Last Updated on July 24, 2023 by Guitarist Authority
The guitar is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Its a key component in most modern music and all the different types of guitars have their place in many genres.
In this article we will cover all the different types of guitars.
How Many Types of Guitars Are There?
When we talk about the modern guitar we can safely say there are three distinct types. Acoustic guitars, electric guitars and bass guitars.
However, there are many different categories/varieties within each type. We will cover these different category types below.
Types of Acoustic Guitars
Although guitar-like instruments have been around for millennia, the first modern acoustic guitars were created in about 1850, based on designs from European luthiers a century earlier.
Acoustic guitars have steel or nylon strings; they can be full-bodied or include a cutaway and have either an arch-top or flat top. Some acoustic guitars are equipped with a pickup so that they can be plugged into an amp or a PA via a direct box.
Dreadnought Acoustic Guitar
The Martin Company first created the Dreadnought body style in the early 20th century. It is the most popular body style of acoustic guitar and has a larger body with a wider soundboard than its predecessors. When you think of an acoustic guitar, this is the body style you imagine.
Jumbo Acoustic Guitar
First introduced by the Gibson guitar company in 1937. As their name implies, Jumbo guitars are larger than their dreadnought brothers and produce a loud, booming sound. They have a strong bass response and substantial projection. They quickly became popular due to their fantastic projection and complimentary sound.
Parlor Acoustic Guitar
Parlor guitars are smaller in size than the Jumbo and dreadnought varieties. They tend to have a lighter, more airy sound and a quieter acoustic projection. It’s the ideal guitar for a small-room or at-home concerts, recording, and intimate settings. Smaller people will feel more comfortable using this instrument.
Concert and Grand Concert Acoustic Guitar
Like the parlor guitar, the concert guitar is smaller in size than a dreadnought or jumbo guitar. It also has a narrower waist than a dreadnought or parlor guitar. This makes for a quieter, more mellow guitar tone.
It is also a comfortable body shape for smaller people and those who play with the guitar on their lap, as the narrow waist gives a good notch to fit in your lap. The grand concert is slightly larger than the concert, with a somewhat louder projection.
Auditorium and Grand Auditorium Acoustic Guitar
In recent years, the grand auditorium body style has become more and more popular. Coming in between the concert and the dreadnought in terms of size, auditorium guitars have a narrow waist and a very even voicing, making them quite versatile for a number of styles.
The grand auditorium is a slightly larger body than the standard but still smaller than a dreadnought.
Classical Acoustic Guitar
Classical-style guitars have several differences from other types. For one, they use nylon strings instead of steel strings. They have a wider fretboard, and the headstock is open slotted, which is different from most other types.
Classical guitars tend to be smaller bodied than most other acoustics. The nylon strings produce a very warm and rich tone. They are less bright and more muted than steel strings and are generally not played with a pick.
Although used primarily for classical music, you can also find classical guitars in jazz, country, and even in some pop and rock settings. Willie Nelson is a famous example of someone who uses a classical guitar outside of the classical genre.
Renaissance and baroque guitars are examples of older designs of the modern classical guitar.
Twelve-String Acoustic Guitar
Twelve-string acoustics usually use a dreadnought or jumbo-style body. Instead of 6 strings, a 12 string guitar has two strings for each note. The lower four sets of strings’ (E, A, D, G) each have one string in the lower octave and one string in the higher octave. The two sets of high strings (B, E) are the same octaves in relation to each note.
This type of guitar has an unmistakable thickness and chime to it. Think of the beginning of the Eagles’ Hotel California or Tangerine by Led Zeppelin. Twelve strings can also have a washy, chorus-like sound as the minute pitch differences between the matched strings play against one another.
Archtop Acoustic Guitar
Most modern acoustic guitars have a flat soundboard or top. However, some acoustics feature an arched-top that utilize f-hole openings on the outer flanges of the soundboard.
They are generally larger-sized guitars and feature a floating bridge rather than a bridge fixed to the guitar’s top.
Jazz musicians often favor archtop acoustic guitars for their smooth and warm tones. They are quieter than their round hole counterparts and tend to blend in the mix rather than stand out.
Resonator Acoustic Guitar
Resonators are strikingly different in both sound and appearance from other acoustic guitars. They feature a metal soundboard, and some resonator’s bodies are made entirely of metal.
Another big difference in the construction is that some resonators have square necks as opposed to the traditional rounded necks.
