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Guitar Center, Inc. Business Information, Profile, and History

5795 Lindero Canyon Road
Westlake Village, California 91362
U.S.A.

Company Perspectives:

Our goal in the retail stores business is to continue to expand our position as the leading music products retailer in the United States. We plan to increase our presence in existing markets and open new stores in strategically selected markets. We will continue to pursue a strategy of clustering stores in major markets to take advantage of operating and advertising efficiencies and to build awareness of our Guitar Center and American Music brand names in new markets.

History of Guitar Center, Inc.

Guitar Center, Inc., is the leading retailer of musical instruments in the United States, selling guitars, amplifiers, percussion instruments, keyboards, and professional audio and recording equipment. The company operates a chain of 122 stores, maintaining a presence in 45 major markets and in 15 secondary markets. Guitar Center operates online through Musician's Friend, a mail-order and e-commerce retailer of musical instruments. The company also operates a chain of approximately 20 musical instrument stores called American Music, a purchase made in 2001. The company's operations are served by a 500,000-square-foot distribution center near Indianapolis, Indiana, the largest facility in the company's industry. Management foresees Guitar Center eventually developing into a chain of 160 large, "big-box" stores and 160 smaller stores.

1960s Origins

Guitar Center was born, almost by accident, in 1964. Wayne Mitchell was managing the Organ Center, a 21-store chain of music stores in southern California. The store specialized in keyboards, organs in particular, the instrument that dominated music sales at the time. In 1964, the Thomas Organ Company acquired Vox, a manufacturer of guitars and amplifiers. Unfortunately, its sales representatives knew next to nothing about the new products and had no idea how they should be sold. The Thomas representative approached Mitchell at Organ Center and--possibly through the application of subtle or outright pressure--persuaded him to take on the Vox line. A deal was reached: Mitchell would rent a storefront in Hollywood and Thomas would provide the sign. When it arrived it read "Vox Guitar Center," which later was shortened to Guitar Center.

Mitchell quickly discovered that his new store was a gold mine. Rock and roll music was taking off, the British Invasion was at its height, and bands like the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Kinks had sparked an unprecedented demand for guitars and amps. When Mitchell realized how much better guitars were selling than organs, he started closing his Organ Centers to concentrate on the new business.

Not all of Guitar Center's early success can be explained by Mitchell's remarkably good timing. By all accounts, he was a born salesman and a charismatic personality. He brought the savvy and technique he had developed as an automobile salesman and put it to work at Guitar Center. He knew, for example, that auto dealerships rely on their parts and service departments to pay the bills, enabling salesmen to cut margins on car sales to a minimum and offer customers the best deal possible. Mitchell decided that the equivalent at Guitar Center was the accessories department. Its products--cords, straps, picks, and effects, for example--helped stores cover their expenses. Mitchell cut costs to the bone and invested little in the look of his store, an expense he considered not directly linked to profits. The early Guitar Center stores showed it: old carpets mended with duct tape and racks purchased at closeout or bankruptcy sales gave them a bargain basement look.

One point that Mitchell insisted on was that Guitar Center pay all bills promptly. It used the reputation it developed, one unusual in music retailing, to win price concessions from manufacturers. Mitchell also created a hungry, aggressive sales atmosphere by putting his sales staff on straight commission. "If you didn't work," Chief Operating Officer Marty Albertson later recalled, "you didn't eat." While a "hustle" atmosphere was created that helped fuel Guitar Center's early growth, this policy was consciously abandoned in the mid-1970s.

Mitchell used a series of gimmicks, described in company literature as "Barnum & Bailey-style sales promotions," to draw customers into his new store. He set a record for keeping a store continuously open (11 days), which made it into the Guinness Book of World Records. He created the world's largest Les Paul guitar cake. He mounted 36-hour-long sales extravaganzas in which the store opened at ten in the morning one day and did not close until ten in the evening the following day. He continued to rely on those events throughout Guitar Center's first 20 years.

By the end of the 1960s, Mitchell's combination of low prices, attention-grabbing promotions, and timely paying of suppliers had made Guitar Center one of the most profitable stores in southern California. In contrast to the staid, old-fashioned, department store style of the established music stores, the Guitar Center on Sunset Blvd. had a distinctly counterculture feel. Its salespeople were usually musicians themselves who, while making their hard-sell pitch, encouraged customers to handle the merchandise, to pick it up and play it.

Expansion in the 1970s

Mitchell had the ultimate vision of 50 Guitar Center stores across the country. He opened a second store in San Francisco in 1972 and a third in San Diego the following year. To cut overhead, Mitchell kept Guitar Center decentralized as it expanded. The new stores were semi-autonomous and were run as a partnership, with Mitchell serving as the majority partner to the store manager. Mitchell instilled all his employees with a sense of what Guitar Center could become. The positive attitude that he created manifested itself in the group that later evolved into the company's senior management. Mitchell began hiring them, as salesmen, in the mid-1970s: in 1975, Ray Scherr, who later took over the company; in 1977, Larry Thomas, later president and CEO; in 1979, Marty Albertson, later executive vice-president and COO. Historically, Guitar Center has had more than average staff turnover at the entry level but nearly no turnover at the management level. Store managers remain an average of eight years. By the late 1990s, most senior management had been with Guitar Center from ten to 15 years.

