Guitar Heat

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Electric guitars are a lot like acoustics but there are a few important things to know about the differences. Let’s look at the Fender Stratocaster, the basic standard for so many electric guitars manufactured today. Here’s a typical model:

Tuners, or Machine Heads, are used to adjust the pitch of the strings. Depending on how you wind your strings, of course, turning them clockwise will raise the note and counterclockwise will lower it.

The String Tree keeps the strings from popping up from the nut. The nut is an anchor or plastic or metal that keeps the strings in a groove at the top of the neck so that they don’t flop and they keep their pitch. Some guitars have headstocks (the end of the neck that has the tuners) that slant backward and those types of guitars generally don’t need string trees as its shape holds the strings taut.

The guitar’s headstock, as mentioned before, holds the tuners. Many people can look at a guitar’s headstock and tell you immediately what brand of guitar it is. If you look at different brands of guitars, each one has a special patented shape. PRS, Fender and Parker are three of the most distinctive and basic types of headstocks.

The neck of the guitar starts at the body and ends at the nut.

The frets, in effect, separate the notes you play. By depressing the string between two frets, a note is played. Slightly raised, thin metal bars are placed at regular intervals along the neck, with the intervals getting smaller along the neck as you get closer to the body of the guitar. The farther up on the neck—“up”, or higher, is towards the body and refers to the pitch of the note—you depress the frets, the higher the note. That’s why players refer to “up” as towards the body of the guitar.

Fretboards, sometimes called fingerboards, holds the frets and strings. Most fretboards are 21 to 24 frets. When you hear of an artist owning a guitar with more frets, it’s usually a custom-made instrument. 24 frets are common, as it contains two complete octaves (essentially, two complete musical scales). The fretboard is built with a precise mathematical formula that ensures the pitches between the frets are consistent, which is why the frets closer to the body have smaller intervals between them. Learning where all the notes on the fretboard are in any tuning you play is an invaluable tool and not as complicated as it sounds.

The strap button holds the strap to the guitar while you’re playing and is a small round metal protrusion at each end of the body. On Fenders, the top strap button is located on the upper horn.

The pickguard, or scratch plate, is just what it sounds like—it protects the finish on the body of the guitar as it’s being played. If guitars didn’t have pickguards, most well played guitars would have excessive wear and finish damage around the strings running across the body to the bridge.

The pickups are what send the vibrations of the strings to the amp, letting you project the sound of the guitar. There are so many kinds of pickups that we can’t get into them here but depending on how the wire is wound in the pickups, you can have a twangy tone or a richer, fuller tone. Where they are placed and which you choose to play through are also important contributors to your tone. Most guitars have a switch selector that allows you to choose a bridge pickup for treble, a neck pickup for bass tones, or a combination of the two. There are hundreds of pickups made, each with a different purpose and tone if you don’t like the tone you get with the standard pickups on your guitar.

The Tremolo, or Whammy Bar is a movable arm anchored at a pivot point in the bridge that will raise and lower notes played as you pull or depress the lever. Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and other shredders are good examples of whammy bar use.

The selector switch allows you to choose between the pickups your guitar is equipped with. Most guitars that have 3 pickups, like the Fender Stratocaster, will have a selector switch that gives you five different combination choices.

The volume knob, of course, adjusts the volume of the guitar. You’ve probably heard of “volume swells”, an effect that’s made by simply manipulating the volume knob. The tone knobs control the bass and treble outputs. Some have only one tone control knob, some have none and some have one each for bass and treble.

The receptacle where you plug the cord into your guitar is called the Output Jack. It’s always a good idea to check it every so often to make sure it’s not loose.

Every guitar has a Bridge, which holds the strings in place on the body of the guitar. There are floating bridges and fixed ones, adjustable according to your needs and the type of music you want to play. On the bridge are saddles that stop the string vibration. Each string has a saddle, which dictates the height of the string over the fretboard. You’ll often hear guitarists remarking that a guitar has good action, which means the strings are at a perfect height over the fretboard, in their opinion. Some people like high action, others (like “shredders”) prefer low action. The saddles also dictate the length of each string. Each saddle has a screw that can adjust the string length longer or shorter and this is called “intonation”. If you intonation is not properly adjusted, you’ll definitely be able to tell!

The Truss Rod is one of the most important parts of the guitar. You can’t see it as it’s built into the neck but it prevents the neck from snapping or bowing and allows you to adjust the neck’s curvature. It’s better to leave this type of adjustment to a professional guitar builder/technician as you can irreparably damage your guitar should you tighten or loosen the truss rod too much.

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