What Is An Acoustic Guitar? – Buyers Guide

Acoustic Guitars
Acoustic guitars are a type of guitar that can be played anywhere because they are self-amplifying. While electric guitars typically need to be plugged into an electronic amplifier to project their sound loudly enough to be heard clearly, acoustic guitars are designed with a hollow chamber inside and a wooden top (also known as a soundboard) that amplifies the sound of the strings naturally, without the need for external amplification.

Acoustic guitars have been around for over 300 years, and have evolved into many different shapes and sizes. Most feature steel strings, though classical guitars features string made of less tense materials such as nylon, silk or even gut.

In this buying guide we will go over the different types of acoustic guitars available today, and what makes each unique. Read on for all the info you could need to narrow down your search for the perfect instrument!

What Is An Acoustic Guitar?
An acoustic guitar is a string instrument; it produces sound through the vibration of strings tuned to a certain pitch. The strings of the guitar are usually plucked with a pick or fingers to get them to vibrate, and this can be done in a variety of ways including fingerstyle, flatpicking, and strumming. The body of the acoustic guitar is wooden and hollow which means that when the strings vibrate, these vibrations resonate through the top (or ‘soundboard’) which in turn creates an acoustically amplified sound.

Acoustic guitars are used in a wide variety of music genres, including pop, rock, classical, jazz, folk, country and bluegrass. Depending on your own personal musical tastes, you can learn to play any of these style of music and more on your acoustic guitar. The type of music you are interested in might even change over time as you learn to play and understand music on a different level!

Electro-Acoustic Guitar
An electro-acoustic guitar is a type of acoustic guitar that uses an electronic pickup to amplify its sound through an amplifier or a speaker. Electro-acoustic guitars are still considered a type of acoustic guitar, because they can be played unplugged as a normal acoustic. The guitar usually still has the look, sound and feel of an acoustic, it just has the electric features as well.

The electric components used in electro-acoustic guitars are often different from those used in electric guitars. Electric guitars usually have strings made of a magnetic metal such as steel or nickel, and use magnetic pickups to convert the movement of the strings into an electrical signal, which are then sent to an amplifier. In contrast, electro-acoustics usually have piezoelectric pickups mounted under the bridge saddle; these are thin strips made up of crystals that convert vibrations into a very small electrical signal. This signal is weaker than that generated by magnetic pickups, but it more realistically captures the sound of the acoustic guitar. And because they don’t rely on the strings being made of magnetic metal, piezo pickups can be used on classical guitars and other instruments too!

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Body Types
Acoustic guitars come in many different shapes and sizes. Generally, the bigger the guitar, the louder it will be. For example, dreadnought guitars are typically louder than a parlour guitar, and jumbo guitars are louder still. Larger bodies also typically create a sound that has more bass than smaller bodies, as the soundwaves that bass frequencies are made up of are longer than those that make up higher frequencies. For the same reason, the shape of the guitar body has an effect on the guitar’s overall tonal balance, with different shapes accentuating different frequencies in the guitar’s sound. Here are a few of the most common body types:

• Dreadnought: The most common acoustic guitar body type, the dreadnought shape is what most people imagine when they picture an acoustic guitar. It is named after the dreadnought battleships of World War I.
• Jumbo: Living up to its name, this body type has a big, booming voice owing to its large size. Many players also appreciate their dynamics, as the player can produce huge differences in sound by adjusting their picking style.
• Grand Concert: Smaller than a dreadnought but larger than a parlor or mini-dreadnought, Grand Concert guitars bridge the gap between smaller and larger instruments. They typically sound a bit brighter than dreadnoughts.
• Parlour: A small type of guitar that looks longer in proportion due to its slimmed-down body. These guitars were originally designed to be conveniently sized and quiet enough to be played at home, hence the name ‘parlour guitar’.
• Mini: A very small body type that is great for beginners who want something easy to play without sacrificing on tone. Examples include the Taylor BT1 & BT2 ‘Baby Taylor’ models.
• Archtop: Also known as ‘jazz-boxes’, these guitars have soundboards that are bent into a beautiful curved shape similar to violin tops, and usually feature F-holes as opposed to circular sound holes.

Tone Woods
There is some debate in the guitar world as to how much effect the wood of the guitar body has on the sound of the electric guitar (because the magnetic pickups should in theory only be affected by the movement of the strings themselves, not the acoustic sound of the guitar). But one thing everyone agrees on is that the wood that an acoustic guitar is made from makes a huge difference to the sound!

This is because, in an acoustic guitar, the sound is being made by the movement of the soundboard. This sound will be different depending on a number of characteristics of the wood, such as density and flexibility. A strong, rigid wood like mahogany will vibrate less than a more flexible wood such as spruce (the most common wood for acoustic guitar soundboards). Spruce will therefore produce a louder sound with lots of bright harmonic overtones and richness. But mahogany soundboards will absorb less of the momentum of the strings, allowing them to ring on for longer, resulting in a somewhat quieter but more direct tone with tons of sustain.

