 Hello everyone and welcome to Blackstar Potential. My name is Lee Fuge and I'm here today with musicteacher.com. In this video, we're gonna be taking a look at the anatomy of the electric guitar. So the guitar I'm holding in my hands today is the Blackstar Carry On Travel Guitar. Now even though this is a portable travel size guitar, all the parts we talk about in this video and what they do will be applicable to a full size guitar as well. So I will be doing some playing later on in the video and the tones you're gonna be hearing at that point will be coming from the Blackstar Studio 10 6.0.6, which we've got running on the drive channel. So we're gonna break the guitar into three main areas. We've got the body, the neck, and the headstock area. So we're gonna start up at the headstock area of the guitar and talk about what goes on up here. So the headstock is where we typically see a company's branding. So obviously on this guitar, you can see the Blackstar on the front and we've also got some additional logos and some information about where the guitar was made and serial numbers on the rear of the guitar. But probably the most important thing about the headstock of the guitar are these things. These are the tuners. So this guitar has six tuners because it's a six string guitar, but if you have a seven string or an eight string guitar or a bass, you'll see a different number of tuners, but they all do the same job. So the job of the tuners is to tune the pitch of each individual string. So we do that by loosening or tightening the tuner to get the string to its desired pitch. The neck of the guitar is this long piece of wood here that extends from the body between the body and the headstock. The neck obviously is the part that we place our hand around, but there's a couple of very important things about the neck. So the first of which is this thing on top of the neck, which is known as the fingerboard or the fretboard. The fretboard is where all the magic happens on the guitar. So on top of the fretboard, we have these metal lines which go down the neck. These are called frets. So the frets are essentially like your keys on a piano. Each fret is a different note. So wherever I press down, I'm shortening the length of that particular string which increases the pitch. So the further up the neck, this way I go and I'm pressing down the higher the pitch of that string. And obviously using different combinations of different frets on different strings, I get different chords. In between the frets we have these dots. These are fret markers. These are just there to help us figure out where to go. The 12th fret you'll notice has two dots which signifies that it's the same notes as the open string. Not all guitars will have dot inlays. Some will have different aesthetic inlays but the purpose of them is the same. And also you'll notice on the side of the neck you also have those dots present. At the top of the fretboard, we have this thing here which is called the nut. Now the nut is a very important part of the guitar because it does a few different things. So when the strings come out of the tuners, the nut actually helps guide them in a straight line down to the bridge of the guitar. So there's a perfect line from here all the way down. If the nut is cut incorrectly, it can also mean that the strings aren't lined up correctly but it also means the strings could be too high or too low which can actually impact the feeling of playing the guitar. The nut can be made from a bunch of different materials so you can get graphite, bone, synthetic bone, plastic and all sorts of different materials each with their own tonal and feel characteristics. And at the heel of the neck down here we have this little thing which is quite hard to see on this guitar. This is called a truss rod adjuster. Now this is something you should never adjust yourself if you're uncomfortable or inexperienced in doing so. Inside the neck of a guitar is what's called a truss rod which is a metal rod which counteracts the tension that the strings put on the neck. So as the strings are in tune, they pull the neck forward with tension. The job of the truss rod is to pull the neck back to counteract the tension of the strings. This means you get a nice flat even neck. If the truss rod was too loose, the neck would be bowing forward like this. And if the truss rod is too tight, it would be bowing backwards like that. Obviously, like I said, don't adjust the truss rod if you're inexperienced or don't know what you're doing. Take it to your local guitar tech and they will sort that out for you. Where the neck joins the body is also an important part of the guitar. So this guitar is what's called a set neck or a glued neck. You can actually see a join line here between the neck and the body. What this means is that even though they might be made from the same wood or even the same piece of wood, they're carved as separate pieces. If this join line was not here and this bit of wood was consistent all the way through, this is what would be known as a through neck. Sometimes you'll get a guitar where the body and the neck are carved from a singular piece of wood, but typically on a through neck guitar, you would see a stripe coming all the way down like this and then these end wings would be glued on separately. Another type of neck which you may see is called a bolt on neck, which is when the neck and body are once again separate, but they're joined with four big solid screws through there as well. This type of guitar is a set or a glued neck because this bit of wood has been glued to this bit of wood. Now we're down at the body. So the body is obviously the overall look of a guitar. So this is a single cut style, which means that the body joins here, but there's a cut away here. So this is known as a single cut. If this bit here was cut away, it would be known as a double cut. The body of a guitar can be made from a bunch of different woods and that will obviously determine how heavy the guitar is, how resonant the guitar is or how the guitar sounds. Different woods have different tunnel and field properties. Not only that, but we also associate the visuals of a guitar with the shape of the body as well. On top of the body, we've got the finish. So this guitar is finished in white, but the back and sides are unfinished, which is a nice contrast because we've got the white top with the plain wood back and sides. The body also houses some aesthetic things. So we've got this scratch plate here, which is also known as a pickguard. This does have a practical use in that when I'm picking, it prevents my pick from wearing away at the finish here, but purely it's aesthetic