Music Acoustic Guitar Labelled — free printable diagram

The parts of an acoustic guitar

An acoustic guitar makes sound in two steps: a plucked string vibrates, and the hollow wooden body amplifies that vibration into a note loud enough to hear. Nearly every labelled part belongs to one of those two jobs — setting the pitch of the string, or amplifying it. The parts below are the ones normally labelled, listed from the top of the instrument down.

Headstock

The top of the neck, holding the tuning pegs

Tuning pegs

Also called machine heads — tighten or slacken a string to tune it

Nut

The ridge at the top of the neck that the strings pass over

Neck and fretboard

Where the fingers press the strings down

Frets

Metal strips dividing the fretboard into semitones

Body

The hollow soundbox that amplifies the vibration

Soundhole

Lets the sound out of the body

Bridge and saddle

Anchor the strings and pass their vibration into the body

Strings

Six, tuned E A D G B E from lowest to highest

• A string on its own is very quiet. Plucking it makes the bridge vibrate, the bridge vibrates the top of the body, and the body moves a much larger volume of air — which is the whole reason an acoustic guitar is hollow and an electric one need not be.
• Pressing a string down behind a fret shortens the length that is free to vibrate, and a shorter vibrating length gives a higher note. The frets are placed so each one raises the pitch by a semitone.
• The nut and the saddle are the two ends of an open string's vibrating length. Everything beyond them — headstock and bridge — holds the string but takes no part in the note.
• Standard tuning is E A D G B E from the thickest, lowest string to the thinnest, highest one. Tuning is done at the pegs, which change the tension in the string.
• Thicker strings vibrate more slowly and sound lower, which is why the six strings differ in thickness across the neck.
• The same parts are found on a steel-string and a classical guitar; the classical uses nylon strings and a wider neck. An electric guitar shares the neck parts but replaces the soundbox with pickups.