Video:What Are the Parts of an Electric Guitar

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Transcript:What Are the Parts of an Electric Guitar

Hi! I’m Rick Tedesco for About.com and today we’re going to talk about the parts of an Electric Guitar. We’re here at the Guitar Hangar in Brookfield, Connecticut. If you are going to learn how to play an Electric Guitar, it’s a good idea to learn more about the parts of the it and how everything works.

The Guitar Body Holds Other Components

We start with the body, this is the part of the guitar that holds the bridge, pickups, strings, strap holders, tremelo, volume and tone controls. The body is also usually made of some type of wood and can be painted any color.Usually every guitar has 6 strings. You pluck and pick the strings to produce noise. Each string has a different level of thickness. The thicker the string, the lower the sound and vice versa.

We move onto the Bridge - the part where the strings sit at the body end of the guitar. The pick up is a magnetic device that actually transfers the vibration of the string into sound. Some guitars are equipped with tremelo bridges which allows you to manually loosen or tighten the string which would lower or raise the pitch up.

Volume and Tone Controls Change the Guitar Sound

The volume control on the guitar allows you to adjust just that, the volume. By lowering it all the way to zero you can turn the guitar off or bring it up to ten which would be at it’s loudest point. The tone control is very much like a tone on your stereo, if you turn the tone all the way off the guitar will produce a bassier sound. If you turn it all the way up, it will produce a tremblier sound and you can have it in any combination of the two. Most guitars with more than one pick up have a pick up selector switch which allows you to choose one or the other or a combination of the two.

Guitars are Tuned at the Headstock Tuning Pegs

Next the headstock which most guitars have. The headstock is the little piece of wood that sits on top of the fretboard. The headstock holds tuning pegs and the ends of the strings. Tuning pegs are just as they sound, they are used to tune the electric guitar. The tuning pegs are located on the headstock. Finally we have the fretboard, this is the neck part of the guitar. It contains frets and fret markers. Frets are the little metal ridges along the guitar that you would press the strings on to produce a different note. Fret Markers are visual aids that are found in between the frets, they are located on the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 12th, 15th, 17th and so on up the neck of the guitar.

Knowing the parts of the electric guitar is important. To learn more about Guitars and other music topics, please visit about.com Thanks for watching.