How to Know Your Guitar Parts

Head (headstock) - As you can see above , the headstock is the part of the guitar where the tuning pegs are mounted after passing over the nut.

Tuning Pegs - As the name hints, these allow you to tune the strings. By turning them, the strings can be tightened or loosed as required.

Nut - The nut is like the 0th fret, it provides a fixed length over which the strings vibrate if the string is played without pressing down on a fret.

Neck - This is the long narrow part of the guitar on which is the fretboard with the frets & position markers on it. The neck also contains a "truss rod" this metal provides a counter tension to that of the strings. The truss rod you won't normally have to worry about, it is something that sometimes gets adjusted during a set-up. It is important to note that if you don't have strings on the guitar, the neck can be bent by the tortion of the truss rod so try to change strings when they break (if possible change all the strings each time one changes).

Fret-board - Usually made of a thin ply of a hard wood, the fret-board is glued to the face of the neck. The frets and position markers are laid into the face of the fret-board.

Frets - Although not all guitars have frets, the vast majority do and I wouldn't recommend attempting to play a fretless until you are very experienced. Frets are counted down from the nut so high frets (numerically are the ones nearest the body). Going up a fret is described numerically, so for example, going from 5th to 4th fret would be going down a fret.

Position Markers - Typically these are perloid dots laid into the face (and sometimes the side) of the fret board. Position markers indicate the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 12th, 15th, 17th, 19th, 21st & 24th frets. These markers help players move quickly from fret to fret. Initially it may seem that the markers are rather randomly placed, however 12th and 24th frets are ocatives of the open string with the others being evenly spaced between.

Strings - Obviously the strings are what you pluck to make sounds, the thickest string makes the lowest sound, the thinest makes the highest. For this reason when describing going up or down a string, it refers to the sound so going up a string goes from thick to thin.

Pick-ups - These are the bits of magic that convert the string vibrations into sound. Unless you are a luthier or an engineer, you probably aren't very interested in how they work, but I am so I am going to describe it anyway! (feel free to skip this if you aren't interested, I'm just indulging myself and it's not going to help you play any better!). Acoustic guitars use a hollow body to amplify the sting vibrations into an audible sound. Different string thicknesses, tensions and lengths change the sound that is produced. Solid body guitars can't use a sound box to amplify the string vibrations, instead the metal strings vibrate over an electromagnet (a wire coil wrapped around a magnet). These vibrations induce small currents within the wire coil which then undergoes a series of amplifications until it gets fed through another electromagnet and moves a wire connected to a speaker cone that sends out sound waves.

Scratch-plate - This can go by a variety of names and come in a variety of shapes, or not even be present. The purpose of the scratch-plate is to protect the body from marks that the pick may make as it is used to play the guitar.

Bridge - The bridge fixes the other end of the strings (the ball-end) so that the vibrations act of a particular length. The bridge also has a few parts that can be adjusted, you won't normally have to bother with these, but as with the truss rod, they may be adjusted during a set-up.

Body - The body houses all the electrics as well as holding the bridge.

“Knobs” - (No innuendo meant... well maybe a little) I put this in quotation marks it's not really what they should be called, different guitars will have different set-ups and conventions for what each knob does, some change pick-up tone, select which pick-ups are used, and control volume individually and/or overall. There is a whole variety of options. I suggest that you have a play around and see what each knob does.

Output Jack - The output jack is where you plug in the cable that leads to the amp or any F/X pedals you may have.