The acoustic guitar group also includes unamplified guitars designed to play in different registers such as the acoustic bass guitar which has a similar tuning to that of the electric bass guitar. There are several notable subcategories within the acoustic guitar group: classical and flamenco guitars steel string guitars, which include the flat top or 'folk' guitar twelve string guitars and the arch top guitar. Many acoustic guitars available today feature a variety of pickups which enable the player to amplify and modify the raw guitar sound. The acoustic guitar is quieter than other instruments commonly found in bands and orchestras so when playing within such groups it is often externally amplified. Guitars can be divided into two broad categories, acoustic and electric:Īn acoustic guitar is one not dependent on an external device to be heard but uses a soundboard which is a wooden piece mounted on the front of the guitar's body.

If you would like to learn more about playing the electric guitar, and just how easy it can be, just However, it was Danelectro that first produced electric guitars for the wider public.

Beauchamp co-founded Rickenbacher which used the horseshoe-magnet pickup. The electric guitar was patented by George Beauchamp in 1936. Torres and Louis Panormo of London (active 1820s-1840s) were both responsible for demonstrating the superiority of fan strutting over transverse table bracing. Modern dimensions of the classical instrument were established by Antonio Torres Jurado (1817-1892), working in Seville in the 1850s. This guitar has been examined and does not show tell-tale signs of modifications from a double-course guitar although fakes are known to exist of guitars and identifying labels from that period. Gaetano Vinaccia (1759 – after 1831) has his signature on the label of a guitar built in Naples, Italy for six strings with the date of 1779. The Vinaccia family of luthiers is known for developing the mandolin, and may have built the earliest extant six string guitar. In favor of the latter view, the reshaping of the vihuela into a guitar-like form can be seen as a strategy of differentiating the European lute visually from the Moorish oud. It is not clear whether it represented a transitional form or was simply a design that combined features of the Arabic oud and the European lute. The vihuela enjoyed only a short period of popularity the last surviving publication of music for the instrument appeared in 1576. Its construction had as much in common with the modern guitar as with its contemporary four-course renaissance guitar. It had lute-style tuning and a guitar-like body. The Spanish vihuela or 'viola da mano', a guitar-like instrument of the 16th century, appears to be an aberration in the transition from the renaissance instrument to the modern guitar. By 1200 AD, the four string 'guitar' had evolved into two types: the guitarra morisca (Moorish guitar) which had a rounded back, wide fingerboard and several soundholes, and the guitarra latina (Latin guitar) which resembled the modern guitar with one soundhole and a narrower neck.

800 AD, the Norse hero Gunther (also known as Gunnar), played a lute with his toes as he lay dying in a snake-pit, in the legend of Siegfried. Elsewhere in Europe, the indigenous six-string Scandinavian lut (lute), had gained in popularity in areas of Viking incursions across the continent. The modern guitar is descended from the Roman cithara brought by the Romans to Hispania around 40 AD, and further adapted and developed with the arrival of the four-string oud, brought by the Moors after their conquest of the Iberian peninsula in the 8th century. Sihtar itself is related to the Indian instrument, the sitar. The modern word, guitar, was adopted into English from Spanish guitarra, derived from the Latin word cithara, which in turn was derived from the earlier Greek word kithara, which perhaps derives from Persian sihtar. The oldest known iconographic representation of an instrument displaying all the essential features of a guitar being played is a 3300 year old stone carving of a Hittite bard.

The guitar appears to be derived from earlier instruments known in ancient India and Central Asia as the Sitar. Instruments similar to the guitar have been popular for at least 5,000 years. Before the development of the electric guitar and the use of synthetic materials, a guitar was defined as being an instrument having 'a long, fretted neck, flat wooden soundboard, ribs, and a flat back, most often with incurved sides'.

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