All About Electrics

Everybody remembers walking into an instrument store for the first time, perhaps long before ever taking up an instrument, and looking around in bewilderment, not knowing where to start. This is sometimes made worse by guitar stores. Every where you look there is a different style, body shape, neck type, color...you name it, it varies. This guide is meant to help you understand the basic and some of the not-so-basic differences between electric guitars. And be forewarned...it's long.

Guitarmakers featured or mentioned in this article:

Paul Reed Smith (PRS) || Gibson || Fender || Ibanez || Jackson || Washburn || Dean || B.C. Rich

[Note: you may notice that I "favor" PRS guitars to an extent in presenting various features of electric guitars. This is because I own two PRS guitars. After all of the research and playing I've done, and with a good deal of "education" from a respected friend, I have concluded that PRS is the new benchmark of quality, innovation, and excellence in guitar making...NOT however the place to seek a bargain guitar. The bias will not affect what you learn.]

Part I - Basic Body Type

The most obvious difference that even non-guitar players will pick up is body style. There are quite a few variations, but each variation occurs in one of only a few aspects.

First off, there is body shape. Simple enough. What form does the guitar's body take? Generally most guitars fit into either one of two categories: single cutaway or double cutaway. Single cutaway guitars have contours that roughly model acoustic guitars, with the exception of a cutaway on the high E string side of the neck which allows access to the higher frets. Double cutaway guitars have cutaways on both sides of the neck. Below are examples of single cutaway (Gibson Les Paul) and double cutaway (Fender Stratocaster) guitars. And the fact that cutaway lines up on 5 rows is just wierd.

Gibson Les Paul	Fender Stratocaster

Just about the all single-cutaway solid-body electric guitars in existence, or at least those that you will find most often in day-to-day life, are based on the Gibson Les Paul (LP) shown on the left. This is a guitar to know. In fact, these two guitars, the LP and the Fender Stratocaster (Strat), are probably the two most famous electric guitar models there are. In any case, what type of cutaway you want is entirely a matter of personal preference. However, a choosing a single-cutaway guitar often brings with it alot of "baggage." Since, as I said, most single-cut guitars are based on LPs, most single-cut guitars also have alot of other features in common, some of which you may or may not like. Generally speaking, double-cut guitars have larger cutaways and better high-fret accessibility. Also, to my knowledge, all production-level 24 fret guitars are double-cuts.

The far more determinate factor in body construction is the presence of a carved top. Again, this is not a rule that results from the carving of the top, but rather a set of traits commonly associated with carved-top guitars. All LP bodies that are neither LP specials nor LP juniors (two distinct models) are composed of two sets of wood: at best, a single back-piece (generally mohogany), and a multiple-plank top (generally figured maple). As a rule, carved-top guitars are generally heftier and, due to their greater mass, have a mellower sound. The common use of mahogany also contributes to this tone (more on woods later). While it is somewhat difficult to see, the picture below tries to capture the rounded top of a Les Paul.

Gibson Les Paul with carved top

Most other types of guitars, however, are made from a few pieces of wood, often alder, poplar, ash, or mohogany. As a rule, the cheaper the instrument (especially with solid color finished), the more pieces will be in the body (the company can get rid of scrap wood that way). For example, an American series strat generally has a three-piece body, whereas the Mexi-strat has between five and seven pieces in its body alone. For the most part flat-topped guitars are made to have the distinct appearance that they have a single piece of wood in the body. Note how the strat top below is totally flat:

Fender Strat with flat top

One of the final considerations regarding general construction is the nature of the neck joint (where the neck joins the body of the guitar). No matter what it may look like, no guitar is made entirely from one piece of wood. The neck, regardless of how few pieces are in the body, is always made separately, and is composed of a neck/headstock, usually a truss rod, and a fretboard (often a different type of wood than the neck). So the question is, how do you attach this separately-constructed neck to the body? There are three ways to do this. The first is to glue the neck to the body and seal the deal with paint or a clear coat. This is called a "set neck." Another possibility is to bolt the neck to the body using...well, bolts: a "bolt-on neck." Below are neck joint pictures of a different Les Paul and the same Strat.

