60 Fun Facts About Guitar

How many strings does a standard guitar have?

Twelve-string guitars pair the strings into six courses, the top two in unison and the rest in octaves.

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

A common mnemonic is "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 of the six is lowered a whole step?

It creates an open power chord on the bottom three strings, which is why it is a metal staple.

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

He removes the lowest string entirely, playing G-D-G-B-D.

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

He enlarged the body and invented the fan-braced top, around 1850.

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

His firm, founded in 1833, is the oldest surviving American guitar maker.

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

It began in New York City and moved to Nazareth, Pennsylvania, where it has stayed ever since.

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

His company's Lloyd Loar later added the violin-style f-holes now associated with archtops.

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

He was among the first to endorse nylon strings after World War II.

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

Nylon gave the classical guitar a more stable tone and helped standardise the instrument.

The first commercially sold electric stringed instrument, from 1931, was nicknamed what?

Its long neck and small round body gave it the name; Beauchamp and Adolph Rickenbacker went on to found Rickenbacker.

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

The name eventually morphed into Rickenbacher and then Rickenbacker.

Whose prototype solid-body guitar, nicknamed "the Log", inspired a famous Gibson model?

He built it in 1940 from a 4-by-4 fir post with two archtop halves bolted on for looks.

Besides guitars, Les Paul pioneered which studio technique?

He is the only person in both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

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

Its single-pickup sister model was the Esquire.

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

A trademark clash with Gretsch's Broadkaster drum kit forced the 1951 rename.

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

Guitars made in the interim had the name simply snipped off the label, and are now called "Nocasters".

In which year did Fender begin manufacturing the Stratocaster?

It was designed between 1952 and 1954 by Leo Fender, Bill Carson, George Fullerton and Freddie Tavares.

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?

He started out running a radio repair shop in Fullerton, California.

To which company did Leo Fender sell Fender in 1965?

He later co-founded Music Man and then G&L; the "CBS" era Strats have a larger headstock.

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

He kept designing instruments almost 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?

It was the first widely successful electric bass and shipped with the Fender Bassman amplifier.

The Gibson Les Paul went on sale in which year?

Gibson president Ted McCarty brought in Les Paul as a consultant to answer Fender's solid-body guitars.

The original 1952 Les Paul had a gold top and which type of single-coil pickups?

The prized 1958-60 "Burst" was actually a commercial flop at the time.

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

The single-cutaway carved-top Les Paul was reintroduced in 1968.

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

Fewer than 100 sold at first; Albert King and Dave Davies later made the shape famous.

Which angular sibling model did Gibson release in 1958 alongside its V-shaped guitar?

The Moderne was designed in 1957 but shelved until 1982.

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.

What lay behind B.B. King's choice of that word for his guitars?

He named the guitar to remind himself never to run into a burning building or fight over a woman again.

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

He named it after Roy Rogers's horse; its top now has a large hole worn through by his pick.

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

Russell reasoned that a scratched signature would make the guitar more valuable one day.

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

He and his father made it as a teenager because he could not afford a Fender or Gibson.

What does Brian May famously use as a guitar pick?

The Red Special's tremolo springs came from a motorbike's valve springs.

Eric Clapton's famous Stratocaster "Blackie" was assembled from the best parts of how many 1950s Strats?

He had bought six cheap Strats in Nashville and given three away to fellow guitarists.

In 2004 Blackie set a then-record auction price for a guitar. Roughly how much?

The music-store chain Guitar Center made the winning bid, for Clapton's addiction-recovery charity.

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

He bought the 1969 Strat at Manny's Music in New York in 1970.

In 2019 the Black Strat was auctioned for a record sum. Roughly how much?

Colts owner Jim Irsay bought it; the proceeds went to an environmental law charity.

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

He played it on Nirvana's MTV Unplugged; Røde Microphones' Peter Freedman was the buyer.

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

John Lennon, meanwhile, played a Rickenbacker 325 from the band's Hamburg days.

Which of these produces almost no sound unplugged?

They rely on electromagnetic pickups that turn string vibration into a signal for an amplifier.

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

At the other end, the strings pass over the bridge and its saddles.

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

The "150" in the name simply reflected its $150 price, amp included.

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".

Classical ("Spanish") guitars are typically strung with what, and played with the fingers?

Their wide, flat necks make scales and chord shapes easier to finger cleanly.

A standard electric bass is normally tuned E-A-D-G. How many strings does it have?

Five- and six-string basses exist but are much less common.

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

A 12-string doubles each of the six strings into a course.

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?

It had six courses tuned in fourths, like a lute, but a guitar-shaped body.

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

Classical guitars usually do without one, since nylon strings exert far less pull than steel.

How does a humbucker pickup cancel electrical hum?

The design was introduced in the mid-1950s; the second coil 'bucks' stray fields.

What is the fret position that divides the upper half of a guitar's scale length in half again?

The 12th fret splits the scale length exactly in two, so the 24th sits two octaves above the open string.

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

In Portugal the word guitarra means this cittern-like instrument, while an ordinary guitar is called a viola.

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

Most left-handed players use a mirror-image instrument built for them.

What material does Steinberger use for its distinctive guitar necks?

Kramer and Travis Bean used aluminum, and Modulus carbon fiber; some Steinbergers have no headstock at all.

Which Spanish guitarist's 1674 book Instrucción de Música contains his entire solo guitar output?

Sanz wrote that other nations, such as Italy and France, added to the Spanish guitar.

Which acoustic guitar maker is the notable exception in using bolt-on rather than glued necks?

Almost all other steel-string acoustics have set necks, while electrics use both methods.

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

The vihuela was popular only briefly in Spain and Italy while the lute dominated elsewhere in Europe.