Guitar: Anatomy of a Guitar: An Open Learning Guide

This chapter presents an overview of the different parts most commonly found on the three main types of guitar.

The body of a guitar consists of a treble or upper bout (the half of the guitar closest to the neck), the bass or lower bout (the wider half of the guitar), and the waist bout (the narrow section between the treble and bass bouts).

The body is one of the most important factors in shaping the overall tone of a guitar. It provides the resonance that shapes the tonal qualities. It determines the volume of acoustic guitars and affects the sustain of electric guitars.

The woods listed below are used in the construction of both acoustic and electric guitars.

Agathis (also known as Commercial Grade Mahogany or Poor Man's Mahogany) is a tropical pine commonly found throughout south-east Asia. It is a plantation-wood used mainly for building cabinets. Agathis is cheap and usually used in the construction of budget guitars. Its tone is similar to mahogany but more bland sounding with a less complex response.

Alder is a lightweight wood that provides a clean balanced tonal response and good resonance. Its soft and tight porous structure is similar to basswood but with a bolder hard grain pattern that adds to the stiffness making it more robust. Alder has a medium light tan color and provides a balanced tone across the frequency range with a slight upper mid-range producing a clean sound. Its resonance provides a good dynamic range.

Ash has an open grain pattern which requires a lot of lacquer to seal and this can have a marked affect on the length of the sustain. Ash is typically used in mid-range priced guitars. Ash offers two varieties for guitar construction and they differ in tone:

(1) Northern hard ash (also known as Baseball Bat Ash) is hard, heavy and dense. This gives it a bright tone and long sustain.

(2) Swamp Ash (also known as Southern Soft Ash) comes from swamps in the Southern USA. Swamp Ash grows underwater which makes the wood lightweight and porous. Many Fender guitars from the 1950s were built with Swamp Ash. It has hard grain lines between its softer layers and a creamy light tan color with bold darker grain patterns. Its tonal qualities are a balance between brightness, warmth and dynamic range with clear bell-like highs, slightly scooped mids and strong lows. Swamp Ash has good resonance across the whole frequency spectrum and therefore can sound quite complex.

Basswood is a lightweight (lighter than Alder) close-grained wood with a consistent and tight grain pattern. Its very soft with light colors that range from almost white to medium tan. It requires a hard finish, such as polyester, for protection and good engineering to allow the screws and screw-holes to hold the parts. The installation of a tremolo system on such a softwood also means the body needs to be thicker to prevent cracking. Tonally, basswood has a warm soft tone which attenuates both the high and extreme low frequencies. It also creates a pronounced midrange fundamental frequency response and a reduced smoother high-end response. The tonal response compared with other softwoods such as ash and alder is less complex with a narrower dynamic range. Basswood doesn't excel in clean sounds though when coupled with distortion and overdriven amplifier produces a metal-lead sound much favoured by some rock guitarists. It is used in the construction of budget guitars and expensive guitars.

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Text adapted from Guitar/Anatomy of a Guitar by Wikibooks contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0. Paragraphs have been selected and abridged, and formatting adjusted. This adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.