Gibson Les Paul	Fender Stratocaster

Notice how the strat neck is clearly a separate piece of wood bolted at four points to the body. The Les Paul, however, flows fairly seamlessly from body to neck. A set neck is generally favored for longer sustain and better tone. This is because the use of a bolt-on neck impedes the free flow of vibration throughout the guitar to a degree. That said, the market for bolt-on neck guitars is huge. As it turns out, the tone produced by a bolt-on neck is actually desirable to many people, in addition to the fact that having a bolt-on neck means easy customization if that is one of your interests. Once again, this is a personal choice.

Cort bass with neck-through-body construction

The third method of attaching a neck is the "neck-through-body" method of construction. This involves creating a neck that runs the entire span of the body (from headstock to the very bottom), containing everything from the frets to the bridge, and attaching "wings" to either side at the base to form a body. As you can see on the Cort bass above, the wood to either side of the neck is clearly a different wood than that running down the center of the instrument. As far as sustain goes, the neck-through (or "neck-thru") construction is the best. Because the strings are attached at both ends on the same piece of wood, vibration is maintained better. However, many would argue that sustain is gained at the cost of tonal warmth. This form of body construction is found mainly on heavy-metal-oriented "superstrats" and bass guitars.

Part II - The Misfits

If this is all that's out there, why are there so many more options in your average guitar store? As I may have failed to point out (it's been a long time since I wrote those first few sentences), these are basic categories, not solitary options. In addition to there being lots of guitars that can't be easily classified either way, there are instruments that are clear crosses between two categories.

Lets start with the whack guitars. These are fun. I don't know how you'd ever play some of thse sitting down, but they catch peoples' attention. Take a look at a few of these crazy concoctions. On the left, Washburn's Southern Cross (Dimebag Darrell's signature model, far left) and a bunch of custom-painted Deans upon which Dime's signature model was based. On the right, the B.C. Rich Warlock.

Various Custom-Painted Washburn Southern Crosses	B.C. Rich Warlock

A bunch of freaky guitars. Wow. Ultimately you could classify these for what mattered. Dime's favorite ride, for example (the guitars on the left), have set neck joints, solid mohogany bodies, and flat tops, while retaining actually retaining most of the tonal characteristics one would expect from a Les Paul-type guitar. After reading this through, you'll see why I say that. Right now it might just have to remain a mystery. Both of these guitars are double-cuts though. Bottom line: freaky guitars are usually just funky lookin regular guitars. If that's your style, they're all yours.

The more interesting category for me are the hybrids: guitars that seek to take the best from all worlds and combine them into one truly rave-worth axe. This is where my personal guitar of choice fits. Paul Read Smith Guitars (PRS) emerged only a few decades ago in 1985, and have since become recognized for true-quality guitars (or at least that is my opinion). With the exception of some SE (student edition, PRS's "made in korea" affordable line of guitars) models, all PRS guitars are multiple-piece carved tops. The design most famous as the PRS signature is shown below. This particular guitar is a PRS custom 22.

PRS Custom 22 front	Custom 22 back

What you have here is a double-cutaway, set neck, carved top guitar. The aim of this guitar is essentially to be as versatile as possible without sacrificing tone, sound quality, or playability. Paul's original goal was to attract both Gibson players and Fender players, and to do that he had to try to give them both what they wanted. This goes far beyond these basic features however, as you'll see later on.

Part III - Got Wood?

One of the most fundamental determining factors in a guitar's tone (and weight) is the type of wood used in its creation. As mentioned before, LP's are generally made with a mohogany back, carved maple top, and often a mohogany neck and rosewood fretboard. Most dark-colored fretboards are constructed from rosewood, though the truly black are made from ebony (very expensive). Strats come with basically two choices for the fretboard/neck and three choices for the body. American strats have alder bodies, Mexican strats have poplar bodies, and some special models use ash. As far as the neck goes, necks are always maple, and fretboards can be either maple or rosewood.

That's helpful. Now you're just inundated with a bunch of wood types and still haven't been told what any of them do for playability or sound. Ok. So here's the deal. Strings vibrate differently depending on what they're attached to. The harder the wood, the less resonance they will transfer to the guitar. The softer the wood, the more the guitar itself will resonate.

Maple comes in two varieties. Soft maple and hard maple. The harder variety is one of the more common hard woods found in guitars. It's hard. Really hard. The benefit is that, like in anything else, the stronger something is, the less of it you have to use. As far as fretboards go, it's generally considered to be more a matter of style than anything else, what looks and feels best to you. However, there is a slight difference in tone. Because hard maple is generally used for fretboards, it will bring out the higher frequencies in your guitar's tone. Use of maple, especially in necks, generally contributes to brightness and "twang." Fender Strats and Teles, the staples of country guitar, feature maple necks and often fingerboards as well. While a maple fretboard contributes very little to the overall tone of a guitar, the difference is there: brighter and a bit sharper where attack is concerned.

