Getting Acquainted With Your Guitar

The Body.

The body of the guitar has some straight forward names. The top, the back and the sides. An acoustic guitar has a wooden bridge, a bridge saddle, the piece of bone or plastic that the strings rest on, and either bridge pins or a tailpiece. Bridge pins hold the strings in, the tailpiece is metal and the strings run through it and then over the bridge. The soundhole, as its name implies, is where the sound comes from. Most steel string guitars also have a pickguard. It's there to protect the top of the guitar from pick scratches from overly active strumming.

The Neck.

No, it's not the handle! The neck is the long, skinny piece of wood that attaches to the body. There are usually either little dots, big dots or fancy inlays on it. These are not just decorative, they're position markers and you use them to find your way around. On most guitars they're at the 5th, 7th, 9th and 12th fret, and many guitars have others as well. The frets are the little metal bars that look like lines. You press the strings down between them to make notes.

The Peghead.

That's the place at the top where the strings attach to the tuning pegs. A lot of guitars also have little plastic cover that houses the truss rod. The truss rod is a metal bar that runs the length of the fingerboard, inside of it, to keep the neck straight. Even though your new guitar will come with an allen wrench and a little instruction sheet, leave the adjustments to a professional. The tuning keys or tuning pegs, are the knobs or buttons that you use to tune the guitar. That little plastic piece that the strings pass through is called the nut.

Not all guitars will have all of the parts, but they'll have most of them.