Before the growing of the http://www.jhguitars.com/ electric guitar and the convenience of synthetic materials, a guitar was defined as being an instrument having "a long, fretted neck, low wooden soundboard, ribs, and a outstretched back, most often with incurved sides". Instruments similar to the guitar have been popular for at least 5,000 years.

Guitars can be constructed to meet the demands of both left and right-handed players. Traditionally the dominant hand is assigned the task of plucking or strumming the strings. For the majority of people this entails using the right hand. This is because musical expression (dynamics, tonal expression and colour etc) is largely determined by the plucking hand, while the fretting hand is assigned the lesser mechanical task of depressing and gripping the strings. This is corresponding to the convention of the violin ancestry of instruments where the right hand controls the bow. A minority, however, believe that left-handed people should learn to flop guitars strung in the manner not new by right-handed people, modestly to standardise the instrument.