Key Facts About Your Guitar

Guitar is one of the musical instruments that have long been used from the ancient times. Its long history explains the wide variety of its musical styles. Through the centuries, stringed instruments were used for entertainment and for religious worship. Every continent of the world has its own version of ancient guitar. This explains why the instrument exists today in various shapes and in styles, using four, seven, eight, ten and twelve strings. Classic guitar constructions use 6 strings.

It all started from the Roman cithara which was used in 40 AD. Elsewhere in Europe, the Scandinavian lut or lute, a six-stringed indigenous instrument, was discovered to be used in Viking excursions. By 1200AD, 2 types of four-stringed guitars were used; the Moorish guitar and the Latin guitar. The Moorish guitar has a wide fingerboard and several sound holes and the Latin guitar resembled the modern guitar with sound hole and narrower neck. In the period between the 15th and 16th century, the Spanish vihuela or viola da mano was used. it was believed to be the immediate ancestor of the modern guitar because of its striking similarities. It has a lute-style tuning and a guitar-like body. Its construction is similar to that of a contemporary four-course renaissance guitar.

According to history, the Vinaccia family has built the oldest surviving string guitar. The guitar has Gaetano Vinaccia's signature on it, with the date of 1779. However, it is Antonio Torres Jurado who has established the dimensions of a modern classic guitar which is also known as the Spanish guitar while he was working in Seville in the 1850s.

Today, modern guitars have been crated and constructed to cater to left and right handed guitarists. To allow easy gripping and depression on the strings, modern guitars were constructed to have the following parts:

o Headstock. Allows adjustment to pitch through string tension adjustments.
o Nut. A strip of bone, plastic, brass, corian, graphite, stainless steel and other medium-hard materials, serving as the guide of the strings onto the fretboard.
o Fretboard. A piece of wood that is embedded with metal frets.
o Frets. The metal strips that are embedded at the fretboard to divide the board in scale in accordance with the strings' vibrating length and resultant pitch.
o Truss rod. The metal that runs along the inside of the neck. Corrects neck curvature to compensate for the effects of changing humidity and pitch due to string tension to the sound of the guitar.
o Inlays. The visual elements of the guitar. Fretboard inlays are shaped like dots and are arranged in between the frets. More elaborate inlays are found in the body of the guitar and on the body of high-end and limited edition guitar constructions.
o Neck. The board that accommodates the frets, fretboard, tuners, headstock, truss rod. Also doubles as the handle of the guitar.
o Strings. Modern guitar strings come in metal, carbon or nylon constructions.