Many guitars feature maple tops as well. Hard rock (sometimes abbreviated "HR") maple can be used in making bodies, and when combined with a generous portion of overdrive it does plenty to contribute to the screaming and agressive tone you'd expect of a Les Paul or PRS (which both generally feature maple tops) in the hands of Randy Rhoads, Jimmy Paige, Zakk Wylde, Dave Navarro, or a "nu metal" player such as Mark Tremonti or Wes Borland. When coupled with a mohogany back, the low-end response is plentiful but not overpowering of highs and articulation. Maple is also great because it can be highly "figured." All those cool guitars you see with "zebra" or "cloud" patterns on their tops (called "flame" and "quilt" tops respectively) are the result of staining a highly figured maple top with a cool color to bring out contrast, then covering with a glossy lacquer finish. See the awesome examples below:

A Vintage Gibson Les Paul 'Burst (flamed maple top)	PRS Private Stock #235 McCarty (flamed maple top)	PRS Private Stock #324 12-String McCarty (quilted maple top)

Rosewood is a beautiful, soft wood. It feels great under your fingertips. It looks good on guitars. As far as I know it's typically used only for fretboards and occasionally necks, though if you really want to split open your bank account, you can definitely find very expensive rosewood models. Brazillian rosewood guitars are both incredibly gorgeous and capable of emptying your pockets...and perhaps the treasury of a small nation as well. A rosewood fretboard typically lends a bit of a darker, mellower sound with less high-end bite. It also has a different feel. Entirely a matter of personal taste.

Ebony is also used sometimes for fingerboards. This is found much more often in older guitars and in custom or collector's guitars. Ebony is a VERY hard wood. With density and firmness come very difinitive high-end response. Though some consider an ebony fretboard to bring out extra brightness, the main advantage of ebony is its irrefutable contribution to sustain.

Mahogany is significantly softer than maple, and is used for the backs and necks of most Les Paul and PRS guitars. I'm personally a big fan of the use of mahogany. Especially when combined with a maple top, mohogany guitars tend to have a much fuller sound, and much more mid- and low-end. Especially if you are in search of a round and robust sound, mahogany is a great way to go.

Alder is used for the body of most Strats and several other flat-top guitars. Given what I've already said about the Strat sound, you can probably guess what I'd say about Alder. It's actually one of the most "middle-of-the-road" woods used in solid body guitars. It's very lightweight and has a relatively full sound and wide range of tone, though it has little or no natural figure. This is why you normally see strats in solid colors or blander sunburst finishes.

Ash is also sometimes used for bodies as well. Again found in two varieties: hard (Northern) and soft (Swamp). Used in many of the early Fenders (the Esquire, Broadcaster, and early Telecasters...all pretty much the same guitar with different names), swamp ash is both lightweight and resonant. With a natural "scoop" (a metal term describing equalizer settings, boosted highs and lows with dropped mids), this wood has great bass response and quick attack. An all-around useful, not to mention highly desirable, wood choice for many.

Walnut was said to be the favorite wood of Les Paul himself (the guitarmaker after which the guitar is named...could've figured that one out probably). He thought that tonally it provided the best quality. However, walnut, as you may know, is absurdly heavy. If you ever find, for instance, a Gibson Firebrand (a 335-S Firebrand is displayed below), you will find that, if it is the walnut variety, it weighs a ton. These guitars are sort of crosses between the SG and the Les Paul Junior as far as design, with

a few noteworthy changes in electronics and the like. They were made in both mohagany and walnut, and even with the drastically reduced depth of this model with respect to a LP, the walnut variety weighs as much if not more than the average Paul. Very few guitars are made from walnut.

Part IV - Pickups and Electronics

A. Pickups
I don't want to be redundant, so before reading this, check out the piece on pickups in the articles section.

Pickups are perhaps the most important quality check for your sound. As the the end-all in sound production as far as your electric is concerned, this is where you want to know what you're looking for. A shitty guitar with really nice pickups will undoubtedly sound better (if only menially) than an amazing guitar with ass-tacular pickups.

