Seven Essential Elements You Need to Know Before You Play a Guitar

You pick up a guitar from your local music store. You're ready to start playing. chances are, you don't know what any of the parts to a guitar are called. Here is a simple guide line to not only get you in the right direction, but get you the right names.

1. Getting To Know Your Guitar:
Electric;
Your electric guitar is basically an electronic gadget built to produce sounds through a receiver, (usually an amplifier). We will now dissect your guitar to see how it works and get the names to the pieces of your guitar. Guitars vary by size, color, and shape. Some guitars are built differently to accomidate the player, but this is a basic strat style guitar.

BODY

The body isn't neccessarily made to accomidate comfort when holding it, and there are literally hundreds of different body styles, so don't get discouraged If It feels uncomfortable at first. The body of an electric guitar holds the components neccessary to play an electric guitar. The body of an electric guitar is where ALL the electronic knobs, switches, input jacks, and pickups are located.

NECK AND FINGERBOARD

Generally, there are two types of necks associated with your guitar. you have a bolt-on neck, and a neck that was built into the guitar. A "bolt on" neck has been "bolted on" to the body, whereas, a built in neck has no bolts. The back of your neck is primarily what kind of wood the neck is made from. The front of the neck has a separate piece of wood, called a fingerboard. Usually made from rosewood or abalone, the fingerboard was made to sustain sounds from coming through as a vibration through the neck itself, giving you a solid sound when you play the guitar.

FRETS

See those metal bars on your fingerboard? These are frets, little metal bars aligned in certain areas on your guitar. According to where you put your finger, frets are primarily made to "stop" the sound from that point back. If you set your finger just behind a fret, then strum the same string, your fret will make a pitch according to where your finger was set.

HEAD

Generally, this is located at the end of the neck. The head of a guitar starts where the nut sits, (see next description), and has the tuning pegs situated appropriately. Generally, heads come in different styles, but a strat-style guitar basically has the same type. Your head is the farthest part of the guitar from you.

NUT

The "nut" to a guitar is usually located toward the top-end of a guitar neck. Made to keep strings sitting in the right spot and spread out in distance exactly, the nut has strings sitting in slots crreated for such a job. Generally, a nut is 1 5/8in. long, but this is also a general length, some also vary in length. There are mainly two types of material used in building a nut, which is plastic or bone.

STRING LOCKS

Located just below the nut, usually chrome in color.

TUNING PEGS

Tuning pegs, (also called keys), are located on the head of your guitar. Generally they are chrome in color, but this also comes in a variety of colors, (gold, black, etc..) . tuning pegs are made to tune your guitar by tightening or loosening your strings. Your tuning pegs are little complicated gears set to adjust your strings to the exact setting of your strings. Each string has it's own tuning peg.
These are essential to tuning your guitar, and there are usually six. There are also 4-, and 5-string electric guitars out there, but we"ll get to that in the next lesson.

TREMOLO

This is where names get a little complicated. A tremolo is attached to your body and is at the other end of your set of strings. A tremolo was made to change your string tention, and often, is associated with songs that used this type of amplitude. This is also where your "action" is set. Action is basically a term meaning how high or low your strings are setting from the back of the guitar. this is also essential to getting the right sound out of your guitar. Dissection of a trmolo is as follows:
A "bridge-style" metal is married to a swingable bridge and has a string hole made there . A "presser" , made in the string hole for movement in the string direction, and a lock bolt screwed into the bridge forces the presser piece to press a string to the wall of the string hole with a string bead being locked against the lower end of the string hole. A mechanism based on string pressing and bead locking well keeps damage on the string construction ,caused by pressure, at a minumum. The bridge and the presser piece are both made of metal for tone, color, and pitch. These also vary. TREMOLO ARMS are basically bent arms that bend the strings to alternate the sound. The tremolo arm is either screwed or applied towards the back end of the tremolo kit.

PICKUP

Pickups are located usually in the base of the guitar, towards the middle. These are generally magnets with wire encapped around them. There is a wide variety of pickups available, but they are always located underneath the strings. There are a series of different layouts for pickups, but their main use is that they "pickup" the sound of the guitar, and sends the sound towards the PHONE JACK.

PHONE JACK

Commonly referred to most often as an "INPUT JACK", this is where all the sounds made from your guitar feeds through. this is where your instrument cord, (guitar cord), gets plugged into. Phone Jacks are generally located in the back of the guitar, either on the back base of the body, or on the side facing downwards. Usually chrome by color, there are two types of Phone Jacks and both equally do the same job. The only difference is preference.

VOLUME AND TONE KNOBS

The knobs for your guitar also vary, but the basic guitar has a volume knob and a tone knob. These are located on the back end of the base of the guitar. Knob sizes, colors, and diagrams vary as widely as guitars, but the location of these knobs are generally the same, towards the bottom part of the base of the body and down low.

PICKGUARD

A Pickguard is named for such. It protects the body from scratches and dents from usage, and is located around the general area of where you strum your guitar. Pickguards, (like everything else on an electric guitar), also vary in size and color, but generally, a pickgurd comes in white and is shaped to protect the general area of the guitar.

STRAP BUTTONS

Last, but not least, you have your strap buttons. these buttons are generally on top of the base of the guitar, and also at the very bottom of the guitar. Strap buttons are basically the only piece to a guitar that can be used just about anywhere in the general area of the back-end of a guitar and around the top of a guitar. some guitars have strap buttons already installed, so If you don't see your strap button, just go to your local music store and have them installed, this shouldn't cost too much.

OVERALL

Guitars are like cars. there are so many styles shapes, colors, price variations, as well as models, one would have a hard time memorizing every type, but this list just represents a BASIC idea. Get to know your guitar and your guitar will get to know you.