60 Fun Facts About Guitar

How many strings does a standard guitar have?

A standard guitar has six strings; classical, steel-string acoustic and most electric models all share that count, with the lowest and highest strings tuned two octaves apart.

What are the notes of standard guitar tuning, from the lowest string to the highest?

Standard tuning is E A D G B E from low to high: perfect fourths between each pair of strings except the major third from G to B, remembered as 'Eddie Ate Dynamite, Good Bye Eddie'.

Which fret divides a guitar's scale length exactly in half, sounding an octave above the open string?

Each block of twelve frets represents one octave.

In "drop D" tuning, which string is lowered a whole step?

The sixth (lowest) string drops a whole step from E to D, so the lowest strings sound a D power chord when strummed open, a staple of metal and grunge riffs.

Keith Richards plays "Honky Tonk Women" and "Brown Sugar" in which five-string tuning?

Keith Richards' five-string open G tuning, G-D-G-B-D with the lowest string removed, powers 'Honky Tonk Women', 'Brown Sugar' and 'Start Me Up'.

The 19th-century Spanish maker who set the size and fan-bracing of the modern classical guitar was whom?

Antonio de Torres Jurado, working in Seville from the 1850s, enlarged the body and refined the fan-braced soundboard, fixing the proportions that define the modern classical guitar.

The robust X-bracing of flat-top steel-string guitars is credited to which German-American luthier?

C.F. Martin, a Saxon immigrant to New York, developed X-bracing in the 1840s; its two crossed struts give a flat top the strength to bear steel strings.

In what year was the oldest surviving US guitar maker, known for the D-28 and D-18, founded?

The firm was founded in 1833 in New York City by a Saxon immigrant and moved to Nazareth, Pennsylvania, in 1839; its D-28 dreadnought arrived in 1931.

The violin-like carved-top archtop guitar is usually credited to which American?

Orville Gibson, a Kalamazoo, Michigan, luthier, carved guitar and mandolin tops like a violin's from the 1890s and patented the construction in 1898; the company bearing his name formed in 1902.

Which Spanish virtuoso did the most to establish the guitar as a serious concert instrument?

Andrés Segovia, born in Linares in 1893, played the world's concert halls for seven decades, commissioned works from Ponce, Turina and Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and taught generations of players.

After World War II, which material for classical guitar strings, replacing catgut, was popularised?

Nylon strings, developed by Albert Augustine with DuPont in the 1940s, held their pitch and resisted humidity far better than gut, and leading concert players adopted them within a few years.

What nickname did the first commercially successful electric guitar, a 1930s lap steel, carry?

The Frying Pan, George Beauchamp's cast-aluminium lap steel with a horseshoe-magnet pickup, took its nickname from its long neck and small round body; the first ones were sold in 1932.

Which company did Adolph Rickenbacker and George Beauchamp found in 1931 to sell electric lap steels?

The Ro-Pat-In Corporation, short for Electro-Patent-Instruments, was set up in 1931 by Beauchamp, Rickenbacker and Paul Barth; it was later renamed the Electro String Instrument Corporation and sold under the Rickenbacher, then Rickenbacker, brand.

Which Texas bluesman played a battered sunburst Stratocaster he called 'Number One'?

Stevie Ray Vaughan found Number One in an Austin music shop in the early 1970s and played it until his death in 1990; its worn sunburst body, 'SRV' stickers and left-handed tremolo made it instantly recognisable.

Besides guitars, Les Paul pioneered which studio technique?

He pioneered multitrack overdubbing, layering parts by recording sound-on-sound to disc and then tape; the 1951 hit 'How High the Moon' with Mary Ford stacked many overdubbed guitar and vocal parts.

The Telecaster and Esquire were the first commercially successful mass-produced what?

The Telecaster, with its single-pickup sibling the Esquire, was the first commercially successful mass-produced solid-body electric guitar: a bolt-on maple neck on a plank-like ash body, built from 1950.

The Fender Telecaster was first distributed in 1950 under which name?

Fender shipped the model as the Broadcaster from autumn 1950; Gretsch objected to the name, it was dropped early in 1951 and Telecaster decals appeared later that year.

Fender had to rename its new Telecaster in 1951 after a trademark clash with Gretsch over what product?

Gretsch already sold a drum kit under a near-identical name and objected; for some months in 1951 Fender clipped the model name from the headstock decal, and those guitars are nicknamed Nocasters.

In which year did Fender begin manufacturing the Stratocaster?

Fender put the Stratocaster into production in 1954, after Leo Fender, Bill Carson, George Fullerton and Freddie Tavares worked up its contoured double-cutaway body and synchronised tremolo bridge.

How many pickups does a standard Fender Stratocaster have?

It was the first Fender with three pickups and the first with a contoured body.