because the guitar will still function without this. On certain guitars, pick guards or scratch plates can have a practical use in that some bodies will be routed out for electronics and a pickguard can hide any holes or even have electrical components mounted to it. And also all the way around the side of this guitar, you'll notice this thin stripe which runs all the way up the neck as well and all the way around the headstock. This is known as binding. Now binding again is just aesthetic. It doesn't actually impact the guitar at all, but this is known as a tortoise shell binding, but you can get binding in all different colors and materials as well. It's purely aesthetic and it does look great on this particular guitar. Right down here at the bottom of the guitar, we have what's called the bridge. So this particular bridge has six individual saddles. So each of those saddles control the intonation of a string and intonation is the overall tuning of the entire length of the string. So you can really fine tune the tuning of the string. So if the open string is in tune but a threaded note is not in tune, means the intonation needs to be adjusted. The bridge of the guitar also controls what's known as the string action. So the height of the bridge determines how high the strings are from the fretboard. So the higher the bridge, the further we have to push the strings down when we play notes. So we can adjust the action by moving the bridge up and down as well. Not only that, but the bridge also keeps the strings in line with the nut. So there's a straight line that runs across the bridge saddle all the way up the neck, up to the nut of the guitar. This guitar is what is known as a string through body, which means the strings go through the back of the guitar out the top and over the bridge. You may see some guitars with an additional bridge piece or a wrapper on bridge where the strings are all mounted on top of the guitar and also some guitars may have tremolo systems which will also deal with the string mounting as well. But this particular guitar, the strings go through the body, over the bridge and up the neck towards the nut. So now we're going to talk about what makes an electric guitar an electric guitar. We're going to start with this thing here on the bottom of the guitar, which is known as the output jack. You may also see this label as the input jack and this is where we plug our cable. So the guitar cable goes into that jack socket and now we have plugged the guitar into the amplifier. So on top of this guitar, we have this metal thing here, which is known as a pickup. So the job of the pickup is to take the vibration of the strings. So if I just play the strings, you can only hear that in the room through the camera microphone, but you can't hear it through the amplifier. That's because I've not turned the pickup on. That's the sound we associate with an electric guitar. So that works because the pickup is a magnet. It's a magnet which is surrounded by a coil of copper wire. That is also charged up magnetically so it interacts with the strings and creates that sound. So this particular pickup is what's known as a mini humbucker. You get a bunch of different types of pickups, but this is similar to a regular size humbucker, which is a pickup that gives a fat sound often used in rock music, which is a magnet with two separate copper coils around it. The reason for that is it reduces hum. So this is just a mini version of that pickup. You also have a pickup type called a single coil, which is a single set of magnets with a single copper coil around it, but those are much thinner sounding, much brighter sounding but they are susceptible to noise, especially when you're playing with a lot of gain. So this pickup is also connected to these two controls down here. So this control is the volume control. So when the volume control is down, you don't actually hear anything from the guitar. And if I increase the volume control, the sound of the guitar comes through the amplifier. The other control I have is called the tone control. So when the tone control is turned all the way up, it doesn't actually do anything at all. What you hear is just the sound of the strings passing through the pickup straight into the amp. But as I start to decrease the tone control, it takes the high frequencies that we hear and it shaves them off, giving us a fatter, warmer sound. So obviously I was going full extreme there from all the way up to all the way down to the range of it, but you can actually use it just to take a little bit of brightness off if you need to. This guitar also has another cool feature. So I mentioned that this was a humbucker which meant that it had two separate coils in. But if I grip the volume control and I pull it up, I activate something called a coil split. So what that does is it actually disengages one of the coils in the bridge pickup and turns it into a single coil, which I mentioned earlier has a thinner sound. So this makes this guitar very versatile and a lot of guitars will have this feature. So if I play a little bit with the humbucker mode on, so that's the volume pot pushed down and then I engage it by pulling this up, you'll hear the sound get thinner. Because we're disengaging one of the coils, you can also hear a volume drop there as I engage the coil split. That's a really cool feature of this guitar that does make it a little bit more versatile. Some guitars will have multiple pickups on the top. This obviously only has one. If I had a second pickup or even three pickups, I would also have a switch of some type which allows me to select between pickups and different combinations of those pickups as well. And the other little thing you may have noticed about this guitar are these things on the top and bottom. These are called strap buttons. So if I was playing this guitar stood up, those are the two anchor points where my guitar strap would sit so the guitar can hang around my neck as I play standing up. So there you go, there is an overview of all of the parts on the electric guitar. If you'd like to see us do some videos where we talk about how to maintain your electric guitar and any particular tweaks you might want to make to improve your guitar, let us know down below in the comments what those things you'd like to see are and we will take a look at that for you as well. Don't forget to check out Blackstar Amplification on YouTube for more videos just like this. And if you're looking for a music teacher, please head to musicteacher.com, check out the database of great music teachers all around the country, waiting to help you guys out. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you soon.