History

The steel-stringed guitar is an American invention of German origin created by Christian Fredrich Martin. In his youth, Martin apprenticed under Johann Stauffer, one of the preeminent German Guitar makers of the early 1800s. After a bitter dispute in which the Violin-maker's guild attempted to prevent the cabinet-maker's guild from building guitars, Martin left Germany for America. He initially settled in New York City before making his way to Nazareth, Pennsylvania.

In America, Martin and other German immigrants started created guitars with a unique "X" bracing pattern. Like all bracing patterns, this bracing pattern is glued to the guitar's inside top (called the soundboard). Bracing allows the top to be very thin and light-weight, letting it vibrate freely, resonant more, and produce more volume.

Bracing is crucial in the construction of a guitar. Without it, the strings will exert such a force on the guitar that the soundboard will warp and destroy the instrument.

Meanwhile, in Spain, the modern classical guitar was taking shape. Although he did not achieve great success during his lifetime, history regards Antonio Torres of Southern Spain (Andalusia) as the exemplary builder of Classical Guitars. He and other Spanish builders' advancements included fan bracing (as opposed to Martin's X bracing) and broader bodies.

If you're interested in getting a quick run-through of the history of classical guitar bracing and modern developments using space-age materials, check out my article on classical guitar bracing patterns.

However, the problem of both Martin and Torres' designs was a lack of volume. The acoustic guitar is, by it's nature, a relatively quiet instrument. The invention of steel strings circa 1900 helped create new possibilities in volume and created new construction problems. Steel strings require double the tension of classical guitar strings, and the bracing systems of the day could not withstand this tension.

Martin had, almost by chance, an elegant solution. By increasing the thickness of his current X-bracing system, his guitars could withstand the added pressure. This volume, plus the bright sound of steel strings, helped Martin's guitars be heard in the typical band configurations of the time. These bands often had fiddles, banjos, and mandolins, and Martin's guitars were able to cut through the mix and be heard. You might've heard of a Martin guitar, as they're still one of the largest and best builders of steel-string acoustics in the world.

Meanwhile, Torre's Spanish style of fan-bracing and wider bodies circulated throughout Europe. Steel strings were never adopted, presumably because Europe's folk and art music didn't need it at the time. The bright nature of steel strings, an advantage in American bands, would have sounded very aggressive and unbalanced in solo music written for the European guitar. The mellow-sounding sheep-gut strings used at the time had a warmer sound (yes, that's right. They used guts before nylon strings were invented).

Musical Styles

Guitar has a long history of both folk and classical music written for it.

Classical Guitar music is primarily written to be performed as a solo instrument, without any other instruments or accompaniment (even voice!). Because of this, compelling classical guitar music requires a single player to cover all the elements of music (melody, harmony, accompaniment, bass, etc.).

To do this requires incredible technical mastery that still boggles my mind, 20 years after discovering the classical guitar. The dexterous use of 10 fingers on the guitar can produce some incredible effects.

The classical guitar has a warmer, gentler, and more balanced sound than a steel-string guitar because of its solo nature.

Some people say that Flamenco music uses classical guitars; this is false. Flamenco music uses Flamenco guitars, which are similar to Classical Guitars in many ways. Most notably, Flamenco guitars also use nylon strings. However, there are significant differences in construction between the two instruments.

Steel-String Acoustic Guitars were built to be used in a folk band of early 1900s America. In these bands, fiddles, banjos, and a vocalist would play the melody, with a bass instrument covering the low notes. The guitar was primarily an accompaniment instrument, strumming chords with a pic to help fill out the harmony. Higher frequencies and brighter instruments can be heard more clearly in a band setting, and steel-string guitars were built for this purpose.

This is still how the steel-string acoustic is used today, as is its electric cousin. While there are guitarists out there who play very advanced fingerpicking on the steel-string guitar, they are the exception rather than the norm (similarly, people occasionally use the classical guitar as an accompaniment instrument). Both steel-string and electric guitars are used for solos in many songs. However, these "solos" are a chance for the guitarist to play the melody instead of playing the accompaniment. The rest of the band still accompanies them.

Construction

Neck

The neck of a Steel-Stringed Acoustic is much thinner at the headstock and much thicker at the body. This taper helps facilitate techniques that are more common in steel-string guitar playing and mitigates the difficulty of barre chords due to the higher string-tension.

The classical guitar neck also tapers, but not nearly as much as the steel-string. This tapering is because the classical guitar uses much more of the fretboard. Thus, it is more advantageous to keep the strings a similar distance apart across the entire fretboard.

Strings

As previously mentioned, the classical guitar uses steel-strings, and the modern classical guitar uses nylon strings.

However, both classical and steel-string players face a wide variety of choices when picking strings. Each variety of strings has a slightly different tone and feel.

Both steel-string and classical guitar players can select strings of different widths. Thicker strings will be louder and provide a punchier sound; however, they will be harder to press down.

Steel-string players refer to thickness by "gauge"; the higher the number, the thicker the gauge. Classical players refer to thickness as "tension"; low tension strings are thin, and high tension strings are thick.

Steel-string players can choose from Brass or Bronze strings. Bronze strings are warmer sounding, and brass strings are brighter. Bass strings are made using a mix of 80% Copper and 20% Zinc and are usually referred to as 80/20 Bronze. Phosphor bronze strings are another option.

The creation of nylon strings in 1948 was a massive moment for classical guitarists. Immediately preferred over temperamental gut strings by the top guitarists of the day, they are still the industry standard. However, carbon and titanium polymer strings are recent innovations that have taken hold for players of all ability levels.

Both steel-stringed acoustic guitars and classical guitars have some strings that are a single wire or single strand of nylon. However, both instruments' thicker strings utilize a core (either steel, nylon, or other filaments) wrapped in metal. This wrapping can be different metals. By combining the different varieties of thicker, wrapped strings and thinner, single-strand strings, guitarists have an incredible variety of tones available to them.

Tuning Pegs

One of the visual differences between Steel-Stringed acoustic and Classical guitars is headstock and tuners. The differences between these two types of tuners are primarily visual; they both operate by turning a tuning knob, which turns a gear that turns the shaft of a single string.

Classical guitars have two slots on each side of the headstock. The tuning shafts are inserted into the headstock's side (3 on each side), and the tuning knobs point towards the back of the guitar. The gears are exposed on the side of the headstock.

A steel-string headstock has six holes drilled through the headstock, front-to-back. The tuning shafts are then inserted through these holes. The knobs stick out to the headstock's sides, while the gears are on the headstock's back. Most steel-string tuners have gears enclosed in a metal casing that contains a lubricant.

Conclusion

This article covers the significant differences between Steel-String Acoustic and Classical Guitar in history, style, and construction. If you have any questions, leave a comment below!