Beginner Guitar Lessons: What are the Parts of an Electric Guitar? | Guitar | Lesson | Beginner
[MUSIC] And now let's talk about
the parts of the electric guitar. I'm going to start with the basics. These of course are the strings. And the strings, we actually tune them
with these, which are called tuners. In this case, I have locking tuners,
which actually allow me to cut off the string completely and
minimize the amount of tuning irregularities, I just think
they're a little more accurate. So in this case, we have locking tuners. Moving down the strings we actually come
to the area, this is called the nut.
In this case, I have a graphite nut. As we move down the neck
these metal things, they're called frets and
they allow you to extensively shorten the length of the string and placing
your finger down in certain positions. The shortening of the strings
changes the pitch. And that way you can actually combine and
create melodies and chords and create difference pitches and
play them together or separately. [SOUND] A lot of times frets
have markers on them and typically, you'll find them on the 3rd,
5th, the 7th, the 9th, and the 12th fret.
As you can see, this guitar goes
way up to something like 22 frets, whereas most acoustic guitars
will stop around 12, and then it becomes a little more
physically difficult to get higher. Moving along, we're going to get down
to this area here called the bridge. And these are called saddles. Now, these are sometimes adjusted
to fine tune the instrument. This is something you should probably get
done when you first buy the instrument. It's a process called intonation which just basically fine tunes
the tuning on your instrument. In this case, on this guitar,
we have something called a whammy bar or more traditionally known as a tremolo. And that allows you to [SOUND] add
a little bit of tremolo to you chord or whatever melody you might be playing. [SOUND] Tremolo bar. Here we have the input, which is where
you plug your guitar cable or chord. Moving along, here we have these
little things, which we call pickups. Now here we have what's called
a pickup selector switch.
In this case,
there are five different positions. And each of these five different positions
allows you to select a different configuration of these,
what we call pick-ups. The result is that it's a different sound. It goes from sort of darker, or a little
fatter, when we're in this position, to brighter, sort of a little twangier,
in that position. This first, position one,
selects this pick-up, position two selects
both of these pick-ups, position three just selects the middle
one, position four selects these two, and then the last pickup selector
position selects this pickup. So essentially this pickup selector
allows you the range and tones from dark and fat to bright and twangy. Now we're going to talk
a little bit about pickups.
In this case, the pickups that are on
this guitar which is a Stratocaster style guitar are called single coil. Without getting into too many details
the two options that you usually have are either single coil as we have here,
or if they look a little squarer, sometimes you might have
what is called a Humbucker. Now the difference sonically is that
humbuckers might sound a little louder, a little fatter. Single coil as we have here
are sort of very thin, with less output, a little twangier,
a little brighter. It's just a question of
personal preference, both are really great sounding pick-ups.
In addition, we have tone controls, and again, you might find different
configurations of tone controls and volume controls,
based on the instrument that you have. In this case, I have two volume
controls and one tone control. Usually, there's a volume and
two tone controls. In my case, I had some custom work done. Usually, just a volume and tone and
tone would be the standard setting. Now, if we take a look right here, we'll
see a little hole at the top of the neck. This is called the truss
rod adjustment area. Now, I would advise you when you first get
your guitar to make sure that it's set up correctly.
Usually the place at which you purchase
your guitar will have a technician and they'll set the action on your guitar. Now by the action,
I mean the height of the strings. What the truss rod adjustment
does is it controls the bow and in effect, the height of
the strings above the fret board. That makes it physically easier to play. A guitar with lower action
will have low strings. A guitar with higher action, well you'd
have to press a little bit harder. So the truss rod adjustment is used in
combination with the saddle fine tuning when you first get your guitar and
your technician sets it up. So I would recommend, if you can,
a professional setup. Now, usually on many of
the Strat style guitars, we call this style of guitar,
it's a Fender Stratocaster. Affectionately called a Strat. You'll find what's called a pick guard.
Now the pick guard covers the wood,
and again, protects it, because sometimes when you're playing,
often you hit, so you'll find some pick guards
that are pretty worn. In the cases where there's no pick guard, you'll find the wood
quite worn from playing. And that's it for the parts of the guitar..
