Guitar players thread.

[Morlun]

Does anyone else on the forum play guitar ? If so, what guitars? what tones ? what styles ?

[Miss Lucifer]

I can play the James Bond theme tune, but that's about it.

[Hamz]

I play a bit on acoustic, mainly crap. My main instrument is bass guitar atm. I've been thinking of getting a trumpet and relearning it.

[StrangeWill]

I play guitar hero...

lololololz

[Mishra]

i have a gibson es-335, i like generally clean tones. i play everything, ska, folk, blues, jazz, rock, punk, little bit of hardcore, indie, alternative, funk, etc

[J A Eyers]

I have an Epiphone Les Paul Standard, a special edition called a Black Beauty, which has three humbuckers. It's okay, but I think if I ever buy another, I'll just fork out the big cash for a proper American-made model rather than one of these Korean copies. It's about four years old now, and has been knocked about a bit, so I've managed to lose the jack-in hole inside the guitar before, the action is so low the low E string has some fret buzz when played open, and now the switch has started to phase out when flicked to the neck pick-up. Despite all that, I can still manage to get a good sound out of it, and it's really rather versatile, especially coupled with the 30 watt Marshall amp I have, so with a few twists of the dials, I can get Green Day one minute and Guns N Roses the next. You can't really get a proper metal crunch out of the thing, but turn the gain and the mid range up and I can get a good enough estimation of Metallica if I close an ear, which is what I play mostly (or try to).

[Morlun]

I've had a fair guitars, i started off on a fender strat. which i desipsed. moving onto an epiphone sg. I started buying a lot more guitars but i had a love for metal, and now when i look at my purchases i cringe and think what more versitile axes i could have bought.

the next two guitars i bought. the ibanez sounds like dung. like an underwater amp. The pre-fender jackson sounds alright for chording and has a nice percussive clean sound; probably due to the JB and jazz pickups. Also has the thinnest neck i have ever felt. The only guitar i play really.

A dean vendetta i fired an emg pickup into. Sounds perfect for killswitch engage style metal. its a riff machine.

i need pikktures pplz !

[Froberg]

I play awesome air-guitar.

[Mishra]

i've mostly played on other peoples amps like in rehearsal spaces and things, but i am picking up a fender deluxe reverb in like a month, my little practice amp is a marshall mg30 (pretty crappy but alright for practice by myself)

[Hamz]

pics of what I have:


Geddy Lee Signature Fender Jazz bass. I took the pick guard off of mine and mine also has a "Sex Machine" label on it. It comes with a shaved down neck, at the nut its more narrow than a fender strat.


I have a fender MIM P-bass as well, looks like this one minus the vintage ashtrays and finger rest.

[J A Eyers]

Here's a picture of it on top of my current amp (next to the little one I had before, which I don't have anymore, the photo being about two years old... don't even live in that house now):



And a close up:



Or two:

[J A Eyers]

This is the point when people start posting MP3s.

[Mishra]

sure, where can i upload files to for free

[Hamz]

@J A, I had that same marshall amp when I played electric, it always impressed me.

[Mishra]

http://www.freefileupload.net/file.p...ve+in+vain.mp3

http://www.freefileupload.net/file.p...improv+ska.mp3

http://www.freefileupload.net/file.p...oy+balloon.mp3

http://www.freefileupload.net/file.p...78/wanking.mp3

crappy mic though so the sound quality is less than stellar

edit: just came up with this cool thing
http://www.freefileupload.net/file.p...in+a+thing.mp3

[J A Eyers]

Kudos for recording something clean. It would have been much easier to hide limitations behind distortion. I liked the wanking piece. Someone spent many a lonely evening learning their scales! It's all good. A few painful bends, though, which I'm sure you already noted. Do you find that recording yourself and listening back gives you some distance between what you're playing, so you can hear stuff you wouldn't necessarily hear as you're actually concentrating on playing?

[Mishra]

yeah i can hear messed up notes and things easier. i dont really do distortion like ever, i mostly play unplugged and when i do plug it in i prefer it clean. i tend to stick with minor pentatonics and stuff, or major pentatonics, but i always throw in some notes from the full scales and things on occasion. i also like harmonic minors and augmented fifth scales but i dont really get to use them often in a ska band. its much easier for me to play without a pick than with one when i want to play fast like that.

