Charlie Wallace asked:

Buying a new guitar can be an often exciting moment, but you have to stop your excitement getting in the way of making an informed decision.

The first thing that I will point out is that even if a guitar costs $5,000, it may not be better than a $2,000. The first rule when buying a new guitar is…

- No Matter how good you think the guitar is, how much you like the guitarist/band or are told how good the guitar is. DO NOT buy a ‘Signature’ guitar.

What a ‘Signature’ guitar is a guitarist’s guitar. E.g. Zakk Wylde, Jimmy Page, Stevie Ray Vaughn all have signature guitars. The biggest difference (Other than the price) is the looks. The thing about signature guitars is that they are very over priced, and only cost a lot because they have a guitarists name on it. So DO NOT buy one, you will only waste money.

Now another thing, you can buy a $100 guitar, or one that costs 10 times the price at $1,000. But the $1,000 guitar will not be the same value as the $100 guitar. Why? Because the $1,000 guitar is not 10 times better than the $100 guitar. It has strings, a bridge, a neck, machine heads etc. Once you realize this you find that you don’t have to spend a lot to get a good guitar.

Secondly the brand. Brands are really just the little stamp that appears on the headstock and of course the body shape. This may shock you but if you have ever said that Cort make bad guitars, you are also saying that Fender, Ibanez, Jackson and more make bad guitars because they are actually made in the Cort factory! So Cort take the best parts out of all the Guitars, so Cort could really be the best Guitar brand! But many people (including myself) prefer other brands. Personally I use Fender, but only because the specific guitar I play feels better than guitars 5 times the price!

Now, once you play through a lot of guitars at all different price ranges and have found a guitar you like the feel of. Play through every note on every string. Don’t play hard but just as you usually would pick a note, this is done to make sure there are no problems with the fretboard. If there is a buzz on any string, make sure you ask the shop assistant if they can get it fixed for you.

Also, when you buy a new guitar, make sure you ask the shop too get a professional setup done on the Guitar. What this is, is setting up the action correctly, adjusting the truss rod, the bridge, the nut and fixing up anything else that will be wrong with the guitar.

Now you should be ready to make an informed decision when buying a new guitar, so good luck!

Daniel Lehrman asked:

Poorly setup guitars really make playing the guitar a bigger challenge. As if it is not an endless challenge itself. But why make it more difficult? As you probably know by know, the faster you learn to play brings you more personal gratification and desire.

What is ‘guitar setup’? Basically it means to have the specifications adjusted to the actual factory standards or your personal specs. Simply put, a set-up includes:

#1. adjusting the height of the strings over the neck

#2. making sure your frets are level or the same height all the way up the neck

#3. intonation

#4. adjust and lubricated all remaining components, in general.

The purpose here is to help you to have a guitar you can play to it’s max potential. Hopefully without confusing anyone or using unusual terms that don’t really mean anything to you. As a matter of interest, I have rarely handled a new guitar, especially Gibson Guitars, that are really poorly set-up from the factory. Realistically speaking, it it a real mystery as to why more time is not spent setting up the guitars at the factory.

The Fender and Squier line of guitars seem to be the best set-up guitars from the factory, especially the Artist Series and Custom Shop series, and sometimes they leave a lot to be desired. I don’t really want to beat down any brand of guitar, it is not personal.

That being said leads me into the fact that every guitar a guitar store unpacks should be set-up before it is shipped or sold. Due to many conditions, it is not realistic for guitar retailers of any type to set-up every guitar. With the low profit levels guitar dealers are saddled with, it is not economically possible.

Regardless of whether it is new or used, once your guitar is properly set-up and adjusted, you may not recognize it in terms of how well it plays and just as important, how excellent it now sounds. It does not matter what your feelings were in term of playability and tone, your mind will be changed and blown.

I got lucky, my teacher of many moons is not just a brilliant teacher, he is a bona-fide Guitar Hero. He has 51 years of playing, including a music education at Berklee School of Music. FYI, that is one of the top two leading music schools in the world. Period. Richard Mac plays at a level only achieved by guitarists like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Eric Johnson and other players in that class, although he clearly has his own vibe.

Back to the subject, my score from Richard, other than teaching me to be a pretty good player (always getting better) is all about guitar set-up. He is sick about having every one of his many guitars set-up before he even plays it. Since I am his disciple, I now set-up every guitar I own immediately upon arrival. Believe this, I bought an Eric Clapton Custom Shop guitar a few years ago and set it up immediately. Actually it was well set-up from the Fender Custom Shop, but It had to checked and set-up perfectly.