Remarkably, Fender founder Leo Fender could not do what?

Leo Fender never learned to play the guitar; trained in accounting and self-taught in electronics, he ran a radio repair shop in Fullerton, California, and relied on working musicians to test his designs.

To which company did Leo Fender sell Fender in 1965?

Leo Fender sold his companies to CBS in January 1965 for about $13 million; the CBS-era Stratocasters that followed are recognisable by their larger headstock.

After leaving Fender, Leo Fender co-founded Music Man and then which other guitar company?

G&L, named for George Fullerton and Leo Fender, started in Fullerton in 1979 after Leo's Music Man years; he kept designing there until his death from Parkinson's disease in 1991.

Fender's 1951 four-string electric, named for its fretted neck's accuracy, was called what?

The Precision Bass, launched in 1951, took its name from the fretted neck that let players hit exact pitches; it was the first widely successful electric bass, and Fender built the Bassman amplifier to go with it the following year.

The Gibson Les Paul went on sale in which year?

The model went on sale in 1952, after company president Ted McCarty signed the guitarist as endorser and consultant to answer Fender's new electrics; the first ones carried a gold-finished top.

The original gold-top Les Paul carried which type of pickups?

The first gold-tops carried P-90s, the single-coil pickups of the day; the model switched to Seth Lover's humbuckers in 1957, and the sunburst 'Burst' followed in 1958.

When the Les Paul was redesigned in 1961, it became which now-separate Gibson model?

The thin double-cutaway 1961 redesign kept the Les Paul name until 1963, when the endorsement lapsed and the company renamed it the SG, for Solid Guitar; the original carved-top shape returned in 1968.

Which radically shaped 1958 Gibson was originally built from a pale wood the company branded "korina"?

The Flying V's arrow-shaped korina body sold fewer than 100 units in 1958-59; Albert King, Dave Davies and Lonnie Mack later made the shape famous, and it was reissued in 1967.

Which angular 1958 Gibson flopped at launch, then was revived in 1976?

The Explorer, a futuristic korina design, sold only a few dozen in 1958-59; it was reissued in 1976, and players like James Hetfield and the Edge later made it famous.

What name did B.B. King give to every one of his guitars?

They were usually black Gibson ES-355-style guitars; Gibson made an official B.B. King Lucille model in 1980.

Which 1949 incident inspired the name B.B. King gave his guitars?

The name recalls a dance-hall fire sparked by a fight over a woman: in Twist, Arkansas, in 1949, two brawling men knocked over a kerosene heater, and King ran back in to rescue his guitar.

What is the name of Willie Nelson's battered nylon-string classical guitar?

Trigger, an N-20 classical bought in 1969, is named after Roy Rogers's horse; decades of pick strokes have worn a large hole through its spruce top beside the bridge.

Whose signature, scratched into Willie Nelson's guitar, began its collection of 100-plus autographs?

Leon Russell was the first: he asked Willie Nelson to sign his guitar and offered to scratch his own name into Nelson's in return, starting a collection that passed 100 signatures.

Queen's Brian May built his guitar, the Red Special, largely from what?

Brian May and his father Harold built the Red Special in 1963-64, carving its neck from an old fireplace mantel a neighbour was discarding and the body from salvaged wood, because a factory-made guitar was out of reach.

What does Brian May famously use as a guitar pick?

Brian May plays with a sixpence coin: the pre-decimal British sixpence is stiffer than a plastic pick, and its milled edge gives a scratchy attack when he angles it against the strings.

Which Fender model, introduced in 1958, became a surf-rock staple with its floating tremolo?

The Jazzmaster, launched in 1958 with an offset body and a floating tremolo, was aimed at jazz players but found its home with surf bands such as the Ventures and, decades later, Sonic Youth.

Roughly how much did Clapton's Blackie fetch at its record-setting 2004 auction?

Blackie sold for $959,500 at Christie's in New York in June 2004 to the Guitar Center chain, with the money going to Clapton's Crossroads Centre addiction-treatment clinic in Antigua.

Which Pink Floyd guitarist played the "Black Strat" on "Comfortably Numb" and "Money"?

David Gilmour bought the Black Strat, a 1969 model, at Manny's Music in New York in May 1970 and used it on most Pink Floyd records from Meddle to The Wall, including 'Money' and 'Comfortably Numb'.

Roughly how much did the Black Strat fetch at its record-setting 2019 auction?

The Black Strat sold for $3.975 million at Christie's in New York in June 2019 to Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay; the proceeds went to the environmental law charity ClientEarth.

Which guitar broke the Black Strat's auction record in 2020?

Kurt Cobain's 1959 Martin D-18E, played on Nirvana's 1993 MTV Unplugged set, sold for just over $6 million at Julien's Auctions in June 2020 to Røde Microphones founder Peter Freedman.

