Distinguish between classical guitar and Acoustic guitar

The easiest way to distinguish the differences between a classical guitar and a Acoustic guitar is through observing the differences in their strings. However, people may ask, “If I install steel strings on a classical guitar, do I call it a Acoustic guitar? Identically, if the Acoustic guitar is installed with nylon strings, will it be called as a classical guitar?”This is a very interesting question.

Let’s put it this way. “The type of guitar”actually indicates “the combinations of the hardware”, including every parts of the guitars, such as the width of the fretboard, the type of strings used, the design of the body and others. Due to these combinations, the guitar produces its unique sound, allowing the user to compose the most suitable song with this unique sound. Moreover, the design of guitars are different and unique based on the usage of the guitars. For instance, classical guitars are mainly used for play, in which require the fingers to be moving frequently, hence, the fretboard is wider to prevent touching other strings when moving along the scale. Whereas for folk pop guitar, it is mainly used for playing and sing along, the focus is not only on the play but also to be used with singing, whereby the playing mostly acts as an accompaniment with certain main chords. Due to the changes in pressing the strings are not as frequent as classical guitar, the fretboard of an acoustic guitar is narrower to prevent tiredness of the fingers when pressing chords. Besides that, the neck of acoustic guitar is normally longer than the neck of classical guitar. One of the reason for this is that the acoustic  guitar is mainly used to sing along that everyone has different range in sound, the user will always use a capo to change key easily. Therefore, if the neck of acoustic guitar is short, the higher key the capo is fixed at, the lesser the guitar can be played, hence, it causes inconvenience during play. Therefore, different design of the guitars has different theory in it!

Let’s go back to the first question. The type of strings is the main factors that causes the differences between the sound of the guitars. If we change the classical guitar with steel strings, will the sound be more like a acoustic guitar? A lot of beginners might have this idea and thought that if the guitar is installed with steel strings, then it is acoustic guitar. This is a wrong concept. The tension of six steel strings is a lot greater than the tension of six nylon strings. Classical guitar is designed to bear with the tension of nylon strings. If we install steel strings on the classical guitar, not only that the sound will not be alike as folk pop guitar, it will even cause deformation and damage to the guitar due to overly high tension of the strings. It is not a joke!