Ray Scherr moved rapidly from the sales floor, became a store manager, and then became a sort of junior partner to Wayne Mitchell. Scherr became a major force for innovation at the company in the 1970s and 1980s. It was Scherr's idea, for example, to centralize Guitar Center operations and thereby increase the company's buying power with vendors. Initially, Mitchell resisted the added expense of central administration until he could be shown that the money saved in vendor discounts would pay for it. Scherr also instituted the direct mail campaign that is still an important element of Guitar Center marketing. The Guitar Center of the early 21st century embodies the vision of both men. "Wayne Mitchell built a lot of the value culture of Guitar Center," Albertson said, "while Ray Scherr built the operating structure."

In 1979, the company received information that a bank was about to foreclose on a music store in Chicago. Guitar Center moved quickly and later that year opened a store in that city, the company's first outside California. Moving into the Chicago market forced Guitar Center to confront its weaknesses and to rethink its entire approach. It discovered it could not simply enter the Chicago market and conquer it. Chicago, Guitar Center learned, was dominated by local independent retailers who commanded fierce loyalty from their customers. What was more, Chicagoans were put off by the company's hard sell tactics as well as its radio ads, which had worked well in California for five years or more. "Chicago was where we cut out teeth on expansion," said Larry Taylor. "It changed the way we did business." The experience led Guitar Center to become more customer service oriented, working to win consumer confidence and earn repeat business, a goal that hitherto had not been a high priority.

Changes and Continued Growth in the 1980s

In 1980, Mitchell inaugurated an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), a stock-sharing program for Guitar Center workers. The ESOP transformed the company from a sole proprietorship to one owned jointly by management and employees and helped increase employee commitment to company growth. Because of the transient nature of the company's entry-level sales force, however, the ESOP was later converted to a profit sharing plan.

For a short period around 1980, Guitar Center became involved in guitar manufacture when it purchased Kramer Guitar. Kramer eventually produced a full range of guitars for beginners to professionals, and its popularity was increased substantially at the time by its association with guitarist Eddie Van Halen. Kramer's head Dennis Berardi was, in Larry Thomas's words, "a very young, inspirational, undisciplined kind of guy." Berardi's management style clashed with Mitchell's, which was considerably more conservative. Running Kramer came to be so stressful for Mitchell that Guitar Center decided to pull out. Mitchell already had heart problems and other members of senior management were afraid he would suffer a heart attack.

In 1983, at the age of 57, Wayne Mitchell did die of a heart attack. Mitchell's family sold half of his share of the company to the ESOP and half to Ray Scherr. Scherr, who had been Guitar Center president for several years, became the majority shareholder and took over the running of the company. The Guitar Center chain had, in the meantime, grown to nine stores and under Scherr the chain continued to grow, adding an average of one store a year for the next decade.

In 1985, the Hollywood store inaugurated the "Rock Walk," where the greats of popular music have pressed their hand prints in the sidewalk. It went on to become a popular tourist attraction in Los Angeles. More important, the chain was operating 12 stores by that year, and it had become obvious that an effective infrastructure was urgently needed that would enable the company to effectively control inventory and sales. As a result, Guitar Center interrupted its expansion drive for a couple of years to concentrate on computerizing its existing stores and introducing bar coding for its entire line of merchandise. The work lasted a year and a half, but when it was completed the company had a state-of-the-art system that was far ahead of its competitors in the music retail industry. Once in place, the system laid the foundation for Guitar Center's explosive growth during the 1990s.

Becoming a Public Company in the 1990s

Guitar Center engaged in another short-lived involvement in manufacturing when it acquired amplifier producer Acoustic Amplification in 1987. It sold Acoustic only two years later. In 1991, Larry Thomas--after working as a salesman, a store manager, a regional manager, corporate general manager, and chief operating officer--became Guitar Center president. By 1993, the company had 17 stores across the United States, with annual sales of approximately $100 million.

In 1996, Ray Scherr decided to leave Guitar Center. As a result, senior Guitar Center management, led by Larry Thomas and Marty Albertson, borrowed $100 million and, together with three California venture capital companies, bought most of Scherr's stock in the company. Not long afterward, the company made a high yield bond offering to convert the $100 million loan to long-term debt. The added burden of that large debt, together with the new involvement of the venture capitalists who were counting on stepped-up, national growth, led to the decision to make an initial public offering (IPO) in March 1997. The company had a scare the day the stock was priced when the market plunged 157 points and some of the banks involved almost pulled out. The stock, however, after being offered at $15, closed the first day of trading at $18 and about $90 million was raised. Guitar Center became the first publicly traded company in the music retail industry.

Going public raised some difficult issues for Guitar Center. The stock offering was predicated on the assumption that the company would expand quickly. It was accustomed, though, to opening one store at a time, then closely monitoring developments before opening another store. Suddenly it had to move efficiently at a much faster pace. In 1997, the company opened five new stores; in 1998, it opened 12 further stores and planned 12 more for 1999 and 16 for 2000. At the time, he company foresaw a network that would ultimately number 150, including a new smaller store format in small- and middle-sized markets across the United States. Another important question mark was whether manufacturers would be able to supply a much larger Guitar Center with the large volume of products it required. Most suppliers were able to adapt to Guitar Center's new needs. Nevertheless, a common complaint of smaller music retailers is that they are often not able to take shipment on items because most have been allotted to Guitar Center. Overall, Guitar Center's first year as a public company was a successful one. In the spring of 1998, it reported that sales had increased 39 percent and net income increased 60 percent to $11 million.

In May 1999, Guitar Center acquired Musician's Friend in a stock transaction valued at approximately $50 million. Musician's Friend, based in Medford, Oregon, was the world's largest mail-order and e-commerce retailer of musical instruments, with $97 million in revenue in 1998. Its acquisition made Guitar Center the leader in Internet as well as traditional musical instrument retailing. The Internet business was to remain headquartered in Medford under the name Musician's Friend. Most of its music stores were converted into Guitar Center stores. Guitar Center intended to use the stores, located in smaller markets, to create its new smaller store format.

Vibrant Growth in the 21st Century

Guitar Center embarked on the most prolific period in its history as it entered the 21st century, expanding physically and recording enormous sales growth. Perhaps most remarkable, the company's robust development occurred while the rest of the retail industry--not just musical instrument retailers--suffered from recessive market conditions. Guitar Center was one of the few success stories in the entire retail industry during the early years of the century's first decade, demonstrating strength that was acknowledged by an impressed financial community. The stock market reached its lowest point in four years early in the decade, but Guitar Center's stock increased in value, doubling between September 2002 and September 2003. Wall Street was watching the next "category killer," a company like Wal-Mart Stores or Home Depot that silenced competitors through sheer might, and it approved of the strategy. The company's growth led an editor of an industry trade magazine to remark to the Los Angeles Business Journal on September 30, 2002, "They have taken market share and they've pounded a lot of other businesses. What everyone asks is, 'How big can they get?'"

Guitar Center, prodded by its IPO to expand more aggressively, did not disappoint investors following the acquisition of Musician's Friend in 1999. The company opened its 100th store in early 2002, a shop located in Little Rock, Arkansas. A year earlier, the company acquired a new vehicle for expansion, purchasing American Music Group, a Liverpool, New York-based chain of 19 musical instrument shops that sold and rented band instruments to schools and colleges. The company planned to open between eight and ten new stores, focusing on markets with a "strong educational environment," according to Albertson in a November 25, 2002 article in the Los Angeles Business Journal. In 2002, when 20 new Guitar Center stores were established, the company opened a 500,000-square-foot distribution center near Indianapolis, Indiana, to service its rapidly expanding chain. With the distribution center, Thomas and Albertson hoped to secure price reductions from instrument manufacturers, arguing that Guitar Center should receive some of the savings realized by shipping and billing to one location instead of myriad locations. It was the stuff of Home Depot and Wal-Mart Stores, giving Guitar Stores an advantage over smaller retailers who were not in the position to ask for discounted prices.

By the end of 2002, Thomas foresaw Guitar Center as chain of 160 large stores and 160 smaller stores. That was the goal the company was pursuing as it enjoyed enormous increases in its revenue volume. Sales, which neared $400 million in 1998, leaped to nearly $800 million in 2000 before reaching $1.1 billion in 2002. The company opened 14 new Guitar Centers in 2003 and announced plans to open between 16 and 18 new stores in 2004. In March 2004, the company formed a new division to broaden its already comprehensive customer base. GCP Pro was established to serve the commercial recording market by offering services that included analyzing a professional musician's recording studio and installing equipment and upgrades on-site.

As Guitar Center celebrated its 40th anniversary, the company held sway in the musical instrument industry. The company was the dominant player in the industry by far. Few industry observers doubted that Guitar Center would cede its overwhelming lead in the years ahead, particularly given its intention to eventually establish more than 300 stores in major and secondary markets throughout the United States. The task of blanketing the nation with "category killer" units fell largely to Albertson, who became sole chief executive officer and chairman of the company in late 2004. Thomas, who had served as co-chief executive officer and chairman, became Guitar Center's chairman emeritus. As the company pressed ahead with Albertson dictating its strategy, competitors and industry observers waited for the answer to the question: "How big can they get?"

Principal Subsidiaries: Musician's Friend, Inc.; Guitar Center Stores, Inc.

Principal Divisions: GCP Pro; Musician's Friend.

Principal Competitors: Sam Ash Music Corporation; American Music Supply; Sweetwater Sound Inc.

Related information about Guitar

In its modern form, a musical instrument with a wooden, ‘waisted’ body, flat back, fretted neck, and six strings which are plucked (usually by fingers or fingernails) or strummed. Before the late 18th-c, most guitars had four or five courses (a ‘course’ being one or more strings tuned to a single pitch). Since its earliest days the guitar has been associated with folk and popular music, especially Spanish flamenco, but the 19th-c six-course instrument also attracted an extensive printed repertory from guitarist-composers such as Mauro Giuliani (1781–1829) and Fernando Sor (1778–1839). The elevation of the classical guitar to the status of a recital and concerto instrument owes much to the example and influence of Andrés Segovia.

The electric guitar, the sound of which is amplified and fed through a loudspeaker, exists in two types: the semi-acoustic, with a hollow body, and the more common type with a solid body acting not as a resonator but as an anchor for the strings, and a panel to which the electronic pickups and tone and volume controls are attached. The standard instrument has six strings, played with plectrum or fingers; the bass guitar has four strings, tuned one octave below the four lowest strings of the standard instrument. Both sizes are widely used in all types of modern popular music.

Unreferenced

The guitar is a fretted and stringed musical instrument, used in a wide variety of musical styles, and is also widely known as a solo classical instrument. It is most recognised in popular culture as the primary instrument in blues, country, flamenco and rock music. The guitar usually has six strings, but guitars with seven, eight, ten, eleven, twelve, and eighteen strings are also found.

Usage


Guitar strings are strung parallel to the neck, whose surface is covered by the fingerboard (fretboard). By depressing a string against the fingerboard, the effective length of the string can be altered, which in turn changes the frequency at which the string will vibrate when plucked. This is similar to the convention of the violin family of instruments where the right hand controls the bow.

The strings may be plucked using either fingers or a plectrum (Guitar pick).The sound of the guitar is achieved either mechanically or electronically, forming two main categories of guitar: acoustic (mechanical amplification) and electric (electronic amplification).

  • In acoustic guitars, string vibration is transmitted through the bridge and saddle to the sound board. The sound board, typically made of a light springy wood such as spruce, vibrates the air, producing sound which is further shaped by the guitar body's resonant cavity.
  • In electric guitars, transducers known as pickups convert string vibration to an electronic signal, which in turn is amplified and fed to speakers, which vibrate the air to produce the sound we hear.

Guitars are made and repaired by people called luthiers.

History

Instruments similar to what we know as the guitar have been popular for at least 5,000 years. The guitar appears to be derived from earlier instruments known in ancient central Asia as the cithara. Instruments very similar to the guitar appear in ancient carvings and statues recovered from the old Iranian capitol of Susa. The modern word, guitar, was adopted into English from Spanish guitarra, derived from earlier Greek word kithara. Prospective sources for various names of musical instruments that guitar could be derived from appear to be a combination of two Indo-European roots: guit-, similar to Sanskrit sangeet meaning "music", and -tar a widely attested root meaning "chord" or "string".

The word guitar may also be a Persian loanword to Iberian Arabic. The word qitara is an Arabic name for various members of the lute family that preceded the Western guitar. The name guitarra was introduced into Spanish when such instruments were brought into Iberia by the Moors after the 10th century. (See related article).

The Spanish vihuela "de mano" appears to be an aberration in the transition of the renaissance guitar to the modern guitar. It had lute-style tuning and a guitar-like body. Its construction had as much in common with the modern guitar as with its contemporary four-course renaissance guitar. In favour of the latter view, the reshaping of the vihuela into a guitar-like form can be seen as a strategy of differentiating the European lute visually from the Moorish oud. (See the article on the lute for further history.) The Ancient Iranian lute, called tar in Persian also is found in the word guitar. The tar is thousands of years old, and could be found in 2, 3, 5, and 6 string variations.

The earliest extant six string guitar was built in 1779 by Gaetano Vinaccia (1759 - after 1831) The Classical Mandolin by Paul Sparks (1995) Early Romantic Guitar in Naples, Italy. The Vinaccia family of luthiers is known for developing the mandolin. This guitar has been examined and does not show tell-tale signs of modifications from a double-course guitar. Stalking the Oldest Six String Guitar

Modern dimensions of the classical instrument were established by Antonio Torres Jurado (1817-1892), working in Seville in the 1850's. Torres and Louise Panormo of London (active 1820s-1840s) were both responsible for demonstrating the superiority of fan strutting over transverse table bracing.

The electric guitar was patented by George Beauchamp in 1936. Beauchamp co-founded Rickenbacher which used the horseshoe-magnet pickup. However, it was Danelectro that first produced electric guitars for the wider public. Danelectro also pioneered tube amp technology. citation needed

Types of guitar

Guitars can be divided into two broad categories, acoustic and electric:

Acoustic guitars

The traditional guitar is not dependent on any external device for amplification.

There are several subcategories within the acoustic guitar group: steel string guitars, which includes the flat top, or "folk" guitar, the closely related twelve string guitar, and the arch top guitar. A recent arrival in the acoustic guitar group is the acoustic bass guitar, similar in tuning to the electric bass.

  • Renaissance and Baroque guitars: These are the gracile ancestors of the modern classical guitar. The strings are paired in courses as in a modern 12 string guitar, but they only have four or five courses of strings rather than six. They were more often used as rhythm instruments in ensembles than as solo instruments, and can often be seen in that role in early music performances. (Gaspar Sanz' Instrucción de Música sobre la Guitarra Española of 1674 constitutes the majority of the surviving solo corpus for the era.) Renaissance and Baroque guitars are easily distinguished because the Renaissance guitar is very plain and the Baroque guitar is very ornate, with inlays all over the neck and body, and a paper-cutout inverted "wedding cake" inside the hole. See article: Baroque guitar.
  • Classical guitars: These are typically strung with nylon strings, played in a seated position and are used to play a diversity of musical styles including classical music. Flamenco guitars are very similar in construction, have a sharper sound, and are used in flamenco. In Mexico, the popular mariachi band includes a range of guitars, from the tiny requinto to the guitarron, a guitar larger than a cello, which is tuned in the bass register. Modern dimensions of the classical instrument were established by Antonio Torres Jurado (1817-1892). Classical guitars are sometimes referred to as classic guitars, which is a more proper translation from the Spanish.
  • Flat-top (steel-string) guitars: Similar to the classical guitar, however the body size is usually significantly larger than a classical guitar and it has a narrower, reinforced neck and stronger structural design, to sustain the extra tension of steel strings which produce a brighter, and according to some players, a louder tone. The acoustic guitar is a staple in folk, Old-time music and blues.
  • Archtop guitars are steel string, instruments which feature a violin-inspired f-hole design in which the top (and often the back) of the instrument are carved in a curved rather than a flat shape. Lloyd Loar of the Gibson Guitar Corporation invented this variation of guitar after designing a style of mandolin of the same type. Some solid body electric guitars are also considered archtop guitars although usually 'Archtop guitar' refers to the hollow body form. Archtop guitars were immediately adopted upon their release by both jazz and country musicians and have remained particularly popular in jazz music, usually using thicker strings (higher gauged round wound and flat wound) than acoustic guitars. The electric hollow body archtop guitar has a distinct sound among electric guitars and is consequently appropriate for many styles of rock and roll. Many electric archtop guitars intended for use in rock and roll even have a Tremolo Arm.
  • Resonator, resophonic or Dobro guitars: Similar to the flat top guitar in appearance, but with sound produced by a metal resonator mounted in the middle of the top rather than an open sound hole, so that the physical principle of the guitar is actually more similar to the banjo. Three cone resonators always use a specialised metal spider bridge.

    The type of resonator guitar with a neck with a square cross-section -- called "square neck" -- is usually played face up, on the lap of the seated player, and often with a metal or glass slide. The round neck resonator guitars are normally played in the same fashion as other guitars, although slides are also often used, especially in blues.


  • 12 string guitars usually have steel strings and are widely used in folk music, blues and rock and roll. Rather than having only six strings, the 12-string guitar has pairs, like a mandolin. Big Joe Williams is a blues musician famous for his 12 string guitar.
  • Russian guitars are seven string acoustic guitars which were the norm for Russian guitarists throughout the 19th and well into the 20th centuries.
  • Acoustic bass guitars also have steel strings, and match the tuning of the electric bass, which is likewise similar to the traditional double bass viol, the "big bass", a staple of string orchestras and bluegrass bands alike. Harp Guitars are difficult to classify as there are many variations within this type of guitar. Most consist of a regular guitar, plus additional 'harp' strings strung above the six normal strings. The instrument is usually acoustic and the harp strings are usually tuned to lower notes than the guitar strings, for an added bass range. Some harp guitars also feature much higher pitch strings strung below the traditional guitar strings. The Pikasso guitar; For well over a century guitars featuring seven, eight, nine, ten or more strings have been used by a minority of guitarists as a means of increasing the range of pitch available to the player. Usually this entails the addition of extra bass strings.
  • Guitar battente.

Electric guitars


Electric guitars can have solid, semi-hollow or hollow bodies, and produce little sound without amplification. Electromagnetic pickups (single and double coil) convert the vibration of the steel strings into electric signals which are fed to an amplifier through a cable or radio device. The sound is frequently modified by other electronic devices or natural distortion of valves (vacuum tubes) in the amplifier. The electric guitar is used extensively in jazz, blues and rock and roll, and was commercialised by Gibson together with Les Paul and independently by Leo Fender. The lower fretboard action (the height of the strings from the fingerboard) and its electrical amplification lend the electric guitar to some techniques which are less frequently used on acoustic guitars. These techniques include tapping, extensive use of legato through pull-offs and hammer-ons (also known as slurs in the traditional Classical genre), pinch harmonics, volume swells and use of a Tremolo arm or effects pedals.

