10 Things You Might Not Know About the Guitar

1. How many strings does a guitar have?
Traditionally, a guitar – such as an acoustic, classical or electric guitar has 6 strings, but it is not uncommon to find guitars with four, eight or twelve strings.

2. How does the sound get created in the guitar?
Normally sound from a guitar happens in two ways; acoustically or electrically. With an acoustic sound, the tone is created through the vibrations of the string resonating around the hollow body of the guitar. With an electric guitar, the strings resonate into an electric “pickup” which is essentially a small microphone. Other guitars may generate sound acoustically, which is then amplified using pickups or microphones afterwards. The sound is then amplified electronically which can then be used to manipulate the tone.

3. What is a Luthier?
A Luthier is the master craftsman traditionally responsible for manufacturing (and repairing) guitars and other stringed instruments. Famous guitar Luthiers include Antonio Torres Jurado (the Spanish luthier credited with developing the classical guitar), Paul Bigsby (the tremolo arm) and Leo Fender (Stratocaster electric guitar).

4. What’s different about a left handed guitar?
You play it with your left hand, silly! In all seriousness, guitars can simply be re-strung to be left handed (to put the strings in the right order), or artists can play a normal guitar left handed (as did Jimmy Hendrix). Modern ‘left handed guitars’ are purpose designed for those 13% of the population that are left handed, and are strung differently, often with opposite shaping than those of right handed guitars.

5. What components make a guitar?
We’re not going to go individually into what each one of these components are, but the components of most electric, acoustic and classical guitars are typically the following; headstock, nut, fretboard, frets, truss rod, inlays, neck, heel (acoustic), neck joint (electric), strings, body, pickups, electronics, lining, binding, purfling, bridge, pickguard, vibrato arm and guitar strap.

6. What is a guitar made of?
In terms of the materials used, the non electrical parts of a guitar are traditionally made of wood (such as cedar and spruce for the sound board) and animal gut. In more contemporary guitar designs, more synthetic materials are used such as metal (particularly the string nuts and on resonator guitars), plastic, aluminium alloys and carbon composites.

7. Who makes guitars now?
There are literally hundreds of modern guitar manufacturers in the 21st century, but arguably the most popular. Mass market guitars available to consumers are Fender, Yamaha, Dean, Epiphone, Ibanez, Ovation and Stagg amongst others.

8. How old is the guitar?
Well instruments similar to the guitar have been popular for at least the last 5,000 years probably stemming in ancient times from central Asia and India. The oldest known depiction of a guitar being played is from a 3,300 year old carving of a Hittite bard. The word ‘guitar’ comes directly from the Spanish word ‘guitarra’, which itself probably comes from the Moorish (muslim) introduction into Spain in around 8th century from the Arabic word ‘qitara’ and the Roman introduction of the ‘cithara’ eight centuries earlier.

9. What types of guitars are there?
In truth, there has historically been too many types of guitars to list. With a history of 5,000 years, most are probably lost in the sands of time. Those we know of any commonly use today include electric guitars, normally of a fairly similar construction, and acoustic guitars such as renaissance, baroque, classical, ten string, flat-top, archtop, resonator, 12 string, Russian, acoustic bass, tenor, harp guitar, extended range guitars and battente’s.

10. What was the first electric guitar?
In the early twentieth century, the Electro String company experimented with adding electric pickups to guitar using a solid body. They released their ‘Rickenbacker’ guitar in 1932, which was the first of its kind. Now The Rickenbacker International Corporation, it is now the largest guitar company to manufacture all of it’s guitars within the USA.