How many acoustic guitars are there

They are among the smaller bodies, which can be appealing to people with smaller body frames. That makes a lot of sense, but they have a certain sound that can be very intimate under certain approaches such as a Folk solo artist who prefers to finger pick alongside soft vocals. They were also mass-produced during the era, so Parlor guitars offered a widely available cheap solution for the travelling troubadour See the Fender pictured above.

Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull employed Parlor guitars for his Irish inflected acoustic work and is a fantastic example of how well the tonal properties of the body shape allows the guitar to fit in with a full band. From full-on strumming to subtle finger picking, Anderson could make the Parlor guitar speak or wail, which shows the full capabilities of the smaller shape. More recently, John Mayer uses his Martin signature series Parlor guitar for his solo performances.

The Parlor body shape is an excellent choice for the solo artist because of its light, yet balanced tonal spectrum. They are smaller and easier to travel with as well! Gibson introduced the Jumbo body shape in with the release of the J model. This shape is more rounded in its shoulders and bottom, and provides the largest sound cavity of all the shapes. The main benefit from making this shape larger and wider boils down to one element: Volume.

These guitars are loud. From strumming hard to softly finger picking, if you invest in a Jumbo you will get the most volume for your money, guaranteed. Maybe you are a larger framed person who knows you can handle a larger instrument and command it to make your voice heard. The tonal spectrum is balanced, but from personal experience the larger cavity produces a more open type of sound that can really accentuate the bass frequencies.

Tonal terminology can be difficult to speak about, and although analogies can help in this scenario your best bet is to listen to some artists who employ the Jumbo in their main arsenal of axes.

Bob Dylan is one of the most widely known singer-songwriters, and you may not realize you are already familiar with the tonal properties the Jumbo body shape has to offer. If your main concern when shopping for an acoustic guitar is volume, then the Jumbo body shape is right up your alley. They look great too! Check out this picture of the Gibson J to get an idea of the visual beauty the Jumbo has to offer. More famous guitarists than we could dare to list here play the J, but we'll mention Elvis, Emmylou Harris, George Harrison, etc For those of you on a tighter budget, check out Epiphone guitars, which are owned by Gibson.

The value is still there, but not as damaging to the wallet. The first three acoustic guitar body shapes we looked at are among the most widely recorded instruments.

Their popularity has been defined due to their visual appeal, but also their tonal nature and the artists who have made them famous. For those of you who want to go down the less travelled path, check out these lesser known but fully capable variants on the acoustic guitar body. Each has its own look, and because of the dimensions of the sound cavity and upper and lower bouts, they all have their own distinct feel and sound.

When Martin Guitars introduced the Dreadnought shape, other companies immediately followed suit. They replicated the exact body shape to get their share of the market for this highly used body shape. Other companies, such as Gibson, even created slight variants to the Dreadnought that became extremely popular in their own right.

Most notably, the Gibson J surged in popularity after its introduction. The sunburst finish has stuck throughout the years, although you can now buy them in natural finishes. The price of the instrument helped it to rise to prominence, and its warm tone that offered luscious sound that complemented any vocalist immediately created a sensation in the acoustic arena. Now that the Gibson J has become as popular among players as the Martin Dreadnought, you can expect to pay a decent premium for one, because this instrument offers a tremendous quality under the Gibson brand.

Lennon even customized his instrument to include a soundboard mounted single coil pickup and volume knobs similar to some of the types of electric guitars out there.

Similar to the Dreadnought, but with a much more recent developmental history, stands the Auditorium body shape. Once again this is another C.

Martin design. While some electric guitars are harder to play than others, the string tension is generally lower than what it is on a steel-string acoustic guitar. If you like the sounds an electric guitar can produce and you want to play music that is usually played on an electric guitar, it is highly recommended you start learning on an electric guitar. Pick the type of guitar that suits the style of music you want to play. Resonators are a strange type of guitar that you may not see very often depending on the style of music you listen to.

As you might expect, this metal cone helps the guitar resonate and project any note you play. There are different models with different types of cones that are better suited to different styles of music. A lot of resonator guitarists use a slide, but you can play a resonator as you would play a normal guitar.

Resonators can be harder to learn at first, but it depends on what style of music you want to play. The idea behind string guitars is that instead of having six strings, you double up each string.

So you end up with six pairs of strings as shown below:. If you already know how to play guitar, a quick read of that guide will explain how you can play a string guitar.

A string guitar has a very distinctive sound. Once you learn to recognize it, it will stand out in any song that uses one. You need to press down hard enough for two strings to make contact with the fret under each finger, so it is harder to play than a regular 6-string guitar. Once you build up your finger strength, you can work your way to playing a string guitar.

