Articles | Guitar Lessons 101 - Parts of the Electric Guitar

Those who intend to venture into the realms of rock, jazz, metal, alternative, and blues should at least take guitar lessons in their selected musical style. This is especially true of beginners who are picking up a guitar for the very first time. Of course, one of the first lessons that every beginner should learn is to know the different parts of a guitar.

Parts of the Electric Guitar

Identifying the different parts of an electric guitar is usually part of the first few lessons of guitar lessons for beginners. Both the electric guitar and the acoustic guitar have practically the same basic design with a few tweaks on the side as differences. Both types of guitars have a body, neck, fingerboard, frets, bridge, nut, headstock, tuning pegs, strap buttons, and strings. The unique features of an electric guitar not found in acoustic models include pickups, switch, tone and volume controls, input jack, handle or tremolo bar, and tremolo apparatus among others.

The headstock is where the tuning pegs are fastened. The tuning pegs have string posts where strings are attached. The machine heads are turned in order to tighten or loosen the strings. In between the headstock and the neck is the nut, which contains six grooves - one for each string. Some electric guitar models also incorporate a string lock.

The fingerboard is the most artistic part of the electric guitar. The finish of the board and the overall design created using the frets and inlays that mark fret positions make this part of the guitar remarkably stylish. Note that some guitars have longer fingerboards than others. Take note that guitars designed for soloing and improvisations usually have 24 frets while electric guitars designed for playing only the rhythm sections of songs have fewer frets and a shorter neck.

The body and its parts constitute the main difference between acoustic guitars and electric guitars. This is one of the basic guitar lessons that beginners should learn. Acoustic guitars have hollow bodies so that they can resonate the sound from the strings. On the other hand, electric guitars have solid bodies and they create sounds using the principles of electromagnetic induction.

Instead of a sound hole and soundboard, electric guitars make use of electronics such as pickups in order to capture the sounds created by the strings. The vibrations of the metal strings are converted into audio signals and are amplified by a separate device, which is incidentally called an amplifier. Note that the strings and pickups can't generate audio signals that are strong enough to drive loud speakers thus the need for amplifiers.

The other parts of the electric guitar are incidental either to musical play or to the electronics used to produce the necessary sounds such as the volume control and tone control and the phone input jack. The tremolo and the whammy bar are used to produce bending techniques that are applied when playing music. The pickguard is a panel of plastic that protects the surface of the electric guitar's body from accidental scratches when guitarists pick the strings.

These are the parts of an electric guitar. After getting a rudimentary understanding of each of these parts, beginners can move on to other guitar lessons to help them hone their skills.