Parts Of A Guitar

Before you learn how to play the guitar, it is important to know all the parts of a guitar. You would then understand how does a guitar works.

Acoustic guitar and electric guitar are similar in many ways. They have three basic parts: body, neck and head.

Body
An acoustic guitar consists of a sounding board (or top) with a soundhole, and a back and sides, which contain the sound and make it resonate. In addition, it has a bridge which holds one end of the strings and a pick guard which prevents the body from being scratched by your plectrum during play.

For an electric guitar, the body is made up of solid wood to avoid too much screeching or resonance when the sound is amplified. It consists of the electronic pickups, pickup selector, tone and volume controls, strap pins (to attach a shoulder strap), bridge, stop bar tailpiece and output jack (an insertion point for the cable that connects the guitar to an amplifier).

Neck
The neck has a flat piece of wood called the fingerboard or fretboard. It is divided into sections called frets. They determine the different pitches or notes you can make on each string. The strings run from the bridge, along the neck and across the nut (at the top of the neck with grooves for each of the six strings) to the tuning pegs.

Head
The head (or headstock) holds the tuning pegs (also known as tuning machines or machine heads) that the strings are attached to. Each tuning peg has a knob that you can turn. The knob will tighten or loosen the string putting it into tune.