Today, you can find a wide range of 7, 8 and 9 string guitars mostly electric from many brands. These extended-range guitars provide guitarists with the freedom to play anything you can play on a normal six-string guitar as well as lower notes that can reach as low as bass guitar notes. Note: you may notice that a lot of extended range guitars have slanted frets.

Fanned frets are also available on 6-string guitars, but very common on extended range guitars. Find out about fanned frets in this guide. Find out about 7-string guitars here including different options to buy in my Ultimate Guide to Seven String Guitars.

You can technically play any style of music on an extended range guitar. An extended range guitar simply adds additional strings, so you can play anything on it that you would normally play on a six-string guitar. But extended range guitars tend to be used by guitarists who play heavy styles of music, as well as technical styles such as progressive metal.

To hear examples of seven-string guitars in action, check out this Guide on Seven String Songs to Learn. Many beginners will struggle at first with playing an extended-range guitar. The extra strings require a wider fretboard, which can be awkward for a beginner to reach around. If you are interested in playing music on an extended-range guitar, try a 7-string first.

Just like guitar, you can buy many different types of basses from acoustic, electro-acoustic, solid body, semi-solid, headless, 4-string, 5-string, 6-string, 8-string, and more. If you already know how to play guitar, read this guide for step-by-step instructions on how to learn bass as a guitarist. Bass can be used in any music style.

Learning guitar also teaches you some skills and concepts that apply to bass, so a guitarist can pick up a bass and immediately start playing riffs and basic bass lines. Just keep in mind that bass and guitar are separate instruments. While a lot of the techniques and fretboard knowledge can be shared across the instruments, bass and guitar require very different approaches and mindsets.

If you want to learn guitar, start on a guitar and learn bass separately. If you want to learn bass, start on bass and you can consider learning guitar later on. If you want to learn how to play bass, a good starting point is to work on these Bass Guitar Exercises. Lap steel, pedal steel, and Hawaiian steel guitars are interesting instruments that look similar to a regular guitar but play very differently. A guitarist can take their knowledge of the fretboard and learn to play a lap steel guitar, but you do need to learn new skills and a new approach to playing music.

In addition to Hawaiian music, you can hear lap steel and pedal steel guitars used in country music and bluegrass, as well as rock, jazz, blues, and other styles.

The silky-smooth sliding between notes makes this an incredibly unique sounding instrument. A lap steel guitar and a regular guitar are two different instruments. Here are some common questions beginners often have about the different types of guitars available.

There are two main types of guitars: acoustic and electric. When you look at each of these types of guitars, they can be split into many different sub-types based on body shapes, hardware features, and the number of strings.

Acoustic guitars are split into two main types: steel string and nylon string classical. Steel-string acoustic guitars are available in many different forms, while nylon string acoustics tend to stick closely to the traditional classical style.

Electric guitars can also be split into many different groups. People are still coming up with new types of electric guitars based on different styles and features. The best type of guitar for beginners is the one that you enjoy playing.

Other typical choices include mellow and bassy maple; bright, midrange-y koa; walnut, which falls somewhere between koa and maple tonally; and cherry, which tends toward the maple end of the spectrum. More specialized builders will sometimes use ornate, figured cocobolo, with its rosewood-like tonal qualities, and classical builders often use cypress.

Selecting the right combination of woods and body styles can give you a completely new tone experience. If you already have a spruce-and-mahogany OM for bluesy fingerpicking, then a cedar-and-walnut small jumbo would come in handy for exploration of slow Irish aires.

The rationale for owning not just two, but many different guitars, is pretty easy to argue. But if you are space constrained, frugal, or just not the collecting type, know that there are many players who have proven that a single, great guitar can go a long way. When asked what he looks for in a guitar that can do it all, Bensusan is insistent about thinking of the guitar as a tool for expression, rather than an object of desire.

When you condition yourself with one instrument, you are going to find many ways to have that one instrument speak differently. Michael Chapdelaine also understands the merit of working with a single, more versatile guitar. Unusual for a steel-string, this guitar features a lattice of carbon fiber on top of cedar bracing. And a player, professional or amateur, who wants to work across diverse styles, say flamenco and bluegrass, will probably seek out the instruments that express those styles most authentically.

Perhaps the best guidance, though, is that for all the talk about which guitar fits a certain style or player, there really are no rules. Guitars are about music and music is about feeling. Frequent travelers have an excellent reason for owning multiple guitars. Furthermore, many manufacturers now offer parlor guitars and even smaller travel instruments, which make splendid travel companions. However, for performers, travel can also be the rationale for paring your onstage arsenal of instruments.