Basic Elements of Your Electric Guitar

Although there have been plenty of innovations, the basic elements of your electric guitar have not changed dramatically, at least not for the standard, popular production models. The basic structural elements are the body and the neck. It is within these two main pieces of wood that most of the other components are contained within.

The body is the part of the electric guitar which houses the electronics. This body is also where the sound is 'picked up', and also where the 'bridge' resides. The bridge is from what the strings are tightened and fed to the other end of the guitar. The bridge usually has a small mechanical adjustment saddle for each string in order to adjust the 'intonation' (related to the overall tuning) of the guitar.

The electronics consist of electronic coils (pickups) which collect and transmit the sounds. The pickups have electronic components which control the sensitivity of the coils, which is volume, and the frequency, which is tone. At the end of the instrument (usually on the bottom) is the 'output jack' where the electromagnetic pickups send the low voltage signal to the output jack for amplification.

The neck of the electric guitar is a long piece of wood that contains the fretboard, which is a laminated piece of wood, where the left-hand fingering is done. This fret board has twenty two (usually) frets sunk into the wood, which and create the length of the fretboard from which different notes can be played from. The higher up the neck, the higher the pitch. At the top on the fretboard is a nut which acts as the 'open' tuning for each string. On top of the neck is the head. The head contains the tuning pegs where the strings from the bridge are fastened. They are cogged to permit tensioning, or tuning the strings. There are many configurations of heads but they are all intended to secure the string from slipping.

These components act together to provide a double ended, secured tensioning mechanism; between the bridge and the tuning pegs, where the strings are excited (picked) and vibrate accordingly. The fretboard, attached to the neck provides a place where the player can alter the pitch of the string in half-tone increments. The string vibrates to its natural resonant frequency and the electromagnetic pickups deliver that signal into volume and tone attenuators for processing and finally delivering them to the output jack and cable.

These are the main components which constitute an electric guitar. Although some instruments may have additional components (such as tremolo arms, fixed tuning apparatus, etc), these are less common than the aforementioned components.