The anatomy of the guitar is pretty simple, many of the names are like the human body! This should fill you in on all that, so that you know what I am talking about in my lessons!

Video Lesson

Some little pictures...

I will try and get some pictures here at some point too... but I think the video should show you most of what you need to know.

Common Guitar Anatomical terms...

These are some of the terms you will see when people talk about guitars. I will try and add to this over time to have a complete list of guitar "bits" :)

Body
The main part of the guitar, will contain the bridge and on electric guitars it will have the volume and tone controls. The body is the bit that is in contact with your body!

Neck
The bit that pokes out of the body, where the strings go.

Headstock
The bit at the end of the neck where the strings stop and we find the tuners.

Tuners
The things that you turn to change the pitch of the strings. Usually found on the headstock.

Fingerboard
The part of the guitar where you place your fingers to play. The flatter part of the neck.

Frets
The small strips of metal that go across the fingerboard.

Nut
A bone or metal (or plastic) piece at the end of the fingerboard near the headstock.

Bridge
The far end of the strings from the nut, in the body of the guitar, usually metal.

Whammy Bar
Is a metal bar that comes out of the bridge in some instruments and by pushing it down will lower the pitch of the notes being played. They can make your guitar go out of tune, and in my opinion are not a very useful attribute on a beginners guitar, but are a lot of fun and can be very expressive when you know what you are doing!

Floating tremolo
A type of bridge system whammy bar that locks the strings so that they don't go out of tune, a common problem when you use a whammy bar on a regular guitar. They are great if you are doing serious whammy bar tricks, like Vai or Satriani, but for the beginner they are usually a complete nightmare. None of my guitars have them because I don't play that style much, and my Jeff Beck Stratocaster is pretty good at staying in tune with a normal Fender bridge!

String Tree
Some guitars have a small "tree" that the strings run under in between the nut and the tuning pegs, and it just keep the strings from jumping out of the nut. Not needed on most guitars.

Volume Knob
Pretty obvious really, controls the volume of the electric signal of your guitar.

Tone Knob (or two)
Most guitars have one or two tone controls. These control the amount of bass (low) and treble (high) sounds that the guitar makes. Take some time to play a chord and move the tone knob so you know what it does, cos you have to hear it to understand!

Pick-up
A pickup is found under the strings of an electric guitar, and "picks up" the sound. They contain magnets and measure the changes of the magnetic field made by the moving strings. They come in two basic types, Single coil (as found on most Fender guitars) and Humbucker (found on most Gibson guitars). Humbuckers have a fatter sound with less hum (hence the name).

Pick-up Selector
Most electric guitars will have more than one pickup, and the selector will allow you to choose which is used. You can often choose to use more than one at a time. Fender Stratocasters have 3 pickups, but have a 5 way switch. Gibson Les Pauls have two pickups and a 3 way switch.

HELP!!!!

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Justinguitar Beginner's Products

I have four great beginners products that will help you make the most of this course. Most popular is The Justinguitar Beginners Songbook which contains 100 songs arranged by difficulty that perfectly match up with each level of the course. Many people told me they like books more than web pages so we've made The Justinguitar Beginners Course Book (comes with 2 x CD's too!) and many people found being online to watch the videos a pain so we offer The Justinguitar Beginners Course DVD which also means you can watch the vids in much better quality. Together they complete the whole online course and are perfect when there is no internet connection!! Also very popular is Practical Music Theory for those that like to know what they are doing and why!! It covers very basic theory in an easy to digest way and puts it onto the guitar! They are all available in Bundle Packs too where you can save a bunch of money!! Buying products and making donations help keep the site free and growing! :)