Practice

Guitars

An electric guitar is a wood resonator with steel strings, magnetic pickups, and a few control knobs. The same five or six ingredients — body, neck, pickups, switching, hardware — combine in surprisingly different ways.

Read the basics here, then dive into body types, pickup designs, placement, properties, and the meaning of pickup resistance.

The parts of an electric guitar

Electric guitars share a small, consistent set of parts. Differences in shape, wood, and assembly are real, but every model uses the same vocabulary. Click any part for a deeper dive.

Body

The large wooden slab the strings are anchored to. Solid, semi-hollow, and hollow construction each shape resonance, weight, and feedback behavior.

Tele · Strat · Les Paul · SG · 335

Tonewood

Alder, ash, mahogany, maple, basswood, rosewood, ebony — what each wood is used for and how much it really shapes the sound.

Body · neck · fretboard

Neck

Bolt-on, set, and neck-through joints, plus profile shapes (C, V, U) and scale lengths — how the neck shapes feel and sustain.

Joint · profile · scale

Fretboard

Maple, rosewood, ebony, and pau ferro fretboards; radius and fret-size choices that affect chord comfort and bending.

Wood · radius · frets

Headstock & tuners

In-line vs. 3+3 layouts, headstock angle, sealed vs. open tuners, and locking machine heads — the parts that hold tuning.

Layout · angle · locking

Bridge & tailpiece

Hardtail, tune-o-matic + stop-bar, synchronized tremolo, Floyd Rose, and Bigsby — how each terminates the string and what it costs you.

Hardtail · trem · floating

Nut

The slotted strip that sets string spacing and open-string action. Bone, synthetic, brass, and locking nuts each have a job.

Bone · synthetic · locking

Pickups

Magnetic transducers that turn string motion into signal. Four pages cover types, placement, electrical properties, and resistance.

Types · placement · properties · kΩ

Controls & switching

Volume and tone pots, the tone capacitor, pickup selectors, and wiring tricks like coil-split and series/parallel.

Pots · caps · switching

Output jack

The humble 1/4″ mono jack — mounting styles, why it fails, and how cables, buffers, and amp inputs change what it sends out.

Jack · cable · impedance

Construction choices & what they do

Most of the “why does this guitar sound that way” questions come down to a few build decisions. Here is what each one actually changes:

Choice Options What it changes
Body construction Solid · semi-hollow · hollow Resonance, weight, feedback resistance at high gain
Neck joint Bolt-on · set · neck-through Sustain, attack, ease of repair
Scale length 24.75″ (Gibson) · 25.5″ (Fender) String tension, fret spacing, brightness
Fretboard radius 7.25″ (vintage) → 16″ (modern) Chord comfort vs. low-action soloing
Bridge type Hardtail · tune-o-matic + stop-bar · floating tremolo Sustain, tuning stability, pitch-bend range
Pickup type Single coil · humbucker · P90 · active Output level, EQ, hum behavior
Pickup placement Neck · middle · bridge Brightness vs. warmth from the same pickup

How the signal happens

A magnetic pickup is essentially a magnet wrapped in thousands of turns of fine copper wire. As a steel string vibrates above the magnet, it disturbs the field and induces a small AC voltage in the coil. That signal travels through the volume and tone controls, out the jack, and into your amp.

Four pickup variables shape what comes out the other end — each gets its own page below:

  • The type of pickup (single coil, humbucker, P90, etc.).
  • Where it is placed along the string (neck, middle, bridge).
  • Its electrical properties — coil turns, magnet material, capacitance.
  • Its DC resistance, often shown as a single number on a spec sheet.

Once you know the gear, put it to use: