[MUSIC].
All right, continuing on.
So we have the neck,
we've got our fret board, or
our finger board, also called
a fret board, we have our frets.
These are fret markers, these little,
you can see these little diamonds,
and squares that are put in here,
at strategic points.
Fifth fret here, seventh fret,
so we count up our frets,
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.
That one gets a double.
Then here we are to the top of the guitar,
obviously it's the top,
and we have what is known,
this is called the bridge.
So we followed from the nut,
we follow our strings all
the way down here to the saddle.
Then they go over the saddle
into a little hole where
they're secured by what are called pins.
These little pins will hold the string in.
The string's got a ball end on it.
The pins hold them fast in there, and
over the saddle, which is held in by the
bridge, this whole thing here is a bridge.
It's glued right to the top.
This is made of ebony in this case.
This is called the pick guard.
And it's so you don't,
you're not chopping up the top with your,
if you go wide on your
[LAUGH] on your picking.
Which as you can see,
I do from time to time when I get excited.
So I've put a few scratches in
this guitar, but that's okay.
This piece here is called a rosette, and
there's usually some kind
of design around here.
The sound hole, right, and
then there's a decoration.
And this is a very simple
decoration as you can see, but
it's called the rosette, that area.
Then we go back, as we travel back
you can see end pin, all right?
So this would be called the end pin, it's
where we put our strap if we have one.
And guitars that have pick ups, they've
figured out an ingenious way to make it so
you can actually just not have to
drill any holes in the guitar.
You just plug your plug into the end pins.
It's called an end pin jack.
So that's something to think about.
If you ever get to the point of wanting
to amplify your acoustic guitar,
you don't have to drill a hole.
At least for putting the plug in.
On the opposite side of that end pin jack,
on my guitar,
I have a strap button,
so strap button here.
It's just nestled near the heel.
Kind of along the side of
the heel of the guitar.
Now, that brings up another
thing with the straps.
Old school less invasive than drilling
an extra hole in your guitar.
People would run the strap, they'd have
like a little piece of string that would
run across the end here, and maybe
connect attach to the guitar head stock.
I don't prefer that method myself because
it kind of makes me uncomfortable having
the strap going this way and when I get
down to the lower part of the guitar,
doesn't work for me.
But I know a lot of people who do, and
if you look at older pictures of
the steel string guitar players,
a lot of times that's what they had.
So that's a choice everybody makes,
how they want to do it.
Let's see, now I talked about purfling,
and there are different types.
This is, like kind of,
it's very subtle tortoise, and
then it has these little stripes,
these little pin-stripes but
there's also very dramatic purfling on
some of the fancier appointed guitars.
There's a thing called herringbone,
which you will probably as you
get into steel string guitar more,
if that's where you end up,
you would hear about
the herringbone D28 Martin Guitar.
And that's a certain
design of the purfling.
And then, other things just to
be aware of, inside the guitar,
inside the sound hole here,
it's really hard to see.
It would be kind of impossible to
get a camera angle on it anyway, but
in here if you're,
there you'll see the trust rod.
There is the end of the trust rod usually
under there where you stick a wrench in.
It's usually an allen wrench.
And that's where you adjust it.
Although I don't recommend
adjusting it yourself.
That's something that I would leave
to your luthier or your store,
your guitar store, music store,
where you picked up your guitar.
We talked about setup and
getting things comfortable
with all the parts coming
together to make it work out.
But that's where that is.
And then, you'll see as you look inside,
you'll see there's bracing.
And that's just all it is.
It's called bracing.
And there's bracing for the top.
Under here it's an X brace on my guitar,
and there will be a few little
supplementary pieces of wood,
and then there will
be these braces that go across the bottom
just to reinforce the instrument.
There's a lot of pressure happening.
With, when you tune
this thing up to pitch,
there's a lot of pressure
bearing down on that top.
And this is really just a box, and you're,
the whole challenge of a guitar is to
try to make it as resonant at possible.
So you've got this box with,
it's like a drum in a way.
You want this drum head to be thin enough
to move up and down with the vibrations.
And the more movement you get,
the more sound you get.
It's like a speaker actually.
So you'll see there's bracing and
then there's like a strip
of bracing that just kind of in the
corners, underneath, inside the guitar.
Another part of the guitar, or just
a general part of the guitar to mention.
I mentioned, the back and the top.
And the shape of the guitar has
sort of two distinct areas.
They're referred to as the lower bout,
which is this bigger section here.
This big round section.
And then, things squeeze in the middle.
We've got this.
It's called the upper bout.
Lower bout, upper bout.
And those are the names that we use to
sort of describe what area of the guitar.
And if you ever get
a situation where let's say,
your guitar gets banged kind of hard.
It falls or even in the case
it gets banged pretty hard or
takes a fall, one thing that does kinda
happen, [LAUGH] and you'll hear it.
It'll sound like a rattle
is inside of it and
that occurs when one of
the braces comes loose.
These things are glued
down pretty hard inside,
the braces, but sometimes they can
come loose, and you'll hear it.
You'll be like, okay.
Where is it coming from?
Is it in the lower bout,
or the upper bout?
Frequently it's gonna
be somewhere in here.
But when you're describing areas of
the guitar, lower bout, upper bout.
If you hear the rattle,
again this is a repair question, and
you take it to your luthier or
your music store who has a repair person,
who's qualified and
have them take care of it.
Basically what they will do is,
they'll stick a mirror in there, and
a flashlight, and
they'll be able to see it.
And they'll tap around and
they'll find it for you.
And then it's just a simple little re-glue
thing, it's not the end of the world.
These things are durable.
They're fragile, but they're fixable.
So, just take good care of them,
do the best you can, and you'll be okay.
[MUSIC].
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