[SOUND] And now, let's talk about the parts of the electric guitar. I'm going to start with the basics, these, of course are the strings. And the strings, we actually tune them with these, which are called tuners. In this case, I have locking tuners, which allows me to cut off the string completely and minimize the amount of tuning irregularities. I just think they're a little more accurate. So in this case, we have locking tuners. Moving down the strings, we actually come to the area, this is called the nut. In this case, I have a graphite nut. As we move down the neck, these metal things they call frets and they allow you to extensively shorten the length of the string and placing your finger down in certain positions. The shortening of the strings changes the pitch. And that way, you can actually combine, create melodies and chords and create different pitches and play them together or separately. A lot of times frets have markers on them. And typically, you'll find them on the third, 5th, the 7th, the 9th and the 12th fret. As you can see, this guitar goes way up to something like 22 frets. Whereas most acoustic guitars will stop around 12 and then it becomes a little more physically difficult to get higher. Moving along, we're going to get down to this area here called the bridge and these are called saddles. Now, these are sometimes adjusted to fine tune the instrument. This is something you should probably get done when you first buy the instrument. It's a process called intonation, which just basically fine tunes the tuning on your instrument. In this case, on this guitar, we have something called a whammy bar or more traditionally known as a tremolo and that allows you to [SOUND] add a little bit of tremolo to your chord or whatever melody you might be playing. [SOUND] Tremolo bar. Here we have the input, which is where you plug your guitar cable or cord. Moving along here, we have these little things, which we call pickups. Now here, we have what's called a pickup selector switch. In this case, there's five different positions and each of these five different positions allows you to select a different configuration of these, what we call pickups. The result is that it's a different sound. It goes from sort of darker or a little fatter when we're in this position to brighter, sort of a little twangier in that position. This first position one selects this pickup. Position two selects both of these pickups. Position three just selects the middle one. Position four selects these two and then the last pickup selector position will select this pickup. So essentially, this pickup selector allows you to range in tones from dark and fat to bright and twangy. Now, we're going to talk a little bit about pickups. In this case, the pickups that are on this guitar, which is a Stratocaster style guitar are called single coil. Without getting into too many details, there are two options that you usually have or either single coil as we have here. Or if they look a little squarer, sometimes you might have what's called a humbucker. Now the difference sonically is that humbuckers might sound a little louder, a little fatter. Single coil as we have here are sort of very thin with less output, a little twangier, a little brighter. It's just a question of personal preference, both are really great sounding pickups. In addition, we have tone controls. And again, you might find different configurations of tone controls and volume controls based on the instrument you have. In this case, I have two volume controls and one tone control. Usually, there's a volume and two tone controls. In my case, I had some custom work done. Usually just a volume and tone, and tone would be the standard setting. Now if we take a look right here, we'll see a little hole at the top of the neck. This Is called the truss rod adjustment area. Now, I would advise you when you first get your guitar to make sure that it's set up correctly. Usually, the place at which you purchase the guitar will have a technician and they'll set the action on your guitar. Now by the action, I mean, the height of the strings. What the truss rod adjustment does is it controls the bow and an effect. In effect, the height of the strings above the fret board. That makes it physically easier to play. A guitar with low action will have low strings. A guitar with higher action, you'd have to press a little bit harder. So, the truss rod adjustment is used in combination with the saddle fine tuning when you first get your guitar and your technician sets it up. So I would recommend, if you can a professional set up. Now usually on many of the strap style guitars, we call this style of guitar. It's a Fender Stratocaster, affectionately called a strat, you'll find what's called a pick guard. Now, the pick guard covers the wood. And again, protects it. Because sometimes when you're playing, often you hit. So, you'll find some pick guards that are pretty worn. In the cases where there's no pick guard, you'll find the wood quite worn from playing. So now, we talk about the parts of the acoustic guitar and we're going to start off with the strings. [MUSIC] We have six strings. In this case, the strings are steel and brass wound. And again, we have the tuners up here. These are the tuners or the things that we actually use to tighten strings and increase the pitch, and we'll talk about tuning the guitar in a subsequent lesson. Moving down right here, we have the nut. Each of these, these metal things are called frets. Now often, the frets are numbered with these markers. On acoustic guitar, usually they're on the side. On electric as we saw, they're on the front, in the middle of the fret. On acoustic guitar, we have them on the side. And usually they represent as they do here, 3, 5, 7, 9 and then 12. Now, moving up here we have what's called a sound hole and inside the sound hole directly underneath the end of the fret board is what's called a trust rod adjustment. As I mentioned before with the electric guitar, the truss rod adjustment is the area where you can adjust the bow that's in the neck. Ostensibly, changing the action, which is the height of the strings. Lower action or lower strings are physically easier to play than higher action or higher strings. This however, again is something that you should have professionally done at the time of purchase of the guitar. Now moving all the way back here, we come to an area that's called the bridge. The bridge sits on the soundboard and the strings are secured into the bridge by these things that are called bridge pins. Now, these are the things that you have to pull out when you're going to be changing your strings. Usually on acoustic guitars, we have sometimes a piece of plastic that covers the soundboard. Because sometimes when you play, it's easy and you can see here. I've done a little bit of scratching. This protects the soundboard, the quality finish of the sound board from the constant abrasion that happens when you strum and play chords and stuff like that. So here, we have what's called a pick guard. Oftentimes, it's either made out of plastic or synthetic. Or back in the old days, it was turtle shell. And now, it's fake turtle shell. Oftentimes with acoustic guitars, when you buy a guitar today, you do have the option to buy one that has a built in tuner. Sometimes, acoustic guitars come with pickups and you can actually plug them in the similar way that you would plug in an electric guitar. In this case, this is an older guitar, so it doesn't have a built-in tuner. But usually in this area, there are some controls with which you control the tuner and some tone controls and volume controls in this case. This is an older guitar. This one's called a Gurian. And so, this was back in the days when we didn't have that stuff. But today, when you buy your acoustic guitar often times, these are options that are available to you.
