body.

Fretboard: is the part of your guitar that holds the frets in place. Most of the time, the fretboard is another piece of wood glued on to the neck.

Frets: are the metal strips that run vertically on your fretboard. Frets are usually made of nickel or stainless steel.

Headstock: The section that holds the tuning machines.

Neck: is the entire part of the guitar from the headstock up to the body of the guitar. The neck is where your fretboard is located.

Nut: is the part of the guitar that guides and holds the strings in place right before they get to the headstock

Sides: separate curved wooden pieces on the body that join the top to the back.

Top: The face of the guitar. On an acoustic, this piece is also the sounding board, which produces almost all the guitar’s acoustic qualities.

Tuning machines: geared mechanisms that raise and lower the tension of the strings, drawing them to different pitches.

Guitars come in two basic flavors: acoustic and electric. From a hardware standpoint, electric guitars have more components and doohickeys than do acoustic guitars. But both types follow the same basic approach to such principles as neck construction and string tension. That’s why both acoustic and electric guitars have very similar constructions.

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Electric guitars also have these components:

Bar: a metal rod attached to the bridge that varies the string tension by tilting the bridge back and forth. Also called the tremolo bar, whammy bar, vibrato bar, and wang bar.

Output jack: the insertion point for the cord that connects the guitar to an amplifier or other electronic device.

Selector switch: a switch that determines which pickupsare currently active.

Pickups: barlike magnets that create the electrical current, which the amplifier converts into musical sound.

Strap pin: metal post where the front, or top, end of the strap connects.

Volume and tone controls: knobs that vary the loudness of the guitar’s sound and its bass and treble frequencies.