Here's a brief summary. You have four basic types of pickups. There are single-coil pickups and double-coil pickups (aka "humbuckers"), either of which can be passive or active. Passive pickups, the far more popular, rely on an amp entirely for power. The signal they generate is very weak and much more subject to interference. Active pickups, however, have batteries inside the guitar itself which add extra power to that provided by an amp. Active pickups are much higher gain, much harsher sounding, and much easier to distort. That said, passive pickups tend to sound better, warmer, and fuller to most weathered musicians. In addition to these four types of pickups, some rare models have the Piezo system installed. This is a bridge system which captures string vibration on a per-string basis and converts that to a sound signal. Mostly an acoustic-electric thing. I won't go into detail on that here. The images below are courtesy of Seymour Duncan Pickups.

Double-coil, or "humbucking," pickup	Single-coil pickup

The goal is to match your pickup selection to the type of sound you are going for. If every aspect of your guitar is geared towards producing a bright twangy sound for blues, country, etc, you want to use a pickup that furthers that setup: probably a passive single-coil arrangement. If you're trying to create a clean and powerful-sounding heavy metal axe or mellow jazz guitar with full-spectrum tone, you'd indubitably use humbuckers. What specific pickup you use, what level of output/winding, what material, etc. would be a much more personal choice, dictated by the specifics of the tone you were looking for.

Pickups are chosen so that the guitar in mind will have all the range of tonal possibilities that the user desires. However, this means that certain choices in construction and wood choice generally fit together. Almost all Les Pauls are humbucking. Some have "minihumbuckers" which resemble single coils more. Others have "soapbar" pickups: basically higher-output single-coils. But with a guitar constructed like the Les Paul is, to take advantage of the full range of sound vibration allowed by the wood choices, you'd want to use pickups that produce a humbucker-type sound. All current PRS models, with the exception of the soapbars and the SE (PRS's response to the strat), are humbucking. All strats, with the exception of the "Fat Strat" or modified instruments, have single coil pickups. Many models, like Ibanez's RG varieties, have a combination of single and double coils. Each guitar should be designed to have a complementary relationship between materials, body type, and pickups.

B. Electronic Setup
The way a guitar's electronics are setup determines how you can use the installed pickups. Guitars are best wired to be able to produce all of the sounds that the user will want from the guitar. The most common ways to do this are through pickup placement, pickup selection, and tone control.

-Pickup Placement
The placement of your pickups is the first and most fundamental way to affect how they sound. There are three basic positions for pickup placement. I'll demonstrate using an Ibanez RG:

Ibanez featuring three distinct pickups

Most humbucking guitars have two pickups: one at the bridge, and one at the neck. This guitar has three, with a single-coil between the two humbuckers in aforementioned positions.

If you have a guitar on hand, electric or acoustic, pick it up. Without doing anything special, plugging it in, etc, pick a few notes with your pick really close to the bridge. You'll notice it is very twangy sounding, bright, without a whole lot of mid or bass sound. Of course if you're playing an unplugged electric, no matter what you do you won't get much low-frequency response, but try to pay attention to the relative difference. Pickups positioned at the bridge produce a similar ingredient in their sound. It is bright, agressive, and has less low-end umph.

Now pick a few notes near the neck (or if on an acoustic, directly over the sound hole). You'll notice the notes are much less defined than those picked towards the bridge. They move the string more, and as a result, have more low-end heft to them. Similarly, the neck-position pickup in an electric guitar is much mellower, with a the opposite balance of frequencies emphasized (relative to the bridge pickup). The neck pickup is very bass/mid heavy, with little high-end definition.

Strats have a middle coil, as does this RG. Intuitively, this is going to be a tonal cross between neck and bridge positions. Personally, I see this pickup as the loser out of the three. It lacks the sharp definition of bridge pickup, yet also lacks the mellow bass-heavy tone of the neck. Unless you are looking for a compromise (that can't be found using the neck pickup and tone knob), this probably won't be all that useful as a lead tone. That said, as a rhythm tone, the center pickup can be pretty sweet for some styles of music.