The point is that if you buy a Mexican Standard Stratocaster and set it up properly, you have a guitar that plays as good as an American Standard Strat at four to six hundred dollars less. Same thing with an Epiphone guitar. Why buy a poorly set-up Gibson Les Paul for a few thousand bucks when you can buy an Epiphone guitar for less than half that price and have a better playing and sounding guitar?

Lets get down to brass tacks. A good guitar set-up is less than a hundred bucks. Believe me, that is a steal. A lot of precision work along with some expensive tools go into a set-up. Not to mention the ‘love’ built in by the luthier or guitar maker. I spent a lot of my life rebuilding automotive transmissions, and anyone in the know, knows they are precise and delicate. Guitars take the same delicate precision and time to make right. Don’t take my word for it, cough up the bucks and at least try it.

Not mentioning the many upgrades possible would be a disservice to you. If you had designs on upgrading your pickups or adding a TBX active tone control, locking tuners or whatever you can imagine, this is a great time to do it. Like I said, you can change the entire vibe of your guitar by locating a well trusted guitar maker/luthier.

For more information and ways to get a good set-up, and other cool guitar upgrades or modifications contact Guitar Players Center for a competent luthier who has the experience. Point of importance, don’t just shop by price, not every guitar maker/luthier is the same. Get a reference first, it’s the ‘love’ that counts most, not the cost.

Jeff W asked:

I’ve heard that Fender’s Squier packs are better than Ibanez’s packs and I’ve heard that Ibanez’s packs are better than Fender’s Sqiuer packs. Which should I get? Or if you suggest a different beginner electric guitar please feel free to tell me.

coolwhipp88 asked:

I was just wondering if the age of the wood in acoustic guitars change the sound quality of the guitar.

Victor Epand asked:

Few parts of a guitar, if any, have as many different names and terms used to describe it as the tremolo arm. The tremolo arm is an adjustable lever which is connected to the bridge of the guitar. By moving this arm or lever, the bridge is raised and lowered, and by raising or lowering the bridge, the strings are themselves raised and lowered. This slightly stretches the strings, resulting in a change of pitch, and adjusting this up and down quite rapidly gives rise to the tremolo effect, or rapid pitch bending.

Some of the names commonly given to the tremolo arm include the tremolo bar, the sissy or wang bar, the slam or whammy handle, and also the whammy bar. Both the whammy handle and whammy bar are slang terms used for a long time, and have since given rise to the idea of a ‘whammy’, being a slang term itself to describe the action or effect of a rapid change in pitch, and in some cases there are now electronic devices or facilities built in tot eh amplification equipment connected to electric guitars that replicate the effect of a whammy without the physical use of a tremolo bar to achieve it, instead adjusting the note electronically. In fact, the word tremolo, or rather its use within the context of this electric guitar effect, can be traced back to one of the earliest leading designers of electric guitars, Leo Fender.

Although he was responsible for a huge amount of excellent design development where the electric guitar is concerned, it was also Fender who gave rise to the popular misunderstanding of the term tremolo, and in particular the confusion between what tremolo really means, and the word vibrato. Technically, the term vibrato refers to the effect of a change in pitch either up or down the scale, and the word tremolo actually refers to a change in volume. Both of these terms have long historic roots in music notation and its Latin origins, but thanks to Leo Fender, what should be referred to as a vibrato arm is now referred to by almost any other name.

Today, most designers and manufacturers of electric guitar and electric guitar related equipment reverse the meanings of these two words to avoid confusion within the world of the electric guitar, and so vibrato still refers to a change in volume, whilst tremolo still refers to a change in pitch. However, in other musical circles you will find that these words refer to each others’ meanings. Although the most common form of a tremolo arm is the traditional lever attached to the bridge, there are two other main types of tremolo mechanism, in particular the Bigsby and the B-Bender. The Bigsby is a mechanical vibrato effect which involves a metal bar being placed some way up the neck of the guitar.

The strings are wrapped around this bar, and the player can adjust the pitch, in other words, creating the tremolo effect, by rotating this bar. The rotation of the bar causes the change in tension and therefore pitch of the strings, resulting in a similar effect. The B-Bender is quite different, and the mechanism usually resides inside the guitar, and this, as the name suggests, is connected solely to the B string, so that this one string alone has the tremolo effect, giving rise to a sound similar to that of a pedal steel guitar.

Of course, not all electric guitars have this physical mechanism, although many do, and in some cases, the tremolo arm can be added later, but in all cases, whether the effect is physically present or not, the result can still be achieved electronically by using the amplification equipment, the only downside being of course that it is less tactile and more distant from the actual playing of the instrument.

