Inlay on guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

s or similar fret

Fret

A fret is a raised portion on the neck of a stringed instrument, that extends generally across the full width of the neck. On most modern western instruments, frets are metal strips inserted into the fingerboard...

ted instruments are decorative materials set into the wooden surface of the instrument using standard inlay

Inlay

Inlay is a decorative technique of inserting pieces of contrasting, often coloured materials into depressions in a base object to form patterns or pictures that normally are flush with the matrix. In a wood matrix, inlays commonly use wood veneers, but other materials like shells, mother-of-pearl,...

 techniques. Although inlay can be done on any part of a guitar, it is most commonly found on the fretboard, headstock

Headstock

Headstock or peghead is a part of guitar or similar stringed instrument. The main function of a headstock is holding the instrument's strings. Strings go from the bridge past the nut and are usually fixed on machine heads on headstock...

 —typically the manufacturer's logo— and around the soundhole of acoustic guitars. Only positional markers on the fretboard or side of neck

Neck (music)

The neck is the part of certain string instruments that projects from the main body and is the base of the fingerboard, where the fingers are placed to stop the strings at different pitches. Guitars, lutes, the violin family, and the mandolin family are examples of instruments which have necks.The...

 serve any function other than decoration. Nacre

Nacre

Nacre , also known as mother of pearl, is an organic-inorganic composite material produced by some mollusks as an inner shell layer; it is also what makes up pearls. It is very strong, resilient, and iridescent....

 ("mother of pearl"), plastic and wood are the materials most often used as inlay.

Some very limited edition high-end or custom-made guitars have artistic inlay designs that span the entire front (or even the back) of the guitar. These designs use a variety of different materials and are created using techniques borrowed from furniture making. While these designs are often just very elaborate decorations, they are sometimes works of art that even depict a particular theme or a scene. Although these guitars are often constructed from the most exclusive materials, they are generally considered to be collector's items and not intended to be played. Large guitar manufacturers often issue these guitars to celebrate a significant historical milestone.

Fretboard

Fretboard inlays are not only decorative, but also mark certain frets. They are most commonly shaped like dots (circles), diamond (rhombus

Rhombus

In Euclidean geometry, a rhombus or rhomb is a convex quadrilateral whose four sides all have the same length. The rhombus is often called a diamond, after the diamonds suit in playing cards, or a lozenge, though the latter sometimes refers specifically to a rhombus with a 45° angle.Every...

), parallelogram

Parallelogram

In Euclidean geometry, a parallelogram is a convex quadrilateral with two pairs of parallel sides. The opposite or facing sides of a parallelogram are of equal length and the opposite angles of a parallelogram are of equal measure...

s, isosceles trapezoid

Isosceles trapezoid

In Euclidean geometry, an isosceles trapezoid is a convex quadrilateral with a line of symmetry bisecting one pair of opposite sides, making it automatically a trapezoid...

s, shark fin

Shark Fin

Shark Fin is the peak which has the triangular shape of a shark fin when viewed from the south....

s or rectangles. Circular markers are the easiest and least expensive to produce, because drilling circular indentations and cutting circular inlays (from sheets or rods) require the least time and resources. They are typically of a color contrasting the color of the fretboard, in other words black for a light colored fretboard such as maple or white for fretboard of a darker wood such as rosewood or ebony.

Many manufacturers use a distinct shape for their fret markers to create a brand identity set themselves apart from competitors. Gibson

Gibson Guitar Corporation

The Gibson Guitar Corporation, formerly of Kalamazoo, Michigan and currently of Nashville, Tennessee, manufactures guitars and other instruments which sell under a variety of brand names...

 uses isosceles trapezoids while Fender uses dots, but others include lightning bolts, letters and numbers.

Smaller dots are also usually inlaid into the upper edge of the fretboard or the neck so as to be more visible to the player who views the instrument from the side.

LED

LEd

LEd is a TeX/LaTeX editing software working under Microsoft Windows. It is a freeware product....

s or optical fiber

Optical fiber

An optical fiber is a flexible, transparent fiber made of a pure glass not much wider than a human hair. It functions as a waveguide, or "light pipe", to transmit light between the two ends of the fiber. The field of applied science and engineering concerned with the design and application of...

 can be employed to illuminate the markers. This is mostly employed by players who perform in front of live audiences where the lighting is either insufficient or constantly changing.