-Pickup Selection
Depending on how a guitar is wired, it will have different pickup selection options. Multiple pickups would be useless without being able to switch between the sounds you wanted to use. First, there is the obvious choice in pickup selection: either you're using one, or you're using both. This is the minimal system on two-pickup guitars. You'll have a three-way selector switch. One the extremes will be individual pickups (neck on one side, bridge on the other), and the middle position will combine them both. Below are a couple different examples from the guitars you've seen so far:

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This is useful, but if you need more options, you can do better. Most strat-style guitars (the strat spawned hordes of copies from all brands) have five-way selector switch. The extreme and middle positions are the neck, middle, and bridge pickups, and the intermediate positions are combinations of the neck and middle, and the middle and bridge pickups. That's not all though. The really cool part as that these combinations are wired with the coils 180 degrees out of phase, just like humbuckers. While they are wired in parallel instead of series (they will sound more like single coils), these positions do eliminate the hum, and have a slightly higher output. In many ways, this gives some benefits of humbuckers to single-coil-only guitars.

The final option in terms of pickup selection is sort of the inverse of the five-way selection switch found on strats. Wheareas that system combines two single-coil pickups to create a humbucking effect, "coil splitting" is the use of individual coils in a double-coil pickup to create a single-coil sound. Perhaps one of the best-known examples of coil-splitting is the PRS McCarty electronics system. The typical LP pickup selector switch is there to choose among the two pickups (or combine them). However, somehow (generally through a modified tone knob), you can also choose between single-coil and humbucker. On the McCarty this is accomplished by using a push/pull pot for the tone-knob. The currently selected pickups humbuck when the knob is depressed, and are single-coils when the knob is lifted. "Coil tapping" is a slightly different variation which, when activated, simply reduces the number of active windings on the pickup to effectively reduce the output, while retaining much of the pickup's tone.

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-Tone Knob
Every electric guitar I've ever seen originally had a tone knob. Almost every guitar is equipped with at least one volume knob and at least one tone knob. The volume knob...duh. The tone knob serves as a one-band equalizer, essentially allowing you to control the amount of high-end that comes out of your pickups.

To be honest, not too many people use tone knobs often. Those that do generally use them for effect, or to compensate for not having neck-position pickups. There are several uses for the tone knob, most of which are made obsolete by amp- or effects-based equalizers.

Rolling the tone knob off all the way with the bridge pickup selected will give a tone similar to that of the neck pickup. However, depending on the tone pot, there may also be a muting effect which corresponds somewhat to the sound of a guitar with a wah pedal rolled towards the heel. This tone can be a cool alternative to a bona fide wah pedal, though it doesn't really have much versatility.

Using the tone knob in graduation can also help you control the increased amount of screech you get with increased levels of distortion. By taking a bit off your guitar's high-end output, you can make sure that you don't get the effect of a pick slide every time you shift your fingers. Of course, if you have a multi-channel amp or using effects pedals with tone controls, this can also be much more easily accomplished using those.

Part V - The Neck and Stuff

There are several factors that really affect playability, all of which are centered around the neck.

The scale of the guitar is the length from the nut to the bridge. Some guitars have different bridge/nut systems, but the bottom line is that the scale is based on the vibrating length of the string. The larger the scale, the farther apart the frets are going to be spaced. In addition, a larger scale means your strings will be slightly harder to bend due to increased string tension. If you think about the simple physics, the longer you make a string, the lower its pitch when resonating. In order to have a longer string length and the same pitch, you need to increase string tension. Many guitars (e.g. PRS) use a 25" scale. Gibson uses a 24.75" scale for a slinkier feel but also a more claustrophobic higher-register (frets closer together). This can be good if you have small hands. I however have rather large fingers, so itty bitty tiny upper frets are no good. Fender strats have a 25.5" scale.

The depth and curve of your neck are all about what feels good to mr. left hand. When it comes to proper bending and vibrato, however, it is generally advisable to find a guitar whose neck fills most or all of the gap between the webbing between thumb and first fingers and the neck. Thus if you have larger hands, a deeper and more pronounced neck curve is a good thing. Newer Fender guitars and Fender copies (Ibanez, Jackson, etc.) tend to have thinner necks (depth-wise), although retro and vintage models are available with fatter "C-shape" neck curves. Many Gibsons (Les Pauls, etc.) and most PRS guitars have much fatter necks, something that I love personally. Ultimately, as I said, it comes down to what feels good to your hand, and what makes playing easiest for you.

In the end, neck width is also a matter of taste, but it is much more affected by two main factors: the size of your hands and what you intend to play. A thin neck is great for chords. With the strings spaced closer together, you can contort your hand into all kinds of cool shapes, and it also makes wrapping your thumb around the fingerboard easier, if that's one of your playing techniques. This also means that, especially if you have bigger hands, you may also have trouble playing chords cleanly if the strings are too close together. Then again, if you're a prize shredder and don't play anything but single notes for the life of you, you probably won't be affected much by this.