The sound of a resonator is also distinct. They are very bright with a lot of pick articulation. They have a shimmery quality with a lot of top-end frequencies and a cut bass response. Resonators are often used as slide guitars and played on the lap, and they are also used in fingerpicking with bluegrass and blues.
Types of Electric Guitars
While people had been tinkering with the idea of electric guitars since the late 1930s, Leo Fender is the one credited with producing the first line of commercially available electric guitars in 1949.
Leo’s Esquire guitar was the first in what would become a musical revolution. Today, electric guitars are as varied as the people who play them. However, one thing in common is that they all use pickups to transfer the sound of a ringing string through to an amplifier.
A Note About Pickups
It is worthwhile to note the different types of pickups. The most common types of pickups for electric guitar are single coil. humbucker and P90 pickups. The vast majority of electric guitars have one of these types of pickups.
Single Coil
Basically, single-coil pickups use a single wind of wire around a magnet or series of magnets to transmit sound. These are what you would commonly find on Fender Strat’s.
Humbucker
Humbucker pickups, use two single coils with reversed polarity to cancel out interference that causes hum. They produce a warmer sound and are what you would commonly find on Gibson Les Paul’s.
P90
P90 pickups are a type of single-coil pickup but they produce a more mid-range treble sound (brighter) than humbuckers.
Another sub-category of pickups is between active and passive pickups. Most electric guitar pickups are passive, meaning that they do not require an additional power source to function.
On the other hand, active pickups have their own power, usually provided by one or two 9V batteries. You can think of active pickups as having a small preamp built-in.
Solid-Body Electric Guitar
This is the most common type of electric guitar. Solid-body electrics contain a solid block of material outfitted with pickups which “pick up” the sound of the ringing strings and send it through an amplifier.
Wood is the original and still most common material from which solid-body guitars are made, but not the only one. Graphite, lucite, polymer resin, plastic, metal, and even glass have all been used as a material for solid body guitars.
Unlike acoustic guitars, which all have a fairly uniform shape with some minor differences, solid-body electric guitars come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.
Solid-body electrics can have any number of pickup configurations, employing single-coil pickups, humbuckers, or a combination of both.
Semi-Hollow Body Electric Guitar
Semi-hollow body guitars have a solid block in the middle of the body where the pickups are seated and hollow wings that feature some type of opening, usually an f-hole. They tend to be lighter than solid body guitars, and their shape is usually similar to an acoustic guitar, although many of them have a much more shallow depth.
Their open chambered sides give the guitars a slightly acoustic quality. They tend to be warmer sounding in general. Due to the open chambers, they can be finicky with feedback.
Hollow Body Electric Guitar
Hollow body guitars are similar to semi-hollow bodies, except that they have no center block. Instead, the entire guitar body is a sound chamber like an acoustic guitar. They tend to have a very woody and acoustic-like quality to their sound.
Pure hollow body electrics are not very common these days because they are very fragile, and it is difficult to control the feedback from the amp, especially in a live performance situation.
Chambered Electric Guitar
Chambered electric guitars are the same as a semi-hollow body guitar, except that the chambers have no sound holes. They look like a solid body, but the construction is more akin to a semi-hollow body.
They blend characteristics of a semi-hollow and a solid body, giving a sound with a good bit of chime and resonance without the acoustic guitar quality.
Twelve-String Electric Guitar
Like the 12-string acoustic guitar, these guitars are like their six-string counterparts in most ways. The 12 string configuration is the same as the acoustic guitars, with the bottom four notes having a matching string tuned an octave up and the two high notes having matching pitches/tunings.
They produce the same type of chimey, phased sound of acoustic 12-strings.
Lap-Steel Guitars
These guitars are commonly six stringed, although some have eight. Their bodies are smaller than standard electric guitars and are open-tuned, and their strings are high above the fretboard. The strings are not pressed down on the fretboard like a regular guitar but, instead, the musician uses a slide to play them.
Pedal Steel Electric Guitars
Similar in some ways to the lap-steel, these are the guitars with the smooth sliding twangy sound that you hear in countless country songs.
Pedal steel guitars are played while sitting and are usually comprised of two fretboards with ten springs each, and several foot pedals and knee levers to adjust the pitch of certain strings. Like a lap-steel, the strings sit high above the fretboard and are played with a slide.