Clyde Lee Dennis asked:

Not sure what’s happening with me on this one, but it seems like the more I listen to it, the better II gets. II simply stated is one of their best CDs to date.

It’s a rare day indeed that I get a CD from an artist that I can truthfully say does not have a bad track in the bunch. I’m more than happy to announce that’s exactly what I must say about this one. There simply isn’t a bad one in the bunch. No fillers here at all, with each song standing tall on it’s own.

These days it’s a very rare CD on which every single song is good or better than the one before it. This CD is certainly one of those rare CDs.

Listen to this CD and I believe you’ll find there’s not much to dis-like about it. The songs are inspired, the production is simply outstanding, and this is clearly the work of a group of musicians in top form. So much so that if you’re even mildly into Rock music you’ll enjoy this CD.

While the entire CD is outstanding some of my favorites are track 2 - There’s Something On My Side, track 5 - Ghosts Along The Mississippi, and track 15 - Landing On The Mountains Of Meggido

My Bonus Pick, and the one that got Sore [...as in "Stuck On REpeat"] is track 1 - Lysergik Funeral Procession. It’s a great track!

II Release Notes:

Down originally released II on March 26, 2002 on the Elektra Entertainment label.

CD Track List Follows:

1. Lysergik Funeral Procession 2. There’s Something On My Side 3. Man That Follows Hell, The 4. Stained Glass Cross 5. Ghosts Along The Mississippi 6. Learn From This Mistake 7. Beautifully Depressed 8. Where I’m Going 9. Doobinterlude 10. New Orleans Is A Dying ***** 11. Seed, The 12. Lies, I Don’t Know What They Say But… 13. Flambeaux’s Jamming With St. Aug 14. Dog Tired 15. Landing On The Mountains Of Meggido

Down: Philip Anselmo (vocals); Pepper Keenan (electric guitar, timpani); Kirk Windstein (guitar); Rex Brown (Farfisa organ, keyboards, bass); Jim Bower (drums).

Additional personnel includes: Wayne Lohr (Fender Rhodes piano); Opal Anselmo (background vocals).

Clyde Lee Dennis asked:

The super talented group Still Restless have released their most recent CD on the Koch Records recording label, entitled Still Restless.

I wish it weren’t the case but, it’s not everyday that I get a CD for review that I can just pop in and comfortably listen to from beginning to end. There is usually a song or two that I just can’t force myself to get through. Not at all the case with Still Restless. Every track is enjoyable and was pretty easy for me to listen to from start to finish.

Still Restless has a nicely varied, mix of 11 tracks that are very well written and brilliantly performed songs by these clearly superb musicians. With many of the songs displaying a lot of the kind emotion that makes for a really great listen. Clearly drawing from what I can only imagine are their own personal experiences. At different points touching on the most real emotions of love, and the pain of failed relationships can certainly be heard.

If you’re a Still Restless fan this is a CD your collection flat cannot be without. In fact, this is one of those CDs that you don’t even have to be a fan of lname, or even Rock to know is good. It’s just good music. Period.

While this entire CD is really very good the truly standout tunes are track 2 - Down The Road, track 3 - Same Boat Now, and track 11 - What We Know Now.

My Bonus Pick, and the one that got Sore [...as in "Stuck On REpeat"] is track 1 - Fell My Way To You. Wow!

Still Restless Release Notes:

Still Restless originally released Still Restless on November 9, 2004 on the Koch Records label.

CD Track List Follows:

1. Fell My Way To You 2. Down The Road 3. Same Boat Now 4. Looking Back 5. And More 6. Makin’ Hay 7. Every Fire 8. Yesterday’s News 9. Miracle 10. Night Before, The 11. What We Know Now

Still Restless Album Notes Restless Heart: Paul Gregg (vocals, bass guitar); John Dittrich (vocals, drums); Larry Stewart (vocals); Greg Jennings (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, mandolin); Mac McAnally (acoustic guitar, mandola, piano); Dave Innis (piano, Fender Rhodes piano, Clavinet, Hammond b-3 organ).

Recording information: The Compound, Nashville, TN; The Laundry Room, Nashville, TN.

expertvillage asked:

Learn how to play “Shout at the Devil” on the electric guitar in this free video that features easy guitar lessons and music theory tips. Expert:

William McRea asked:

Fender® is currently one of the premier electric guitar manufacturers out there. The instrument manufacturing aspect of the company had its beginnings in 1946 when Leo Fender began building them. However, the company actually started in 1938 and was called Fender s Radio Services. He was actually a skilled technician who repaired radios, phonograph players, amplifiers, and other electronic instruments.