Which Beatle played a Rickenbacker 360/12 twelve-string that shaped the sound of A Hard Day's Night?

George Harrison received one of the first Rickenbacker 360/12s in February 1964, and its ringing tone colours the title track and 'I Should Have Known Better'; Roger McGuinn copied it for the Byrds.

Which guitarist's band scored hits with 'Black Magic Woman' in 1970 and 'Smooth' in 1999?

Carlos Santana's band Santana took 'Black Magic Woman', a Fleetwood Mac cover released in 1970, into the US top five, and topped the US chart for much of late 1999 with 'Smooth', sung by Rob Thomas.

What is the strip at the top of the fingerboard, over which strings pass to the tuners, called?

The nut, a slotted strip of bone, plastic or brass at the headstock end of the fingerboard, sets the string spacing and the string height at the open end of the scale.

Gibson's 1936 ES-150, its first electric Spanish guitar, is nicknamed after which jazz player?

Charlie Christian, Benny Goodman's guitarist, made the ES-150 and its bar pickup famous from 1939, so both carry his name; the model number came from the $150 price of guitar and amplifier together.

What device clamps across the strings to raise the pitch of all of them at once?

Its full name is the capotasto, from the Italian for "head of the fingerboard".

Which guitarist played 'Stairway to Heaven' on stage with a cherry-red double-neck?

Jimmy Page played 'Stairway to Heaven' live with a cherry-red EDS-1275 double-neck from 1971, switching necks to cover the song's fingerpicked intro and its electric finale.

On which 1968 Beatles track did Eric Clapton play the lead guitar solo?

Eric Clapton played the solo on 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' at Abbey Road in September 1968 at its writer's invitation, one of very few outside musicians to play on a Beatles record.

The chiming twelve-string electric sound was the basis of which subgenre of pop?

Jangle pop grew out of the Byrds' 1965 'Mr. Tambourine Man', built on the bright arpeggios of Roger McGuinn's Rickenbacker; R.E.M. and the Smiths carried the sound into the 1980s.

A lap or pedal steel is played by sliding what against the strings instead of using frets?

The bar itself is called the "steel", which gives the instrument its name.

The word "guitar" ultimately descends from which Ancient Greek instrument's name?

The chain runs kithara to Latin cithara to Arabic qitharah to Spanish guitarra.

Which 15th–16th-century Spanish instrument most influenced the baroque guitar?

The vihuela, a flat-backed, figure-eight-bodied instrument strung in courses like a lute, was the plucked instrument of the Spanish court in the 1500s; the five-course baroque guitar inherited its body shape and playing techniques.

What is the metal rod inside a guitar neck that counteracts string tension called?

The truss rod, a steel bar set in a channel under the fingerboard and usually adjustable at one end, lets a technician straighten a neck that string tension has pulled into a bow.

How does a humbucker pickup cancel electrical hum?

Its second winding is in reverse polarity: wound and wired the opposite way, so the hum each coil picks up is cancelled while the string signal, sensed through magnets of opposite polarity, adds up; Seth Lover's design dates from 1955.

Who composed and recorded the 1968 fingerstyle instrumental hit 'Classical Gas'?

Mason Williams, then a writer on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, recorded 'Classical Gas' in 1968; it reached number two on the US singles chart and won him a Grammy for best instrumental composition.

How many strings does the traditional Portuguese guitar used in fado carry?

The Portuguese guitarra, the pear-shaped cittern descendant that accompanies fado, carries twelve steel strings in double courses; in Portugal an ordinary guitar is called a viola.

Jimi Hendrix, a lefty, famously played what kind of instrument?

Hendrix played a righty model strung in reverse: he flipped right-handed Stratocasters over and restrung them for left-handed play, which put the controls above the strings and reversed the slant of the bridge pickup.

Ned Steinberger's original headless basses and guitars had necks moulded from what material?

Ned Steinberger's 1979 L-series bass was moulded in one piece from graphite-reinforced epoxy, a carbon-fibre composite that resists warping; the headless design moved the tuners to the bridge.

Which Spanish guitarist published the 1674 guitar treatise Instrucción de Música?

Gaspar Sanz, an Aragonese priest trained in Italy, published Instrucción de Música sobre la Guitarra Española in Zaragoza in 1674; Rodrigo's Fantasía para un gentilhombre is built on its dances.

Which major acoustic guitar maker is known for bolting its necks on rather than gluing them?

Taylor's NT (New Technology) neck, introduced in 1999, bolts to the body on precisely milled shims so the angle can be reset in minutes; most other steel-string makers glue a dovetail joint.

In which year did the last surviving published music for the vihuela appear?

Esteban Daza's El Parnaso, printed in Valladolid in 1576, was the last of the seven vihuela books, a series begun by Luis de Milán's El Maestro in 1536.