Schemes

On guitars, there are two popular fretboard inlay schemes:

• The most popular (1) involves single inlays on the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, double inlays on the 12th, single inlays on the 15th, 17th, 19th, and 21st, and if present, double inlays on the 24th. Advantages of such scheme include its symmetry about the 12th fret and symmetry of every half (0-12 and 12-24) about the 7th and 19th frets. However, playing these frets, for example, on the E string would yield the notes E, G, A, B, C# that barely make a complete musical mode
  Musical mode
  In the theory of Western music since the ninth century, mode generally refers to a type of scale. This usage, still the most common in recent years, reflects a tradition dating to the middle ages, itself inspired by the theory of ancient Greek music.The word encompasses several additional...
  
   by themselves.

• A less popular scheme (2) involves inlays on 3rd, 5th, 7th, 10th, 12th, 15th, 17th, 19th, 22nd and 24th frets. Playing these frets on the E string yields the notes E, G, A, B, D that fit perfectly into the E minor pentatonic scale. Such a scheme is very close to the coloring of a piano
  Piano
  The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
  
  's keys and is of some use on classical guitars.

Headstock, neck and pickguard

Beyond the fretboard inlay, the headstock and sound hole

Sound hole

A sound hole is an opening in the upper sound board of a stringed musical instrument.The sound holes can have different shapes: round in flat-top guitars, F-holes in instruments from the violin or viol families and in arched-top guitars, rosettes in lutes. Bowed Lyras have D-holes and Mandolins may...

 are also commonly inlaid. The manufacturer's logo is commonly inlaid into the headstock and pickguard, if present. Sometimes a small design such as a bird or other character or an abstract shape also accompanies the logo. The sound hole designs found on acoustic guitar

Acoustic guitar

An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...

s vary from simple concentric circles to delicate fretwork. Many high-end guitars have more elaborate decorative inlay schemes. Often the edges of the guitar around the neck

Neck (music)

The neck is the part of certain string instruments that projects from the main body and is the base of the fingerboard, where the fingers are placed to stop the strings at different pitches. Guitars, lutes, the violin family, and the mandolin family are examples of instruments which have necks.The...

 and body and down the middle of the back are inlaid.

Because some electric guitars (like the Fender Telecaster

Fender Telecaster

The Fender Telecaster, colloquially known as the Tele , is typically a dual-pickup, solid-body electric guitar made by Fender.Its simple yet effective design and revolutionary sound broke ground and set trends in electric guitar manufacturing and popular music...

 and Stratocaster

Fender Stratocaster

The Fender Stratocaster, often referred to as "Strat", is a model of electric guitar designed by Leo Fender, George Fullerton, and Freddie Tavares in 1954, and manufactured continuously by the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation to the present. It is a double-cutaway guitar, with an extended top...

) do not have a separate fretboard under which they can fit a truss rod

Truss rod

The truss rod is part of a guitar or banjo used to stabilize and adjust the lengthwise forward curvature , of the neck. Usually it is a steel rod that runs inside the neck and has a bolt that can be used to adjust its tension...

, they fit it in the back of the neck and cover it with a strip of dark wood. The has popularly become known as a "skunk stripe," and while it is not inlay, some makers use inlay to simulate it.

Soundhole

The edge of the soundboard around the soundhole of an acoustic guitar is almost always decorated with a rosette

Rosette (design)

A rosette is a round, stylized flower design, used extensively in sculptural objects from antiquity. Appearing in Mesopotamia and used to decorate the funeral stele in Ancient Greece...

inlay.

Main body

Many guitars also have inlays on the main guitar body itself, often for decorative purposes.

Binding

Binding on acoustic guitars serve to protect the edges of the wood from impact and moisture damage. After the back, front and sides are joined a small ledge is cut out on the edge which is then inlaid before finishing the guitar. On solid-body electric guitars it serves only a cosmetic purpose. Fretboards are sometimes also "bound".

Purfling

Purfling is similar to binding, but differs in that it is offset a small distance from the edge surface. It is typically found around the edges of the front, back and soundholes of violins. Purfling helps prevent cracks at the edge from extending deeper into the wood.