These characteristics can also be emphasised or de-emphasised by the bracing, which are wooden struts glued inside the guitar at carefully engineered points to strengthen the guitar. Taylor, for instance, have designed the innovative V-Class bracing to allow them greater control over the flexibility and strength in their acoustic guitar soundboards.

The Guitar Neck
The neck is the part of the guitar that features the fretboard. It connects to the body at one end, and has a headstock at the other end where the tuner machineheads are found. The neck of your guitar is the most important part of how it feels to play; the neck’s shape or ‘profile’, the curvature of the fretboard, the type of frets it has, and how it connects to the body are all major considerations with regards to the guitar’s playability. All of this will be very subjective, and your preference will depend on lots of factors from your own personal musical style to the physical size of your hands!

There are several main types of neck shapes, usually named for a letter to represent its profile (that is, the shape you would see if you chopped the headstock off and looked at the cross-section of the neck). Let’s take a look at what each one means:

• C Shape: This is the most common neck shape on guitars, and is the most ‘universally’ comfortable to play. It is smoothly curved, with no sudden changes in the angle of the curve either in the centre of the neck or the shoulders.
• V Shape: Often associated with electric guitars from the ’50s, V-shaped necks have a noticeable hump in the centre-line of the neck, making them very comfortable for people who like to wrap their hands around the neck, use their thumb to fret notes on the bass strings, or have a solid place to anchor their thumb on the back of the neck when doing big string bends.
• D Shape: The opposite of the V shape, D-shaped necks have noticeable humps at the shoulders but a very flat centre-line. This makes them very comfortable for people who like to keep their thumb flat on the back of the neck for the majority of their playing to allow for quick and accurate position shifts, such as those who play classical or folk fingerstyle.
• U Shape: Like a C-shape except on a thick neck and deeply set back from the fretboard, the U-shape is known as the ‘baseball bat neck’ for a reason. Found on a lot of archtop guitars, as well as early electric & bass guitars and modern instruments based on those designs, the U shape suits large hands and players who like a big chunky neck to really grab a hold of.
• Oval: On the opposite end of the scale from a U-shape, Oval neck profiles are essentially C-shapes with less depth to the curve. Slightly rarer to find on mordern guitars, this profile shows up a lot on artist signature instruments. It’s a bit more of an acquired taste, but some players find it to be a happy middle ground between a C- and D-shaped neck.

The Fingerboard
The fingerboard (or fretboard) is the piece of wood that runs along the top of the guitar’s neck, where the frets are located. Fingerboards come in a lot of materials, but the three most common are rosewood, ebony and maple.

• Rosewood is a dark red-brown wood that is hard and dense, and feels smooth to the touch even without a finish applied, making it ideal for use as a fretboard material. Its use in instrument manufacture was briefly banned by CITES regulation, but it has since received an exemption and is back in a big way!
• Ebony is a wood that is even harder, denser, darker and smoother to the touch than rosewood. Many instruments that typically feature rosewood fingerboards may feature ebony fingerboards as a premium upgrade.
• Maple is a pale hardwood that is very commonly used for guitar tops and necks. It was popularised as a fingerboard material by the Fender electric guitars of the 1950s, but it can be found on certain acoustic guitars as well. Higher-end instrument can sometimes feature ‘baked’ or ‘caramelised’ maple necks and fingerboards.

While some fingerboards are flat, the vast majority have a slight curve to suit the natural curvature of the fingers on the fretting hand. The amount it is curved is usually measured in inches, and is called the radius. The idea is, if you were to extend that curve until it formed a circle, what would be the radius of that circle? So the smaller the radius, the more curved the fingerboard. This can range from extremely curved fingerboards such as the 7.25″ found on older Fender models, to the very flat 14″ or more found on some modern guitars made for high-performance metal shredders. Some guitars even have a compound radius, which is a fingerboard that is more curved towards the lower frets, but flattens out as you go up the fretboard.

Frets are the strips of metal wire that run at intervals along the guitar neck. These frets are placed at specific distances from each other to ensure that each fret corresponds to a precise note. There are a lot of different sizes and shapes of frets available, and each guitarist may have a different preference. Most modern players of rock music and its associated styles prefer larger frets (jumbo or medium jumbo being the most popular) as they allow the fretting hand to more easily apply articulation such as vibrato and bends. Jazz and classical players tend to favour smaller, thinner frets, as they make the strings feel more solidly anchored and improve the tuning of the string when fretted, also known as the intonation.

Conclusion
Acoustic guitars are the most popular type of guitar, and with good reason. They have a rich sound that can be played in many different styles and genres of music, as part of a group or alone in your room. If you’re looking for an instrument that will last you for years and allow you an endless amount of creative freedom when playing music, then an acoustic guitar is definitely something we recommend! 

If you would like any more guidance on what to look for in an acoustic guitar, call us on 01772 622 111, email at customerservice@spearsmusic.co.uk or head to one of our stores. Our friendly staff will be more than happy to help. There is a guitar to suit you, and we’d love to help you find it!

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