Seven-string solid body electric guitars were developed in the 1990s (earlier in jazz) to achieve a much darker sound through extending the lower end of the guitar's range. They are used today by players such as James "Munky" Shaffer, Dave Weiner, John Petrucci, Jeff Loomis, Steve Smyth, and Steve Vai. Meshuggah, Dino Cazares, Rusty Cooley & Charlie Hunter go a step further, using an 8 string guitar with two extra low strings. Although the most commonly found 7 string is the variety in which there is one low B string, Roger McGuinn (Of Byrds/Rickenbacker Fame) has popularised a variety in which an octave G string is paired with the regular G string as on a 12 string guitar, allowing him to incorporate chiming 12 string elements in standard 6 string playing. Ibanez makes many varieties of electric 7 strings.

The electric bass guitar is similar in tuning to the traditional double bass viol.
Hybrids of acoustic and electric guitars are also common. There are also more exotic varieties, such as double-necked guitars, all manner of alternate string arrangements, fretless fingerboards (used almost exclusively on bass guitars, meant to emulate the sound of a stand-up bass), 5.1 surround guitar, and such.

Parts of the guitar

Parts of typical classical and electric guitars
  1. Headstock
  2. Nut
  3. Machine heads (or pegheads, tuning keys,
    tuning machines, tuners)
  4. Frets
  5. Truss rod
  6. Inlays
  7. Neck and fretboard
  8. Heel (acoustic or Spanish) - Neckjoint (electric)
  9. Body
  10. Pickups
  11. Electronics
  12. Bridge (saddle)
  13. Pickguard
  14. Back
  15. Soundboard (top)
  16. Body sides (ribs)
  17. Sound hole, with Rosette inlay
  18. Strings
  19. Bridge
  20. Fretboard



Headstock


The headstock is located at thed end of the guitar neck furthest from the body. Traditional tuner layout is "3+3" in which each side of the headstock has three tuners (such as on Gibson Les Pauls). Many guitars feature other layouts as well, including six-in-line (featured on Fender Stratocasters) tuners or even "4+2" (Ernie Ball Music Man). However, some guitars (such as Steinbergers) do not have headstocks at all, in which case the tuning machines are located elsewhere, either on the body or the bridge.

Nut


The nut is a small strip of bone, plastic, brass, corian, graphite, or other medium-hard material, at the joint where the headstock meets the fretboard.

Fretboard


Also called the fingerboard in fretless guitars and basses, the fretboard is a piece of wood embedded with metal frets that comprises the top of the neck. It is flat on classical guitars and slightly curved crosswise on acoustic and electric guitars. Most modern guitars feature a 12" neck radius, while older guitars from the '60's and '70's usualy feature a 6" - 8" neck radius. Fretboards are most commonly made of rosewood, ebony, maple, and sometimes manufactured or composite materials such as HPL or resin. This feature is important in playing harmonics. Frets are available in several different gauges, depending on the type of guitar and the player's style.

Guitars have frets on the fingerboard to fix the positions of notes and scales, which gives them equal temperament. Consequently, the ratio of the spacing of two consecutive frets is the twelfth root of two sqrt12{2}, whose numeric value is about 1.059463. The twelfth fret divides the scale length in two exact halves and the 24th fret (if present) divides the scale length in half yet again. In practice, luthiers determine fret positions using the constant 17.817152, which is derived from the twelfth root of two. The scale length divided by this value yields the distance from the nut to the first fret. That distance is subtracted from the scale length and the result is divided by the constant to yield the distance from the first fret to the second fret. Some guitar players put LEDs in the fretboard as inlays to produce a unique lighting effect onstage. Both Sam Rivers- bassist of rock group Limp Bizkit- and guitar virtuoso Steve Vai have used LEDs as fret inlays.

Fretboard inlays are most commonly shaped like dots, diamond shapes, parallelograms, or large blocks in between the frets. The simpler inlays are often done in plastic on guitars of recent vintage, but many older, and newer, high-end instruments have inlays made of mother of pearl, abalone, ivory, coloured wood or any number of exotic materials. Most high-end classical guitars have no inlays at all since a well trained player is expected to know his or her way around the instrument, however players will sometimes make indicators with a marker pen, correction fluid, or a small piece of tape.

The most popular fretboard inlay scheme involves single inlays on the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 15th, 17th, 19th, and 21st frets, and double inlays on the 12th, sometimes 7th, and (if present) 24th fret. However, playing these frets, for example, on E string would yield notes E, G, A, B, C# that barely makes a complete musical mode by themselves.

A less popular fretboard inlay scheme involves inlays on 3rd, 5th, 7th, 10th, 12th, 15th, 17th, 19th, 22nd and 24th frets. Playing these frets, for example, on E string yields notes E, G, A, B, D that fit perfectly into E minor pentatonic. Such a scheme is very close to piano keys colouring (which involves black colouring for sharps that pentatonic consists of) and of some use on classic guitars.

