Strum Your Way to Knowledge: Top 9 Fascinating Fun Facts About Guitars

1. No Cats for Strings!

Who let the cats out? Definitely not gut string makers: Contrary to popular belief, early guitar strings were made from the intestines of various animals, such as sheep, goat, cattle, hogs, horses, mules, or donkeys, but never from cats. These high-quality gut strings are still favored by some classical and baroque musicians today for their rich, dark sound and high tension performance in low alto, tenor, and high-bass ranges.
Source => en.wikipedia.org

2. Supersized Physics Guitar

Who ever thought guitars and physics go together like chords and harmonies? Well, a Texas physics teacher and his enterprising students embarked on a monumental journey to create a supersized science experiment that riff-ed right into the record books: They built the world's largest playable electric guitar, a humongous 1967 Gibson Flying V replica, weighing 2,244 pounds and measuring 43.5 feet long and 16 feet wide! The colossal instrument, now owned by the National GUITAR Museum, tours alongside the exhibit GUITAR: The Instrument That Rocked The World and requires fancy hardware and software to make it truly sing – or simply be heard.
Source => thestoryoftexas.com

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=> Fun Facts about Acoustic-Guitars

3. Famous Left-Handed Guitarists

When life gives you lemons, you create rock legends: Did you know that despite a left-handed population of only 10%, some of the most iconic guitarists - such as Kurt Cobain, Albert King, Tony Iommi, Elizabeth Cotten, and Jimi Hendrix - were lefties who conquered the six strings in a right-hand dominated world?
Source => faroutmagazine.co.uk

4. Ancient Greek Power Chords

Question: What do ancient Greeks and rockstars have in common? Answer: They both have a soft spot for harmony and love shredding a perfect fifth! That's right, folks, our leather-pants-wearing musicians and Greek philosophers share a love for some wicked power chords: Power chords, the backbone of rock music, rely on the intervals of the 1st and 5th notes, creating a perfect fifth (with a 3:2 ratio) that not only dates back to ancient Greek music theory but is also considered the most consonant interval after the octave. Rock on, Socrates!
Source => passyworldofmathematics.com

5. Beatles' Magical Chord Potion

Rumor has it that the Fab Four brewed up a magical elixir of sound with a pinch of Rickenbacker, a dash of Gibson, a sprinkle of Hofner, and a dollop of Steinway, creating a rock 'n' roll potion that could charm even the grumpiest of muggles: The legendary opening chord of The Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night" is a harmonious concoction made by George Harrison's 12-string Rickenbacker 360/12 guitar playing an Fadd9 chord with a G note, John Lennon's Gibson J-160 6-string acoustic guitar playing an Fadd9, Paul McCartney's Hofner violin bass adding a D note on the fifth fret of the A string, and George Martin blessing the brew with his Steinway grand piano, all spiced up with hidden notes on the snare drum, cymbal, and cowbell.
Source => beatlesbible.com

6. Les Paul Makes History

When life gave Les Paul a guitar, he didn't just make music, he made history: The Gibson Les Paul, a legendary electric guitar, was birthed in 1952 from the minds of Gibson president Ted McCarty, factory manager John Huis, and the musician Les Paul himself, featuring a solid mahogany body, carved maple top, single cutaway, mahogany set-in neck with rosewood fretboard, two PAF humbucking pickups, and a stopbar tailpiece, making it the instrument of choice for over fifty different models and musicians across various genres.
Source => fuelrocks.com

7. Tanbur: Sneaky Guitar Ancestor

You might call it the "hide-and-seek" champion of ancient instruments, because this sneaky guitar ancestor was jamming incognito for centuries: The tanbur, considered the forerunner of the guitar, was exclusively used by the Ahl-e Haqq religious group in Iran for prayer and meditation for 700 years before the rest of the world discovered its sweet tunes.
Source => fachords.com

8. Guitar Calluses 101

You know what they say, "Beauty is pain," and for guitarists, the two quite literally go hand in hand, and fingertip to fingertip: Guitar calluses are made up of a protein called keratin, which is also found in hair and nails, and as a guitarist builds up calluses on their fingertips, the keratin in the skin thickens and hardens to protect against the pressure of pressing down on the guitar strings.
Source => guitarinsideout.com

9. World's Largest 18-String Axe

Get ready to fret over this one: the world's largest ax has a towering 167 frets and a thunderous 18 strings! Built in 2008 by string wizard Chris Mitchell, it stretches to a whopping 43 feet long. While not usable for serenading (unless you're Gulliver, of course): it takes the cake – or should we say, the pick – in the Guinness World Records as the largest guitar in existence. That's enough strings to make Jimi Hendrix feel string-struck!
Source => fretboardia.com