Identifying the Parts of a Guitar

When beginning to play the guitar, you’ll need to be able to recognise the different parts of a guitar. The neck and the body should be relatively apparent as they create the basic shape of the guitar and form the basis for the other parts of the guitar to mount to.

Headstock

The headstock is found on the ends of the neck furthest from the body. Even though headstocks may be shaped in a different way depending on the manufacturer that produced the guitar, they all achieve the same goal that is to hold the machine heads.

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Machine heads

Machine Heads (or tuning pegs) are parts of a guitar that are turned to allow the strings to be made tighter or looser. They can be positioned in a variety of ways which is dependent on the shape of the headstock. Generally they are usually positioned all along one side, with half of them on one side and the other half on the other side or in some cases with four on one side and two on the other side.

Frets

The frets are the small metal bars that the parts of a guitar that are attached to the fretboard on the front of the neck of the guitar. The frets section the neck up into smaller sections. When pushing the strings down onto the frets you are lessening the space from the bridge to the place that stops the length of the string. The less the distance that connects the two points, the higher the pitch will be.

Most guitars have around 20 frets, with the first four frets called the first position. The numbering of the frets starts at number one, which is the first fret at the guitar’s head.

The Bridge

This is the place on the body that is furthest from the headstock and it attaches the strings to the body of the guitar. The bridge is constructed of wood or metal and can be fixed or floating. As a general rule, an acoustic guitar will usually have a wooden bridge, whereas an electric guitar will have a metal one. A floating bridge will be hanging off of the body of the guitar by two metal bolts and sometimes it may have springs fastened to the back of the bridge. This permits the bridge to be moved up and down to increase or decrease the pitch of the strings for some really cool effects.

Pickups

These are the magnetic parts of a guitar that are attached to the body of the guitar body just under the strings. They convert the vibration from the strings into a varying magnetic field which triggers an electric field to be created in the wire of the pickup which allows current flow and is converted into sound. A single pick up is named a “single coil” and a double pickup is named a “humbucker”.

It’s also possible to find pickups on acoustic guitars. They are generally attached in the sound hole of the guitar and can be seen from the front, or they can either be small strips of metal attached just under the saddle of the bridge where the string sits.

Learning to identify the parts of a guitar should be your first step when you first start learning to play the guitar.

You're now ready to move onto the next section on how to teach yourself to play guitar.