HALPI dot com

One thing that is obvious about the modern world is the enormous variety of taste in music. Rock gets the most attention, of course, but there are millions who enjoy jazz. Many others prefer flamenco and there are those who enjoy music that’s difficult to classify.

For all these individual tastes in music, there is a guitar best suited to produce it.

A standard rock guitar is an electric with an amp. Most are solid bodied, have six steel strings, and at least one (more often now, two) pickup(s). Though there are a hundred different electric guitars, the differences are less pronounced than in other types, and those have much to do with electronics.

The wood and strings play a smaller role in these, where the pickup and amp combine with them to produce the final sound. Ash is often used in body construction.

When you enter the world of jazz, classical or flamenco, the types fan out into more distinctive sounds.

Classical guitars frequently have nylon, rather than steel, strings and produce a warmer, softer sound. They’re made to produce longer notes, with a variety of tones and volume levels. The back and sides (the ribs) may use Mahogany, but a fine classical guitar will often be made partly from Indian Rosewood.

Flamencos, by contrast, are almost a percussion instrument. Meant to be tapped as much as strummed, they have solid sections on the soundboard (the top) to stand up to the pounding and produce the desired sound.

The tap plate on a flamenco (similar to a pick guard on an electric) may be plastic or wood, but it’s carefully constructed to deliver a bright echo. The guitars are commonly made from Spanish Cypress for the back and sides, but more expensive models frequently use Rosewood, which gives a warm tone.

A jazz guitar, like the music itself, is an eclectic mix. In some respects it’s indistinguishable from a classical guitar. But in other cases, the strings will be steel rather than nylon, and the woods will have a brighter tone. Some models will have a cutaway for playing up high on the neck, or an arched back to deliver a heavier tone.

Folk guitars can run the gamut from an ordinary classical guitar with nylon strings, to a fine 12-string steel model. The style is defined more by the music played than the instrument used. Even here, though, the music has evolved over the decades, so that the cross-over to rock is a much shorter bridge than in times past.

Either jazz or folk guitars can today include electric components inside an acoustic body to enhance the volume and provide controls to modify the sound.

Just as with types of music, the dividing lines between types of guitars has become blurred over the decades. Classical-jazz, folk-rock and other even more complex hyphenates are the norm today. Contemporary luthiers (guitar makers) and musicians are endlessly experimenting to produce new sounds.