Guitar

From ArticleWorld

The guitar is a stringed musical instrument. Sound is produced by the strings vibrating under the move of plucking with one’s fingers or with a plectrum (guitar pick). The guitar can be categorized as:

• acoustic guitar
• electric guitar
• both acoustic and electric

A guitar has two main components: a body and a neck (with headstock). The body of the instrument acts as a resonator (especially with acoustic guitars) and can be hollow or filled (most electric guitars). The people that make and repair guitars are called luthiers.

Parts

The guitar is made out of 14 parts:

1. Headstock – located at the end of the guitar’s neck it is built with a machine head used for pitch modifications. Alternate pitch settings create different sound and different tunes of the instrument
2. Nut – a piece of strong material such as plastic or ivory that is used to brace the strings at the headstock part of the guitar.
3. Fingerboard (fretboard) – a long and narrow piece of wood that is straight in classic guitars and slightly bent in acoustical and electric guitars. It is one of the most important parts of the instrument because by pressing on a string and immobilizing it on the fingerboard the vibrations of the string can be shortened creating a different musical note when plucking it.
4. Frets – metal strips used to divide the length of the string in equal parts.
5. Truss Rod – an adjustable metal rod situated inside the neck of the guitar.
6. Inlays – visual points located on the fingerboard.
7. Neck – a part of the guitar that groups the frets, fingerboard, tuners, headstock and tross rods.
8. Neck Joint – the place where the neck of the guitar is linked (usually glued thus the name joint) to the rest of the guitar
9. Body – one of the most important parts of the guitar because its shape and the material it is made of affect the sound directly. It is very important in acoustical guitars and less important in electrical guitar because of the electronic adjustments made to it
10. Pickups – electronic devices built in the guitar (especially electric guitar) that picks up the vibrations of the string, amplifying the sound created by plucking
11. Electronics
12. Purfling and Binding
13. Bridge
14. Pickguard