Beyond the fretboard inlay, the headstock and soundhole are also commonly inlaid. The soundhole designs found on acoustic guitars vary from simple concentric circles to delicate fretwork (referred to as a Rosette). Most acoustic guitars have an inlay that borders the sides of the fretboard, and some electrics (namely Fender Stratocasters) have what looks like a wood inlay running on the back of the neck, from about the body to the middle of the neck, commonly referred to as a skunk stripe. In fact this is a filler strip, used to fill the cavity through which the trussrod was installed in the neck.

Some very limited edition high-end or custom-made guitars have artistic inlay designs that span the entire front (or even the back) of the guitar. Large guitar manufacturers often issue these guitars to celebrate a significant historical milestone.

Neck


A guitar's frets, fretboard, tuners, headstock, and truss rod, all attached to a long wooden extension, collectively comprise its neck. The bending stress on the neck is considerable, particularly when heavier gauge strings are used (see Strings and tuning), and the ability of the neck to resist bending (see Truss rod) is important to the guitar's ability to hold a constant pitch during tuning or when strings are fretted.
Some aspects that to consider in a guitar neck may be the overall width of the fingerboard, scale (distance between the frets), the neck wood the type of neck construction (For example, the neck may be glued in or bolted on), and the shape (profile) of the back of the neck. Almost all acoustic guitars, with the primary exception of Taylors, have glued (otherwise known as set) necks, while electric guitars are constructed using both types.

Commonly used set neck joints include mortise and tenon joints (such as those used by CF Martin & Co. guitars), dovetail joints (also used by CF Martin on the D28 and similar models) and Spanish heel neck joints which are named after the shoe they resemble and commonly found in classical guitars. Bolt-on necks, though they are historically associated with cheaper instruments, do offer greater flexibility in the guitar's set-up, and allow easier access for neck joint maintenance and repairs.

Another type of neck, only available for solid body electric guitars, is the Neck-through-body construction.

Body (acoustic guitar)


The body of the instrument is a major determinant of the overall sound variety for acoustic guitars. The guitar top, or soundboard, is a finely crafted and engineered element often made of tonewood like spruce, red cedar or mahogany. Martin being among the most influential designers of their times); The back and sides are made out of a variety of tonewoods such as mahogany, Indian rosewood and highly regarded Brazilian rosewood (Dalbergia nigra). Each one is chosen for their aesthetic effect and structural strength, and can also play a significant role in determining the instrument's timbre. These are also strengthened with internal bracing, and decorated with inlays and purfling.

The body of an acoustic guitar is a resonating chamber which projects the vibrations of the body through a sound hole, allowing the acoustic guitar to be heard without amplification. The sound hole is normally a round hole in the top of the guitar (under the strings), though some may have different placement, shapes or multiple holes.

As an instrument's maximum volume is determined by how much air it can move the Dreadnought body size is popular amongst acoustic performers.

Body (electric guitar)


Most electric guitar bodies are made of wood. The most common woods used for electric guitar body construction include maple, basswood, ash, poplar, alder, and mahogany.
Pickups are electronic devices attached to a guitar that detect (or "pick up") string vibrations and allow the sound of the string to be amplified. Some acoustic guitars also have microphones or pickups built into them for stage work. Pickups work on a similar principle to a generator in that the vibration of the strings causes a small voltage to be created in the coils surrounding the magnets. This signal is later amplified by an amplifier. The Fender Stratocaster type guitars generally utilize 3 single coil pickups, while the Gibson Les Paul type use humbucker pickups.

Traditional electric pickups are either single-coil or double-coil. Double-coil pickups are also known as humbuckers for their noise-cancelling ability. These employ piezoelectricity to generate the musical signal and are popular in hybrid electro-acoustic guitars. When the string vibrates, the shape of the crystal is distorted, and this change in shape produces a tiny voltage that can be amplified and manipulated.

Some guitars have what is called a hexaphonic pickup. This arrangement allows the signal to be easily modified by on-board modelling electronics, as in the Line 6 brand of electric guitars -- the guitars allow for a variety of different sounds to be obtained, such as banjo, and so forth. These at their simplest consist of passive components such as potentiometers and capacitors, but may also include specialised integrated circuits or other active components requiring batteries for power, for preamplification and signal processing, or even for assistance in tuning.

Bridge


The main purpose of the bridge on an acoustic guitar is to transfer the vibration from the strings to the soundboard, which vibrates the air inside of the guitar, thereby amplifying the sound produced by the strings.

On both electric and acoustic guitars, the bridge holds the strings in place on the body. The whammy bar is sometimes also referred to as a "tremolo bar" (see Tremolo for further discussion of this term - the effect of rapidly changing pitch produced by a whammy bar is more correctly called "vibrato"). Some bridges also allow for alternate tunings at the touch of a button.

