Electric Guitar Parts

Hi everybody, welcome back to the Beginner Guitar Lessons blog! While this blog was set up for acoustic guitar beginners I truly believe there are people starting with electric guitars instead of the acoustic ones for some reasons. Some of the ‘excuses’ are playing chords using electric guitar is much easier because the neck is thinner and the string action is much lower. But I think they are actually saying that playing electric guitars looks cool …… Yayy!

OK, let’s grab your electric guitar to see what the parts do. Some of the electric guitar parts are derived from acoustic guitar parts so basically they do the same functions except for the additional parts found in electric guitars only.

One of the electric guitar parts that differs from the acoustic version is the guitar bridge. Some models of the electric guitars allow dynamic bridge movement by means of the whammy bar. Other types of the electric guitar bridge are designed to work with fix bridge which is similar to what acoustic guitars have.

Whammy Bar or tremolo bar is used to generate a vibrato sound on electric guitars. There are two types of whammy bar: single action / direction which allow you to dive the bar only and double action which allow you to dive and pull off the bar.

Locking Nuts: This part is a must have for electric guitars with a double action whammy bar because pulling off and pushing in the whammy bar excessively can alter the guitar tuning badly. Electric guitars with fix bridge or single action whammy bar normally are not equipped with this feature.

Pick-ups are the transducers receiving analog signals from the strings vibration to be transmitted to the guitar amplifiers or guitar effects for further signal processing. Neck pick-up gives softer tone characteristic which is ideal for rhythm while bridge pick-up gives sharper or twangy tone and often used to play lead.

Pick-up Selector is used to choose which coil to be used. For electric guitars with two pick-ups normally you can set it to the bridge pick-up, the neck pick-up or a combination of both the neck and the bridge pick-ups.

The volume and tone knobs are used to control the sound output, i.e. the treble or bass setting or the sound volume.

I skip the other electric guitar parts such as head stock, guitar neck and fretboard, etc. because they can be found in the acoustic guitars and perform the same functions.

To Your Guitar Success,

-TJ-

Beginner Guitar Lessons Admin

Related posts:

1. Guitar Parts
2. Electric Guitar Bridge
3. Guitar Bridge – How It Works
4. Electric Guitars Buying Guide
5. Electric Guitar Strings Tips