Welcome to video four of the Beginner Guitar Quick-Start Series. I'm Nate Savage. In this
lesson we're going to cover the parts of the acoustic and electric guitar. Knowing the
parts of the acoustic and electric guitar is really important because you need to be
able to effectively communicate about your instrument to other guitar players.
I have my acoustic here so let's start with that. We're just going to go through the parts
on the acoustic guitar. And some of them overlap, most of the actually overlap with the electric
which we'll get to later. Let's start down here on this end of the guitar. This whole
part of the guitar is called the headstock of the guitar, and I'll kind of break those parts
down for you. These right here are called tuning keys, and those are obviously the parts
you turn to tune the strings of the guitar. These little parts right here, which are kind of connected to
the tuning keys, are called the tuning pegs or the string pegs, and that's where you attach
your strings to the guitar. As you work your way down here, this white part on the guitar
is called the nut. That's where the strings rest before they go to the tuning peg.
The next little area of the guitar we're going to work with is this part right here, and
this whole entire area is called the neck of the guitar. And there are a few specific
parts that I want to go over here with you too. These metal strips running vertically
right here are the frets of the guitar, and the frets are attached to the fretboard, or
this piece of wood that runs along the neck right here. And that's usually glued on to
the neck, but sometimes it's actually part of the neck. Most guitars have inlays or fret
markers, and there's two reasons for these. One of them is aesthetics, just for decorations,
and the other one, the other reason, is to help you keep track of where you are on the
guitar. You may have just dots on your guitar. These are a little more fancy. Regardless,
they serve the same function.
Moving up this way a little more, this whole part of the guitar is called the body of the
guitar, and this is where we get a little variance from acoustic to electric. So, let
me go through all of those parts with you. On the acoustic you're usually going to have a pick guard
right here and that's just so you don't scratch your guitar up when you're using your pick. Right?
Most guitars, most acoustic guitars, have a sound hole that's right here in the
middle. Some of them have it in other spots or not at all. It just depends on your particular guitar.
This part of the guitar right here, this black part, is called the bridge of the
guitar, and that is usually glued to the top of your acoustic. This part on the bridge
of my guitar is called the saddle, and it's where the strings rest before they go into
these holes back here. Now, the strings go into the holes and then you put these little pins
called bridge pins into the bridge to hold the strings in place. Some bridges don't have
pins at all. You just run them through the end back here, and they are called pinless
bridges. It really just depends on the type of guitar you have.
Alright, as you can see I have a strap on my guitar, and I have strap buttons too. There's
one on the front and there's one on the back too. Now your acoustic guitar may or may not
have strap buttons. It really depends on your particular situation. Some of them have one
on the back, and some of them have one up here. If that's the case for your guitar,
if you have a strap make sure that it comes with like a little shoelace where you can
tie around the neck of your guitar right here so you can use a strap with your guitar.
The electric guitar has many of the same parts that an acoustic does, and there are some
major differences though, and most of those differences come with the electronics. Let me switch to
my electric real quick and I'll show you what the differences are. So I've got my electric
here and like I said, a lot of the parts are the same. Headstock, tuning keys, frets, fretboard,
neck, body, but when we get to the electronics, there are quite a bit of differences that
you need to know about. There are two main areas of electronics that you should be familiar
with, and that's the pickups and the controls.
The pickups are basically the microphones of your guitar. They're going to pick up the
vibrations from the strings and then it goes out to your amplifier from there. Pickups
come in two basic varieties, humbuckers and single coils. Now these pickups on this guitar
are humbuckers and they're a bit wider, you can't see it because these pickups have covers
over them, but there are two rows of screws right here that pick up the sound from the
strings. And humbuckers are called humbuckers because they get rid of the hum that's normally
associated with single coil pickups. Single coil pickups are generally a little bit brighter,
and they have a hum that's associated with them that the humbuckers can kind of get rid
of. Neither humbuckers or single coils are better or worse or anything. It's all about
personal preference and the kind of sound that you want for your guitar.
Now let's talk about the knobs, the control knobs, on the guitar. They come in two basic varieties,
that's volume knobs and tone knobs. This particular guitar has four knobs. Yours may have one,
two, or three. It doesn't matter. It just depends on your particular guitar.
Volume knobs basically control the output or how much volume is coming from your pickups. This
is the volume knob for this pickup, so if I back off on it, that pickup is going to
get a little bit quieter. If I max it out, it's going to get as loud as it possibly can.
This is the tone knob for this pickup. If I back off on that, it's going to take some
of the treble out of that pickup, and if I max it out that pickup is going to be as trebly
sounding as it possibly can.
Now let's move on to the second type of control for your electric guitar and that is the pickup
selector switch. On this guitar, this is the pickup selector switch, and this is a three-way
toggle style of selector switch. And all it does is select which pickup is active. When
it's all the way down, the bridge pickup is active. The bridge pickup is going to be more
trebly just because it's closer to the termination of the strings back here. If it's in the middle,
both pickups are selected, and that's kind of a medium tone. And if it's up here, on
the neck pickup. That's the only one that's activated, and the neck pickup is generally
going to give you a bit more mellow of a tone. And pickup selector switches come in a couple
of different varieties, but the two main ones are toggle switches like this one. Or if you
have a Strat of some kind you're going to see like a blade switch. Maybe a three way
or a five way switch.
So that does it for the basic parts of the acoustic and the electric guitar. In the next
lesson we're going to learn the names of the open strings of the guitar, and that's important
for two reasons. First of all you have to know the names of the open strings to start
learning how to tune the guitar. Second, you need to learn the names of the open strings
to start learning note names all the way up and down the guitar neck.
If you have any questions leave them below in the comments and I'll answer them there,
or you can email me at nate@guitarsystem.com See you.