The angle of the headstock is also important. Most Fender guitars don't have angled headstocks. In otherwords, the headstock is on the same plane as the fretboard. Many other types of guitars however, if not most, have headstocks that are angled back after the strings cross the nut. Take a look at the angled headstocks below. It may be hard to see, but these are, in fact, angled. On the left is a Gibson LP, on the right, a PRS Santana II.

Gibson Headstock (Angled)	PRS Headstock (Angled)

For comparison, now check out the flat headstock of the Fender Telecaster (Tele) shown below:

Fender Headstock (Flat)	Close-up of String Saddle/Guide

As you may notice, there is a small metal piece guiding the plain strings on the Tele. This piece, called a guide, saddle, or whatever you want to call it that will make sense to people, is the "fix" for a straight headstock. An angled headstock uses the angle to increase string pressure on the nut, creating tension and therefore keeping all the strings in place all by itself while adding to the instrument's sustain. With a straight headstock, since there is no real downward pressure keeping the strings pressed against the nut, guides are put into place to make sure shit don't go wrong. It's somewhat of a hack if you ask me. I would vouch for an angled headstock any day, but you'd have to weigh it against what other options you want on your guitar. Ultimately it's not too big a deal if the guitar is high quality.

There is a variety of fretboard known as a "scalloped" fretboard. This is used sometimes in jazz playing but for the most part is pretty uncommon. Scalloping a fretboard involves digging a curve into the fretboard in between each fret. Check it:

Scalloped Acoustic	Les Paul With Scalloped 21/22 Frets

This wicked mutilation of fingerboard serves one purpose: cleanliness. While it makes playing notes more difficult and odd for a guitar veteran (due to the fact that the fretboard won't stop you from putting too much pressure on the string and bending it downwards), it also allows for incredible control of bending and vibrato...if you can master it. Just look at Yngwie Malmsteen, cocky and ridiculous-looking but utterly masterful god of neo-classical shred. He plays custom scalloped Fender strats, and he arguably has one of the most controlled bending and vibrato techniques.

Finally, and perhaps most obviously...er...In any case, how many frets does your neck have? Depending on when your guitar was made, it could vary quite a bit. However most electric guitars made in the last fifty years have either 21, 22, or 24 frets. The 21 fret variety are usually found on older guitars and some Strats and Teles. I mentioned Yngwie a moment ago. He, for some odd reason, likes 21 fret strats, something that I find very odd considering how much time he spends in the upper register. 22 fret guitars are probably the most common. You have strats, all Gibson electrics, more than half of the PRS line, many Ibanez, etc. This allows you two full octaves on every string with a nice full-step bend on the 22nd fret.

For some, though, this bend is too much, and they want to have their full two-octave tapping orgies without extra work. Thus the 24 fret guitar was born. Yes, they are cool, and they allow you to play all kinds of sick licks in extreme upper registers, but they have a major draw-back. If you pick up a 22-fret guitar (assuming it was made by a decent manufacturer), you'll note that the bobbins in the neck-position pickup are smack dab where the 24th fret would be. This is no coincidence. For some reason, the absolute best tone comes with the pickup placed on a harmonic node, specifically, the 2-octave node. If you have 24 frets, the pickup is slightly out of place. To many, the neck position pickup on a 24 fret guitar sounds like poo. It's not the pickup. It's not the quality of the instrument (hell, both Satch and Vai use 24 fretters and they've got custom models). It's simply the fact that the pickup is out of place. Try it out, see if it bugs you. Then weigh the pros and cons and make your pick.

Part VI - The Bridge and The Wang...Bar

So. Bridges and stuff. There are quite a few ways to attach the ball-ends of the strings to the body. You can wrap the strings into a bridge on the surface of the guitar, or you can run the strings through the back of the guitar and attach them there. Let's start with the bridge option, found on Les Pauls, PRS guitars with the stoptail bridge option, and a variety of other guitars. Here's your basic bridge:

A Les Paul's stop-tail bridge piece (wrap-around)