Seven and Eight-String Electric Guitars
These guitars have an added lower string, usually tuned to C or B, and the eight-string variety will have an extra high string, usually an A.
These electric guitars have been gaining popularity with players who go for heavier musical styles like metal and grindcore, although some jazz players have been known to use them as well. Joni Mitchell famously plays a seven-string guitar at times.
Double and Multiple Neck Electric Guitars
The double-neck electric was made famous by Jimmy Page of Led Zepplin fame. They feature an extra-wide body to accommodate two sets of pickups and electronics, one for each neck. They typically have one six string and one 12 string neck, although I’ve also seen a double-neck guitar with a six string and a baritone neck.
There are guitars with more than two necks. Rick Nielsen from the band Cheap Trick has guitars with up to seven necks.
Baritone Guitar
A baritone guitar is a hybrid between a guitar and a bass guitar. It has six strings like an electric guitar, but with a longer neck and thicker strings. This enables lower tuning with less string slack.
Baritone guitars have no standardized tuning. However, the most common tuning is a perfect fourth lower than standard tuning (B E A D F# B). Another tuning is a perfect fifth lower (A D G C E A). And even a major third lower (C F Bb Eb G C).
Touch Guitar
The touch guitar uses a fretboard tapping style to create sound, commonly known as touch-style. These guitars are not strummed.
They have either eight or ten strings and a range of over five octaves.
Types of Bass Guitars
Although the first electric bass was made in 1935, it was, again, Leo Fender who produced the first electric bass guitar in the 1950s. Like electric guitars, bass guitars come in a variety of styles.
Bass guitars generally have four strings, tuned EADG, although there are exceptions.
Regarding pickups, it’s worth noting that active pickups are more common on bass guitars than standard electrics, although passive pickups are still the most common.
Solid-Body Bass Guitar
Solid-body bass guitars are the most common type of bass today. Like the solid-body electric guitar, they come in all shapes and sizes and can have any combination of single-coil and humbucker pickups.
Solid-body basses are by far the most common type of bass, but you can also find semi-hollow body basses. To my knowledge, no one has made a fully hollow body electric bass guitar.
Semi-hollow Body Bass Guitar
These basses are very similar to semi-hollow body electric guitars in their woody acoustic qualities and thumpy hollow resonance. They also can be tough to handle with feedback issues in live situations for less experienced players.
Acoustic Bass Guitar
As the name states, an acoustic bass guitar is to an electric bass guitar what an acoustic guitar is to an electric guitar. It has an acoustic body construction with a soundhole and can sometimes be fitted with an internal pickup or have a cutaway for easier access to higher frets.
Fretless Bass Guitar
Often favored by jazz and fusion players, fretless basses feature a neck without frets. This gives these basses a rounder, buzzy tone and a feel akin to an upright. They have a unique flavor and appeal.
Since they have no frets, you have to be very adept with finger placement to hit the right note. For that reason, they can be difficult to master for those just starting out.
Five-String Bass Guitar
These basses are like their four string cousins, but with an added low string, usually tuned to B. The necks are slightly wider but are usually otherwise quite similar to a standard four-string.
Six-String Bass Guitar
A six-string bass will have the low B string as well as a high C string added to the EADG strings. BEADGC.
Related Instruments
In addition to the many types of guitars we talked about above. There are related instruments, think of them as cousins, to the guitar.
Travel Guitar
These can be classified as either. just a smaller guitar, a guitar that has a folding neck, or a specifically designed travel guitar.
Harp Guitar
In addition to a more standard guitar neck. A harp guitar also contains unstopped open strings like you would see on a harp.
Banjo
The banjo is a resonator style instrument that utilizes a membrane, normally made of plastic, stretched over the cavity. They are available in four, five or six-string.
Although the banjo is used in many genres of music. It’s generally most popular in bluegrass, country and folk music.
Mandolin
The mandolin is a stringed instrument that is meant to be plucked. It generally has four pairs of strings. Each pair is tuned to the same pitch. So, you would tune an eight string mandolin G G D D A A E E.
Mandolins can also have ten and twelve strings.
Ukulele
The ukulele is small and normally has four nylon strings. There are four common sizes; soprano, concert, tenor and baritone.
Standard tuning of a ukulele is G C E A.
Final Thoughts
We hope you have found this guide on the types of guitars informative. Now that you know how many different guitars are out there, time to get shredding.
To learn more about guitars, check out our Parts Of A Guitar guide. Thanks for reading.
