Flamenco Guitars and Strings

Nut (string Instrument) ... Variations Not all string instruments have nuts as described: Some guitars and mandolins, for example, have nuts that are just string spacers, with deep notches...

Bridge (instrument) ... Instruments of this type, such as arch-top guitars and mandolins, often have a bridge comprising a base and a separate saddle that can be adjusted for height...

Guitar ... Acoustic guitars (and similar instruments) with hollow bodies have been in use for over a thousand years... Guitars are recognized as a primary instrument in genres such as blues, bluegrass, country, flamenco, jazz, jota, mariachi, metal, reggae, rock, soul, and many forms of pop... For this reason guitars are distantly related to modern instruments from these regions, including the tanbur, the setar, and the sitar...

Pickup (music Technology) ... The external load usually consists of resistance (the volume and tone potentiometer in the guitar, and any resistance to ground at the amplifier input) and capacitance between the hot lead and shield in the guitar cable. The electric cable also has a capacitance, which can be a significant portion of the overall system capacitance...

Neck (music) ... Classical guitars almost never feature position markers, especially on the fretboard's face, whereas electric guitars usually do...

Gittern ... Up until 2002, there were only two known surviving medieval gitterns, one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (see external links), the other in the Wartburg Castle Museum. A third was discovered in a medieval outhouse in Elbing, Poland...

Baroque Guitar ... The instrument was smaller than a modern guitar, of lighter construction, and had gut strings. The frets were also usually made of gut, and tied around the neck...

Resonator Guitar ... Resonator guitars are of two styles: Square necked guitars designed to be played in steel guitar style... There are three main resonator designs: The "tricone" ("tri" in reference to the three metal cones/resonators) design of the first National resonator guitars... In 1927, Dopyera and Beauchamp formed the National String Instrument Corporation to manufacture resonator guitars under the brand name National...

Russian Guitar ... The invention of the Russian guitar is attributed to Andrei Sychra, who also wrote a method for the instrument, as well as over one thousand compositions, seventy-five of which were republished in the 1840s by Stellovsky, and then again in the 1880s by Gutheil. Some of these were published yet again in the Soviet Union in 1926...

Modern Classical Guitar ... The thumb traditionally plucks the base or root notes whereas the fingers ring the melody and its accompanying parts. Francisco Tárrega, Emilio Pujol, Andrés Segovia Repertoire In the 20th century, many non-guitarist composers wrote for the instrument, which previously only players of the instrument had done...

Dobro ... The Dobro brand later also appeared on other instruments, notably electric lap-steel guitars and solid-body electric guitars and on other resonator instruments such as Safari resonator mandolins...

Extended-range Classical Guitar ... Paul Galbraith and Alexander Vynograd are two of the most notable 8 string players who use the extra high and low string tuning. Galbraith generally tunes (B) ADGBEA which puts standard 6 string guitar chord voicings and scale shapes within the neck and allows him to read lute tablature directly (a whole step higher)...

Fingerboard ... On 6-string guitars and bass guitars, the markers are typically single smallish dots marking the 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th frets, and their octaves higher up the neck, with a double dot or some other variation marking the 12th fret and 24th frets...

Classical Guitar ... The term modern classical guitar is sometimes used to distinguish the classical guitar from older forms of guitar, which are in their broadest sense also called classical, or more descriptively: early guitars...

Archtop Guitar ... His 1898 patent for a mandolin, which was also applicable to guitars according to the specifications, was intended to enhance "power and quality of tone." Among the features of this instrument were a violin-style arched top and back, each carved from a single piece of wood, and thicker in the middle than at the sides; sides carved to shape from a single block of wood; and a lack of internal "braces, splices, blocks or bridges … which, if employed, would rob the instrument of much of its volume of tone." However, Gibson was not the first to apply violin design principles to the guitar... Merrill, for example, patented in 1896 a very modern looking instrument "of the guitar and mandolin type … with egg-shaped hoop or sides and a graduated convex back and top."The instrument featured a metal tailpiece and teardrop shaped "f-holes," and strongly resembled the archtop guitars of the 1930s...

Pickguard ... As well as serving a practical purpose, the pickguard may also be used for decoration and is often made in a contrasting color to that of the guitar body (popular variants are white pickguards on darker guitars and black pickguards on lighter guitars)... Expensive guitars may have luxury pickguards made from exotic woods, furs, skins, gems, precious metals, Mother of Pearl and abalone pearl... Acoustic and classical guitars Aggressive strumming with a pick can easily damage the polished surface of the guitar's soundboard...

Headstock ... For example, various manufacturers and particular guitar models use: Guitars 4°: Guild 11°: Martin 12°: Bigsby, Yamaha SGV 13°: Peavey, Warmoth 14°: Gibson Firebird V and VII, Gibson X-plorer, some vintage Gibson guitars, Washburn, most budget Epiphone replicas of Gibson models 17°: Gibson ES-335, Gibson Les Paul, Gibson SG, Epiphone Casino Basses 10°: all Gibson basses 12°: Yamaha SBV 14°: most Epiphone replicas of Gibson models 24°: Kinal Luthiers of both styles frequently cite better sound, longer sustain and strings staying in tune longer as advantages of each style... Some guitars without machine heads (for example, ones equipped with Floyd Rose SpeedLoader) have a headstock for purely decorative reasons... Signature headstock outlines All major guitar brands have signature headstocks that make their guitars or guitar series easily recognizable...

Electric Guitar ... Some of the earliest electric guitars adapted hollow bodied acoustic instruments and used tungsten pickups...

Vibrato Systems For Guitar ... The mechanical vibrato systems began as a device for more easily producing the vibrato effects that blues and jazz guitarists had long produced on arch top guitars by manipulating the tailpiece with their picking hand...

Chitarra Battente ... Locals refer to the instrument, simply, as the "guitar," using the term “French guitar” for what is general called elsewhere “guitar,” meaning the classical guitar. That designation of “French” is almost certainly wrong, since all reliable sources claim a Spanish origin for the modern six-string six-course classical guitar...