This "wrap-around" bridge technique allows easy palm-muting (as opposed to having the strings run directly through the bridge holes instead of over the top and back around). This bridge piece is taken from a Les Paul. Most people like to have intonation control, but companies that offer stoptail bridge pieces often having different methods of implementing this feature. Gibson offers Ted McCarty's (legendary Gibson president and guitar designer, later hired by PRS as a consultant; The "McCarty" model in the PRS line is a tribute to him) "tune-o-matic" intonation system: a bridge with intonation settings before the actual wrap-around bridge piece. By adjusting the intonation screws in this bridge system, you could adjust individual string length for perfect tuning on every string. PRS, however, offers intonation screws built into the bridge piece as opposed having an additional bridge piece. Most PRS bridge pieces are set perfectly intonated for .009 and .010 gauge strings. I couldn't find a picture of the adjustable PRS stoptail bridge, so take a look at the adjustable trem bridge and use your imagination. Below are the Gibson and PRS stoptails that I could find:

Les Paul w/ Tune-O-Matic Bridge	PRS w/ Non-adjustable Stoptail

Notice how the PRS is perfectly intonated, but not adjustable. That "stair-step" pattern is usually what it takes to get a guitar's intonation right. Now there are other bridge systems which are not like those shown but are still fixed. Usually strings are threaded over a bridge or over intonation pegs and through the body of the guitar. To string the guitar, you'd slide the string through the back of the guitar and over the bridge. The Fender Tele and various other guitars implement this system. Below is the Tele system:

Front And Back of Fender Tele	Closeup Of Tele w/ Bridge Humbucker

Other companies, such as Jackson, do similar non-trem strings-through-body construction. Below is the signature model of the late great, Randy Rhoads"

A Jackson Rhoads with through-body stringing

Notice here that the strings go over a Tune-O-Matic copy bridge piece and then through the body of the guitar. The nice thing about stoptail bridges is that no matter what you do, they don't move. If you bend a note, change your tuning, or affect string tension in any other way, all of the other strings will stay roughly in tune (barring the neck moving alot...which it shouldn't if you have a good guitar). The disadvantage? No tremelo (vibrato). Read on.

Technically speaking, "tremelo" bars/systems should be called "vibrato" systems, because that's what you're doing. A tremelo is a really fast repetition of notes (as in tremelo picking for those of you who aren't familiar with terms typically applied in classical repertoire). Vibrato is repeated altering of pitch. You only need to know this so that if somebody grills you, you can shut them down. Nobody, and I mean nobody, uses the term "vibrato" for these things. Just as it started with Fender calling the system a trem system when he introduced his Stratocaster in 1950, it is continued today by every manufacterer, from Jackson to Ibanez to Washburn to PRS and on, using the term tremelo.

Alrighty. That was alot to say a little. So then what is a trem system? Basically it's the result of putting whatever holds the bottoms of your strings down on a floating platform. Oooh, but that takes magic you say. Yes, to a degree, but I'm not talkin floating carpets or levels out of Super Mario here. One end of the bridge plate is attached to the body by a set of screws while the other "floats," held in place only by string tension. Thus the bridge acts like a rudimentary hinge. If the floating end of the bridge is pulled up, the strings go slacker and their pitch drops. If the bridge is similarly pushed down, string tension increases and pitch takes quick hike to the ceiling. How is this pulling and pushing accomplished? By the infamous "bar": trem(elo) bar, vibrato bar, whammy bar, wang bar, etc. Wang. What a great word. Ok moving on. Let me illustrate just what I'm talking about here. I'll demo for the most part with a Floyd Rose-based trem system (I'll cover the FR trem in detail later).

The basic trem system for most trem-equipped guitars	You can see how the whole bridge floats on the two bridge posts
This is what a trem might look like on a guitar	The necessary cavity cut-out of the back and the springs

So most non-FR trems (Fender Strat trem, PRS trem, etc) are based on the upper-left diagram. Strings are passed up through the block below the bridge (which holds the strings by their end ferrules), out through the bridge, and then pulled towards the headstock over adjustable intonation guides. To facilitate this system, a cavity is bored into the back of the guitar. Inside this cavity, springs are attached to the bridge to provide appropriate tension so that the bridge floats at the proper level. A back plate usually covers this cavity. A tremelo arm is either screwed or pushed into the hole in the bridge on the right side of the diagram. This arm, when turned directly towards or away from the neck, can then be pushed down or pulled up to change all string pitches simulataneously. The many effects that are possible with a trem system are used frequently by some and never by others. It's just a matter of your playing style.

Part VII - The Floyd Rose Tremelo

Coming soon!