His experience repairing amplifiers actually marked the beginning of the Fender® manufacturer as we know it today. As a technician he had first hand knowledge of the design problems and issues. He began building his own amps in an effort to solve some of these problems.

He then partnered with Clayton Orr Kauffman to form a company called K & F Manufacturing Corp. which specialized in various electric devices and instruments (they made and designed them as well as sold them). Together they created an electric Hawaiian steel guitar. It was shortly after this that Fender and Kauffman had different visions for the business. Kauffman wanted to focus more on repair and Fender wanted to focus on the design aspect. This is when Fender started his company, the Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Corporation and is now called the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation.

Fender® played a huge role in creating solid body guitars and making them widely available. One of their most popular models, the Fender® Stratocaster, or Strat for short was the first electric guitar with a solid body. Each year, they expand on their current guitar line while still making those old favorites available.

Now, there are over 26 styles of Fender® electric guitars available. The Stratocaster line has expanded to include special series modeled after celebrity artists such as David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, Eric Clapton, Eric Johnson, and Stevie Ray Vaughn. Other models include other Stratocaster models, the Toronado, the Jazzmaster, the Bronco, and the Mustang. For a complete list, visit the official Fender® website.

Fender® also boasts a list of artists who play their electric guitars. These include Sting, Eric Johnson, the late Stevie Ray Vaughn, Yngwie Malmstein, Roscoe Beck, and Robert Cray. For a complete list of artists and their profiles you can visit the Fender® website.

Here is what some users have to say about their Fender® guitars (multiple sources_:

Fender 62 Stratocaster Reissue

The tone is fantastic. you really get those screaming highs and the piano like projection of the low strings is gorgeous. through my line 6 flextone II amp it s just a HUGE tone. great looks. great neck, great pickups, no shoddy parts anywhere!

Fender Deluxe Fat Strat

I love the array of sounds. The Texas special pickups are hot, and between the 5 pickup combinations with a little tweaking on the tone adjustment, i can t think of a tone you can t get out of this guitar. The neck is smooth, and construction is solid. The Floyd Rose tremelo is easy to make quick tune adjustments with.

Samuel Malama asked:


When you are a beginner, figuring out the best beginner guitar might be a bit difficult, but it doesn’t have to be. There are small concerns like: how much you should pay, what kind should you buy and where to buy.

Obviously, for a lot of people this would still come out to be rocket science; it does not have to be. Firstly, there are so many guitars out there, guitars like: acoustics, electric, bass, steel and so many others. Unfortunately, not all of these are good for the average beginner if not all.

It would be very easy for a rock fan for example, to go out and buy an electric guitar. From that point of view, it makes complete sense for a rock fan that wants to learn to play, to go out and get the guitar they see rock stars playing.

But if one is serious about playing the guitar, it would be in their best interest to get a guitar that is suitable for their playing level; especially if they are novices. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that the acoustic is the only one a beginner can play; it is just the easiest one to learn with.

So now you know that you need an acoustic guitar, but you are still left with the frustrating ordeal of finding the right deal, store, brand or particular model. Sounds like hard work doesn’t it, I know it does. Fortunately for you, it won’t be, since you will know exactly what you will be doing.

Before you start searching for your first guitar, you have to know what you are looking for. Most popular models are: Seagull S6, Yamaha F310, Takamine G-240, Fender DG-7, Epiphone DR-100 and many lovely models. At this point I think I should tell you something.

Since you are a rookie, and yet you want to become the ultimate guitarist, it would be wise to go with a reputable company. The reason for this is straight forward; since you are just starting out, you do not want to experiment with bad guitars as that would be detrimental.

The brands to go for are: Yamaha, Ibanez, Fender, Gibson, Ovation, Martin and Taylor (though there are others, these ones are among the top ones).

Now we know what kind, model and brand of guitar to buy. The only thing that we have left is to figure out how much and where to buy. Spend the most that you can afford, you can get a good guitar for $250 to $500. Like I said before, you need to get a good guitar if you are to have the experience you want from guitar playing.

Honestly, for a beginner, I suggest staying away from the internet. A music store is the best bet for you. In a music store you can negotiate with the sales person to give you a discount; you can play the guitar and get a feel of it; you can examine it thoroughly making sure that the gluing is not sloppy; you can play on all the frets as loud as you can making sure there is no buzz sound and so many other things.