What makes a guitar, a guitar?

So basically in this whole post, I will talk about the basics of what makes an electric guitar. This is just going to about woods and pickups. In later posts I'll go more indepth into things like wiring, tuning, bridges, stuff like that. This is probably going to be humongously long, so be prepared. As usual, ask questions if needed.


To start off, I'll go through one of the most simplest things in a guitar. The wood.

Tone Wood:
There are several kinds of woods that can be used for a guitar. Woods can be used as body wood, neck wood, fretboard wood, and topwood. Body wood is where you get most of the tone. Neck wood helps for balance and sustain. Fretboard wood looks good, and has little to no effect on tone. Topwoods are used for awesome looks, and to balance out or emphasize sounds. For the electric guitar, the most common of woods are mahogany, agathis, alder, ash, basswood, maple, and rosewood.

Mahogany
Mahogany is probably the heaviest body wood used. A standard sized Les Paul with a non-chambered mahogany body weighs around 9 or 10 pounds. Its not that heavy, but when you're onstage with that hanging down your neck, for around three hours, it can get tiring. Mahogany has a very deep bassy sound. Its used most commonly in guitars that are used for rock and metal, sometimes even blues.

Agathis
This is basically the worst kind of wood you can get in a factory. Its essentially ply-wood. It is pretty light, and has a medium to bright range. Usually used in low end Stratocasters, a guitar used mainly for blues.

Alder
One of the most balanced woods, leaning more towards the bright side. This wood is relatively lightweight, and looks to be a pale orange/yellow or white. Used in just about all Stratocasters of medium to high quality. Used for blues, indie, almost anything really.

Ash
Ash is brighter than alder. Used for guitars with single coils (I'll get to those later). Almost white appearance, fairly lightweight, though a bit heavier than alder. Used for similar genres as alder.

Basswood
Sometimes considered to be low-end mahogany, but that's not quite true. It has a balanced sound, but a bit more bassy than alder. Its usually found in guitars like Les Pauls, but usually the low-end ones. It is quite a nice sounding wood, but hard to find good guitars with it. Used for blues and rock.

Maple
Maple is a wood that is quite heavy, and very very bright. It is rarely used as a body wood, and is normally used for necks and laminate tops. Looks almost white. Used commonly with mahogany to get a nice body. Maple also has very good looking figuring that people like to see.

Rosewood
Rosewood is also quite heavy, but very deep and very very good looking. It is used commonly in good acoustic guitars, and is used in fretboards. Expensive, but worth it.

For more information about tone woods, look here Includes pictures, much better descriptions, and more wood.

Pickups
Pickups are what you see on electric guitars underneath the strings on the body. They look like rectangles. You'll usually see two or three of them. What these are, are magnets that pickup signals from the steel strings. The signal then goes around a circuit and out the cable, into the amp. There are three kinds of pickups that are used commonly. These are single-coils, humbuckers, and P-90 or 'Soapbars'. Other pickups that I won't be talking about are piezo, hex, P-rails, and razorblades.

Single-Coils
Single-coils look like small rectangles. You'll see these most commonly on Stratocasters. They only have one coil (Thus the name). They give a very narrow sound and tend to accent treble ranges. This is because of its size, and how it can only cover a certain space of the strings. The biggest problem with these is its tendancy to give feedback. On a single coil guitar, the sound will go around the coil on a 60 cycle rotation. Basically what this means, is that any leftover sound or vibrations coming from the strings will keep going round and round in the coil, and get louder and louder. You'll often hear this in some punk songs with that really loud obnouxious high pitched sound.

Humbuckers
Humbuckers are basically two single-coils stuck together. Sometimes mistaken for two seperate pickups, but these are just one. Humbuckers were invented to stop the 60 cycle hum that single coils gave. These look much fatter than single-coils, and because of that they cover more string length, and therefore give a fatter sound. These pickups are used in blues-rock, rock, hard rock, and metal.

P-90's (Or Soapbars)
P-90s are basically really fat looking single-coils. One P-90 is just one single-coil that is made a lot bigger. People wanted to use these to get a sound inbetween a humbucker, and inbetween a single-coil. These are named soapbars because they look a lot like soapbars. Popularized in the 70's, and used in bands like Boston and Guns n Roses. Can be used for all forms of rock.


So that's my post for this week. Again, ask questions if your confused or lost, which I'm sure you are.
Thanks!