On almost all modern electric guitars, the bridge is adjustable for each string so that intonation stays correct up and down the neck. On an instrument correctly adjusted for intonation, the actual length of each string from the nut to the bridge saddle will be slightly but measurably longer than the scale length of the instrument. On acoustic guitars and many electric guitars, the pickguard is mounted directly to the guitar top, while on guitars with carved tops (for example, the Gibson Les Paul), the pickguard is elevated. The Pickguard is more often than not used in styles such as flamenco, which tends to use the guitar as a percussion instrument at times, rather than for instance, a classical guitar.

Tuning


The guitar is a transposing instrument. The most common by far, known as "standard tuning" (EADGBE), is as follows:

  • sixth (lowest tone) string: E (a minor thirteenth below middle C?82.4 Hz)
  • fifth string: A (a minor tenth below middle C?110 Hz)
  • fourth string: D (a minor seventh below middle C?146.8 Hz)
  • third string: g (a perfect fourth below middle C?196.0 Hz)
  • second string: b (a minor second below middle C?246.92 Hz)
  • first (highest tone) string: e' (a major third above middle C?329.6 Hz)

A guitar using this tuning can tune to itself by the fact, with a single exception, the 5th fret on one string is the same note as the next open string;

Standard tuning has evolved to provide a good compromise between simple fingering for many chords and the ability to play common scales with minimal left hand movement. There are also a variety of commonly used alternate tunings - most of which are chord voicings that can be played on open strings or made by moving the capo.

There are several mnemonic devices used to remember the standard tuning (EADGBe) such as: "Eventually All Dedicated Guitarists Become Experts", or (in reverse order) "Easter Bunnies Get Drunk At Easter", "Every Body Got Drunk At Eddie's" and "Every Bad Guitarist Deserves An Execution".

Many guitarists use a long established (centuries old) tuning variation where the lowest string is 'dropped' two semi-tones down. Known as Drop-D (or dropped D) tuning it is, from low to high, DAdgbe'. - "D Standard" (DGCFAD).

As with all stringed instruments a large number of scordatura are possible on the guitar.

Guitar terminology

Vibrato Arm

The Vibrato (pitch bend) unit found on many electric guitars has also had slang terms applied to it, such as "tremolo bar (or arm)", "sissy bar", "whammy handle", and "whammy bar". The latter two slang terms led stompbox manufacturers to use the term 'whammy' in coming up with a pitch raising effect introduced by popular guitar effects pedal brand "Digitech".

Leo Fender, who did much to create the electric guitar, also created much confusion over the meaning of the terms "tremolo" and "vibrato", specifically by misnaming the "tremolo" unit on many of his guitars and also the "vibrato" unit on his "Vibrolux" amps. In general, vibrato is a variation in pitch, whereas tremolo is a variation in volume, so the tremolo bar is actually a vibrato bar and the "Vibrolux" amps actually had a tremolo effect. This vibrato wraps the strings around a horizontal bar, which is then rotated with a handle by the musician.

Another type of pitch bender is the B-Bender, a spring and lever device mounted in an internal cavity of a solid body electric guitar that allows the guitarist to bend just the B string of the guitar using a lever connected to the strap handle of the guitar. The resulting pitch bend is evocative of the sound of the pedal steel guitar.

Slides

A slide, (neck of a bottle, knife blade or round metal bar) used in blues and rock to create a glissando or 'hawaiian' effect. An instrument that is played exclusively in this manner, (using a metal bar) is called a steel guitar or pedal steel.

Plectrum

A "guitar pick" or "plectrum" is a small piece of hard material which is generally held between the thumb and first finger of the picking hand and is used to attack the strings.

Guitar/synthesizer

A guitar/synthesizer is the adaptation of a guitar to control a synthesizer. In modern implementations, the converter's output is a MIDI signal. This implementation led to the use of MIDI guitar as a synonym for a guitar/synthesizer or for the field of guitar synthesis in general.

A guitar-like MIDI controller is also referred to as a guitar/synthesizer. The SynthAxe was one notable example.

The guitar/synthesizer was made famous and is still widely used by jazz guitarist Pat Metheny.

Notes

Further reading

  • Electric guitar
  • Guitar effects
  • Guitar amplifier
  • Tonewood

Chronology

  • Key Dates:
  • 1964: Wayne Mitchell opens his first store, initially called "Vox Guitar Center."
  • 1972: Mitchell's second store opens in San Francisco.
  • 1979: Guitar Center's first store outside California opens in Chicago.
  • 1993: The 17-store chain reaches the $100 million-in-sales mark.
  • 1997: Guitar Center completes its initial public offering of stock, becoming the first publicly traded company in the music retail industry.
  • 1999: Guitar Center acquires Musician's Friend, the largest mail-order and e-commerce retailer of musical instruments.
  • 2001: Guitar Center acquires the 19-store musical instrument chain American Music Group.
  • 2002: A 500,000 square-foot distribution center is opened near Indianapolis, Indiana, the largest facility in the industry; sales surpass $1 billion for the first time.
  • 2004: The GCP Pro sales division is formed to serve the commercial recording market.

Additional topics

Company HistoryBook and Music Stores

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