Music Hardware - Electric Guitars 101

[Seth]

Welcome to another Music Hardware article, and this time we're going to take a little look at the hardware of your average electric guitar. For those of you who've never played before and haven't a clue what the various parts are, this article aims to improve your knowledge of electric guitars.

Those of you who're experienced players probably won't get much out of this article however, as it's aimed towards the complete beginner.

Ok, that's the introduction done, onto the guitar!



Despite it's crudeness, you should be able to see all the parts of the guitar that you should know about labelled. Lets take a look at them in detail.

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The Head(stock)

The head, as you'd expect, is at the very top of your guitar. This usually has the tuningheads mounted on it, in various configurations depending on the manufacturer and model of guitar. The one in the picture is an Ibanez RG in case you're interested. Other than having the tuners on it, the section where the head meets the neck is usually where you can get access to your guitars truss rod. The truss rod allows you to correct disfiguration of the neck due to the tension (or lack of it) from your strings.

Tuningheads

These, like the name suggests, are what you use to tune your guitar's strings. The "standard" tuning from high to low is eBGDAE, and by adjusting the tuningheads you can alter the tension of your strings and hence raise or lower the note it plays when plucked. I won't go into detail on the physics behind this, but it's safe to say that tighter strings create a higher note than a looser string.

NB - Don't overtighten your strings. Too much tension might cause them to snap a lot, or cause your guitars neck to bow.

The Neck

The neck is the part of the guitar where you fret the notes and chords you want to play by pressing the strings down with your fingers. Again, this isn't a physics lesson, but shorter strings create higher notes than longer ones so the further up the neck you fret the higher the note you play.

Most guitar necks have between 21 and 24 frets - that's two octaves of notes - which you can play. The dots along the neck aren't for show either, they occur at specific frets. These are 3, 5, 7, 9, 12, 15, 17, 19 and 21. Mainly these help you figure out where to play without having to count up and down the frets.

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The Body

The bodies of electric guitars are different from those on acoustic guitars as they can be made of plastic or completely solid wood without affecting the sound of the guitar. On the body there are recesses for your pickups, which we'll come to later, as well as your guitar's bridge and output controls.

There are many different shapes of guitar body out there, from the "classic guitar" look of the Gibson Les Paul to the familiar shape (as in the diagram) of the Fender Strat and many others.

The Pickups

Ok, now we're getting to the important stuff. The pickups are the part of the guitar that "pick up" the vibrations of your strings, then convert it into an analogue signal that gets sent down your cable into your amplifier. There are two different types of pickup - single coil and humbuckers. Single coil pickups, like the one in the middle in the picture, are one set of inductors that detect your string vibrations. These are relatively low output compared to the humbuckers, which look like 2 single-coil's stuck together or a fat bar depending on their manufacturer. Humbuckers have a higher output and a different tone to single-coils.

The pickups are usually referred to by their position on the body, for instance the one by the neck is the neck pickup and the one by the bridge is the bridge pickup.

The Bridge

The bridge is what keeps your strings attached to the body of your guitar, as well as providing a tremolo. Different guitars have different bridges, and a popular (and expensive) one is the Floyd Rose but that isn't in the picture.

The tremolo aspect of the bridge uses a tremolo arm (effectively just a bar that screws into your bridge) to raise the bridge off the guitar body and lower the tension in your strings. This in turn causes the strings to slacken, creating a dip in the note of the string(s) being played. Not all guitars have tremolo bridges, so if you're looking for one make sure to check before you buy.

Output Controls

Last, but by no means least, are the output controls. These control the level of the output, via the Volume knob, and the tonality of the output, via the Tone knob. Just like they say, they alter volume and tone of the signal output.

The little sliding switch is the pickup selector. This lets you choose which pickup, or combination of pickups, to use when playing. Experimenting with this causes a multitude of different tones and sounds for your guitar.

Has this helped?

I hope this little article has helped answer any questions some of you may have had from other articles, like "What's a bridge?" or "Neck-pickup? Wha..?" though if you have any comments or questions on the article please don't hesitate to ask.