[A L () E N]

I started last december, so it's been about a year and a half since I started playing. I used my brother's guitars up until now, which was a godin (not sure exactly what model) or my other brother's ibanez. Yesterday I broke down and bought my own guitar cause I need one for moving out. It's an Epiphone Goth Les Paul Studio.


I still play lots of different styles seeing as I just started, but lately it's been pink floyd & metallica, although I did learn some Eric Clapton and some other older rock.

[Cybro]

Originally Posted by Mishra

http://www.freefileupload.net/file.p...ve+in+vain.mp3

http://www.freefileupload.net/file.p...improv+ska.mp3

http://www.freefileupload.net/file.p...oy+balloon.mp3

http://www.freefileupload.net/file.p...78/wanking.mp3

crappy mic though so the sound quality is less than stellar

edit: just came up with this cool thing
http://www.freefileupload.net/file.p...in+a+thing.mp3

i just listened to "wanking" on my itunes and forgot about the "currently listening to:" feature on msn

anyway, it was good but there needs to be more variation in your improvisations i think. you kept coming back to the same "twiddly" theme. the "wanking" one was an improvisation yes?

[Mishra]

well i improvise much better when i am playing over chords. when im doing it in my head its hard to hear chord changes sometimes and i end up just vamping over the same chord.

[Cypher]

Damn Mishra, I wish I could get those swingy ska tunes out of my guitar... I can't manage to get the ska-sound nor whatever that sounds like it

[Mishra]

well when i do ska i tend to double time it, normally people do eights and hit every other eight note, i do 16ths and hit it the same rhythm, but double everything. double the mutes, double the upstrokes. unless it's really fast then i just do the eight note thing. works best with clean, high treble, medium-hi mids, and low bass.

[simmo]

I'm rocking this thing at the moment, I love it and for the price it blows away anything i've ever played before. It's a parker p-42. I'll also very soon be purchasing an ENGL ritchie blackmore 100 watt all tube beast.

[Morlun]

i played the engl powerball a while back, complete beast of an amp.

i also played one of those parker guitars, for some reason i cant adjust to a guitar with a stoptail now, i find playing gallops and anything generally speed extremely difficult. My god i hate trem systems.

[J A Eyers]

Okay, fret buzz. What do I do about this? It annoys me some days more than others, and today is one of the days it's annoying me a lot. It only afflicts the low E string, mainly when it is played open. The action on my guitar is really quite low; barely have to touch the string and it counts. However, I kinda like that, so I wouldn't want to raise the action too much higher. But maybe just a bit higher to alleviate the worst of the fret buzz. I just have no idea how to do that. Would I need to take it into some professional engineer?

Or is the problem terminal and my fault for buying a guitar costing less than £1200?

[Morlun]

your problem is the truss rod, it adjusts the neck angle. you get to it by removing the little plate on your les paul that sits just above the nut. ( since your guitar is an epiphone it should say gibson/custom/special or whatever on the plate) just stick the hex key in that you get with your guitar and adjust until the buzz goes away. Alternatively you could take it to a guitar shop and have them do it for you, but its worth learning how to do it for yourself if you have a hex key.

[Mishra]

no, you really shouldnt touch the truss by yourself especially if youve never done it before. try raising the action only a little at the bridge on the one side, since its the epiphone it will have those little screw type things at the bridge, just turn it a little until its good. then you just retune everything.

morlun is right though, it is worth learning it yourself, but dont learn from the internet, you have to learn how to set it up in person to do it right

[J A Eyers]

Your words wound me in the wallet, methinks. My local guitar shop is run by mercenary cowboys. The first time I broke a guitar string I took it in there to be restrung and they charged me £25 ($50) and kept it a fortnight. I learnt how to change them myself pretty quickly after that. Needless to say, I'm not about to sacrifice the thing for major surgery. I might not see it for a year, and then get a £300 storage fee added onto the bill.

I think I'm just going to have to put up with it, aren't I?

[simmo]

No way you don't have to put up with it, it's slightly cliche to say but search google, theres a zilion sites out there on guitar setup and maintenance. If your guitar has a manual look in that, that can always help aswel.

[Kensomniac]

$50 for a restring?! wtf... most places around here will do it for free when you buy the strings... takes all of 10 minutes maybe. Sounds like your getting robbed.