A cutaway on the

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

construction is an indentation in the upper bout of the guitar body adjacent to the guitar

neck The neck is the part of the body on many vertebrates that connects the head with the torso. The neck supports the weight of the head and protects the nerves that carry sensory and motor information from the brain down to the rest of the body. In ...

, designed to allow easier access to the upper

fret A fret is any of the thin strips of material, usually metal wire, inserted laterally at specific positions along the neck or fretboard of a stringed instrument. Frets usually extend across the full width of the neck. On some historical instrume ...

Overview

Cutaway bodies are mainly of interest when discussing

acoustic guitar An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, ...

s and

semi-acoustic guitar A semi-acoustic guitar, hollow-body electric, or thinline is a type of electric guitar that was first created in the 1930s. It has a sound box and at least one electric pickup. The semi-acoustic guitar is different to an acoustic-electric guit ...

s; virtually all

solid body thumb , Sound sample of solid-body electric guitar. A solid-body musical instrument is a string instrument such as a guitar, bass or violin built without its normal sound box and relying on an electromagnetic pickup system to directly detect th ...

guitars either have at least one cutaway, or have a body shape (such as the

flying V guitar The Gibson Flying V is an electric guitar model introduced by Gibson in 1958. The Flying V offered a radical, "futuristic" body design, much like its siblings: the Explorer, which was released the same year, and the Moderne, which was designed ...

) which does not intrude into the upper neck area. Some manufacturers denote instrument models with cutaway using the suffix C, such as the ''

Gibson L5 The Gibson L-5 guitar was first produced in 1923 by the Gibson Guitar Corporation, then of Kalamazoo, Michigan, under the direction of acoustical engineer and designer Lloyd Loar, and has been in production ever since. It was considered the ...

C'' or the ''

Maton Maton is an Australian musical instruments manufacturing company based in Box Hill, Melbourne. It was founded in 1946 by Bill May and his brother Reg. The name "Maton" came from the words "May Tone" and is pronounced ''May Tonne''. Products ...

CW80C''.

Types

There are two main types of cutaways: Venetian and Florentine. A Venetian cutaway has a rounded bout. A Florentine cutaway has a sharp bout. The terms probably originate with the

Gibson Guitar Corporation Gibson Brands, Inc. (formerly Gibson Guitar Corporation) is an American manufacturer of guitars, other musical instruments, and professional audio equipment from Kalamazoo, Michigan, and now based in Nashville, Tennessee. The company was forme ...

and probably do not reflect historic instrument-making practices of

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

and

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...

"Q:'' Can you explain the origins of the terms Venetian cutaway and Florentine cutaway? —Robert Manzoni / ''A:'' Venetian and Florentine refer to the actual shape of the cutaway: Venetian describes the rounded cutaway and Florentine the sharp, pointed form. The original use of these terms can be traced to early Gibson nomenclature in advertising material and catalogs. ...there isn't any evidence that these cutaway styles actually came from Venice or Florence. ... —Ian Watchorn''"

A less common third type is the squared-off cutaway, used on the

Selmer-Maccaferri guitar The Selmer guitar — often called a Selmer-Maccaferri or just Maccaferri by English speakers, as early British advertising stressed the designer rather than manufacturer — is an unusual acoustic guitar best known as the favored inst ...

and some

nylon-string guitar The classical guitar (also known as the nylon-string guitar or Spanish guitar) is a member of the guitar family used in classical music and other styles. An acoustic wooden string instrument with strings made of gut or nylon, it is a precursor o ...

Number

Instruments with only a lower cutaway are known as "single cutaway" instruments, and guitars with both are called "double cutaway". These terms are sometimes shortened to "single cut" (such as in the model name for a solid-body electric guitar called the "PRS Singlecut", produced by the

Paul Reed Smith Paul Reed Smith (born February 18, 1956) is an American luthier and the founder and owner of PRS Guitars, a high-end guitar maker. Early life Smith graduated from Bowie High School in 1974. He also attended St. Mary's College of Maryland where ...

company) or "double cut".

Double cutaway

As well as the more common lower cutaway, many instruments have an upper cutaway, sometimes smaller than the lower one, or sometimes about the same size. This is mainly seen on

electric guitars An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gui ...

, as the reduction in body size resulting from a double cutaway would be detrimental to the sound quality of an acoustic guitar. Double cutaways allow the thumb as well as the fingers to move past the neck-body join. In addition, the strap button on double cutaway guitars is typically positioned on the end of the upper horn, further up the neck than on guitars without a cutaway. This improves the instrument's balance when played with a strap. A double cutaway also facilitates left-handed use of right-handed instruments. In some Gibson guitars, models with two cutaways are abbreviated with a "DC" after the name, such as in the

Les Paul Lester William Polsfuss (June 9, 1915 – August 12, 2009), known as Les Paul, was an American jazz, country, and blues guitarist, songwriter, luthier, and inventor. He was one of the pioneers of the solid-body electric guitar, and his prototype ...

Studio DC, the Les Paul Standard DC, the Les Paul Special DC, and the Les Paul Junior DC. Since more single cut versions of these guitars are produced than the doublecut versions, if the model name of these guitars is not followed by "DC", "double cut", or "double cutaway", the assumed reference is to the single cutaway models.

References

{{commons category, Cutaway (guitar) Guitar parts and accessories