Anatomy of the guitar

The first thing you need to learn is the anatomy of the guitar. Below is a diagram to help understand what the various parts are. There are many different styles of guitar but the key parts are pretty much the same on all styles. Here we are going to be concentrating on a Stratocaster because that’s probably the most popular style of beginner guitar.

Head/Headstock

The headstock is located at the end of the guitar neck furthest from the body. It is fitted with machine heads that adjust the tension of the strings, which in turn affects the pitch.

Nut

The nut is a small strip of bone, plastic, brass, corian, graphite, stainless steel, or other medium-hard material, at the joint where the headstock meets the fretboard. Its grooves guide the strings onto the fretboard. It must be accurately cut or it can contribute to tuning problems due to string slippage, and/or string buzz.

Fretboard

Also called the fingerboard, the fretboard sits on the face of the neck and is home to the frets. Fretboards are curved and the curve is called the radius. The radius is measured in inches, higher numbers meaning a flatter ‘board and smaller numbers being more curved. Fretboards are most commonly made of rosewood, ebony and maple.

Frets

Frets are metal strips (usually nickel alloy or stainless steel) embedded along the fretboard and located at exact points that divide the scale length in accordance with a specific mathematical formula. Pressing a string against a fret determines the strings’ vibrating length and therefore its resultant pitch. The pitch of each consecutive fret is defined at a half-step interval on the chromatic scale. Standard classical guitars have 19 frets and electric guitars between 21 to 24 frets.

Neck

A guitar’s frets, fretboard, tuners, headstock, and truss rod, all attached to a long wooden extension, collectively constitute its neck. The wood used to make the fretboard will usually differ from the wood in the rest of the neck. The bending stress on the neck is considerable, particularly when heavier gauge strings are used, and the ability of the neck to resist bending is important to the guitar’s ability to hold a constant pitch during tuning or when strings are fretted. Necks have special rods inside called the truss rod. This lets you adjust the amount of bend in the neck. The shape of the neck can also vary, from a gentle “C” curve to a more pronounced “V” curve. There are many different types of neck profiles available, giving the guitarist many options. Some aspects to consider in a guitar neck may be the overall width of the fingerboard, scale (distance between the frets), the neck wood, the type of neck construction (for example, the neck may be glued in or bolted on), and the shape (profile) of the back of the neck.

Strings

Guitar strings are strung almost parallel to the neck, whose surface is covered by the fingerboard (fretboard). Guitarists typically use one hand to pluck the strings and the other to depress the strings against the fretboard. The strings may be plucked using either the fingers or a pick (or plectrum). Strings can be bought individually or more commonly in sets and in different gauges. Higher gauge strings are thicker, have more tension when tuned to pitch and are harder to play.

Body

Most electric guitar bodies are made of wood and include a plastic pickguard/scratchplate. Boards wide enough to use as a solid body are very expensive due to the worldwide depletion of hardwood stock since the 70′s, so the wood is rarely one solid piece. Most bodies are made of two pieces of wood with some of them including a seam running down the centre line of the body. The most common woods used for electric guitar body construction include maple, basswood, ash, poplar, alder, and mahogany. Many bodies will consist of good sounding but inexpensive woods, like ash, with a “top”, or thin layer of another, more attractive wood (such as maple with a natural “flame” pattern) glued to the top of the basic wood. Guitars constructed like this are often called “flame tops”. The body is usually carved or routed to accept the other elements, such as the bridge, pickup, neck, and other electronic components. Most electrics have a polyurethane or nitrocellulose lacquer finish. Other alternative materials to wood, are used in guitar body construction. Some of these include carbon composites, plastic material (such as polycarbonate) and aluminium alloys.

Pickups

Pickups are transducers attached to a guitar that detect (or “pick up”) string vibrations and convert the mechanical energy of the string into electrical energy. The resultant electrical signal can then be electronically amplified. The most common type of pickup is electromagnetic in design. These contain magnets that are tightly wrapped in a coil, or coils, of copper wire. Such pickups are usually placed right underneath the guitar strings. Electromagnetic pickups work on the same principles and in a similar manner to an electrical generator. The vibration of the strings causes a small voltage to be created in the coils surrounding the magnets; this signal voltage is later amplified.

Traditional electromagnetic pickups are either single-coil or double-coil. Single-coil pickups are susceptible to noise induced from electric fields, usually mains-frequency (60 or 50 hertz) hum. The introduction of the double-coil humbucker in the mid-1950s did away with this problem through the use of two coils, one of which is wired in a reverse polarity orientation.

The types and models of pickups used can greatly affect the tone of the guitar. Typically, humbuckers, which are two magnet–coil assemblies attached to each other are traditionally associated with a heavier sound. Single-coil pickups, one magnet wrapped in copper wire, are used by guitarists seeking a brighter, twangier sound with greater dynamic range. Upgrading your pickups is often a cheap and easy way to improve the sound of a guitar.

Bridge

The bridge holds the strings in place on the body. There are many varied bridge designs. There may be some mechanism for raising or lowering the bridge to adjust the distance between the strings and the fretboard (action), and/or fine-tuning the intonation of the instrument. Some are spring-loaded and feature a whammy bar, a removable arm which allows the player to modulate the pitch moving the bridge up and down. The whammy bar is sometimes also referred to as a tremolo bar although the effect of rapidly changing pitch produced by a whammy bar is more correctly called vibrato.

On almost all modern electric guitars, the bridge is adjustable for each string so that intonation stays correct up and down the neck. If the open string is in tune but sharp or flat when frets are pressed, the bridge can be adjusted with a screwdriver or allen key to remedy the problem. In general, flat notes are corrected by moving the bridge forward and sharp notes by moving it backwards. On an instrument correctly adjusted for intonation, the actual length of each string from the nut to the bridge saddle will be slightly but measurably longer than the scale length of the instrument. This additional length is called compensation, which flattens all notes a bit to compensate for the sharping of all fretted notes caused by stretching the string during fretting.

Pickguard/Scratchplate

Also known as a scratchplate. This is usually a piece of laminated plastic or other material that protects the finish of the top of the guitar from damage due to the use of a plectrum or fingernails.