Anatomy of an Acoustic Guitar
November 5th, 2009 | Acoustic Musical Instruments, Guitars
The Bridge
The bridge of a guitar is found between the middle and the end of the body, though generally very near the end of the body. Depending on your guitar, your strings may originate at the bridge, or they may just be supported by it. Most guitar bridges are capable of being raised or lowered which is a necessary step when setting up a guitar. These adjustments may safely be made by any guitarist. This adjustment is generally done via adjusting two screws. These screws can either be thumbscrews, or your traditional screw requiring a screwdriver.
Tremolo bar
The Tremolo bar, which is also called the tremolo arm, the whammy bar, or the vibrato bar, is only found on electric type guitars, the most notable electric guitar being the Fender Stratocaster. The base of the tremolo will be beneath the bridge. Pushing the bar down will result in a lowering of pitch, while pulling back on the bar will result in a rising of pitch. The rapid push and pull of the bar will produce a pitch modulation otherwise known as vibrato. Tremolo and vibrato are often confused, which leads to the misnomer of the tremolo bar.
Neck
A guitars neck will very likely extend from the body directly, in the case of acoustic guitars. Bolting on is more common with electric guitars. Both electric and acoustic guitars have a steel rod called the truss rod that goes through the neck. Classical guitars do not need this truss rod. The adjusting of a truss rod is part of setting up a guitar, but only an experienced luthier should make this delicate an adjustment.
Fret Board
On the instruments' front face, on the neck, you are going to find what is known either as a fret board or a fingerboard. There are between twenty and twenty two different frets on an average fret board. Playing any desired note means pressing the appropriate string against the right fret on the fret board. The first fret is found at the top just below the nut, unless there happens to be one directly after the nut, and this fret is known as the zero fret.
Nut
All of the strings on the guitar have to pass through the nut which is located at the very top of the fret board. It is designed to roughly divide the headstock and the fret board and it works as a sort of open string type of fret. The nut is also occasionally regarded as a bridge, meaning that a guitar has two different bridges if you follow this terminology.
Headstock
This is at the end of the guitar's neck and it is responsible for holding the tuning pegs. There is a tuning peg for every individual string. There is a knob extending from each of the pegs that can be rotated so that the pitch of the string can be altered.
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Photo Credits: Jsome1
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