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  1. Yesterday
  2. 2 NGDs in the space of a week, good work! Love the paint job on the T type.
  3. Spotted a Chapman ML3 modern on facebook marketplace at a good price last weekend so pulled the trigger and absolutely loved it. So much so I bought an ML1 Pro this weekend ( I really do need a bigger house !) This is one of the best looking and playing guitars I've owned (it's so bassy !)even when compared to custom build territory like my Ambler. Now I need the green sparkly semi - hollow one and a baritone to complete the collection !
  4. Even though it looks and feel a bit whacked, that posture sure made it a lot easier to fret the frets, though I found it very hard to accurately fret. Probably just practice, but I'll throw that one in for a change. Aah, also made it a lot easier to fret. I'm doing it that way for this particular song since that's what he's doing and it was the only way for me to play the E string together with the other notes. I'm not sure how he does it on the recording and everytime I see him live he seem to be playing differently. I think it's supposed to be a muted tone too but that's far over my league at the moment. But with practice comes experience, so It seems I need to practice a lot more and for the hand easier riffs to build up the core strength. That tip was especially useful when playing Poison since that far stretch in the intro was a whole lot easier doing with the thumb in the center back! I'm not entirely sure what you mean, you mean while playing the same string(s) on different frets? That's something I've been practicing but wow, it's pretty hard. Though that along with the tips from Plucking the strings economically sounds like something I should embrace and practice more. I can up pick one single string, like when playing temple of the king. But if it's two or more, I have to use a very thin pick to even somewhat succeed and I find them hard to get a good sound out of. I'm not a fan of shedding or fast play myself, I like it clean. Ritchie tends to keep it so with good rythms, like the pre-intro when he plays man on the silver mountain live in munich, I like that kinda play. I found out, by accident that for me, resting the palm on the bridge is the easiest way for me to play good sounding muted notes as I can't do that with the fretting hand yet. Though it feels as if the hand is so far back there that it's hard to pick the strings accurately, so I haven't really practiced plucking them there. Usually when something hard we tend to go easiest route and not really bother. But you make me realize that it's all just practice and it'll get better over time. I think you're absolutely right! A very good observation!! I just measured the lowest part of the low E down to the 12th fret and it measures 3mm, I think that could be chopped down a good 1mm. Maybe even more, I'll have to bring it to the shop. I think you have a very very good point here, might be due to the high action. But I'll keep that one in mind when playing! Also, I just played and I slowed it down quite a bit. I noticed I had a lot more control over my fretting hand, the fingers wasn't moving anywhere near as much as in the video nor as far away from the neck. Interesting, maybe I should take it a bit slower, though a hard thing to do when the mind and body never wants the same heh. But to be realistic, I don't think I have the accuracy to play well yet, I think it's all just muscle memory from my side, my hand knows where to move. Which is not the way to go, so slower it is. Thank you very much guys, very exhaustive and detailed answers!
  5. Last week
  6. Thanks for the detailed responses. The neck o the Tele copy I have does feel a bit cramped (not enchche by the poor fretwork but then it was £79! I was thinking Single cut Epiphone or maybe PRS SE. Or if the Sire guitars are as good as the basses ?
  7. Possibly squeezing too hard, relax a little and don't overdo it. Little and often is better than big sessions. I see that you're using your thumb for the E string in the video and this may be a contributing factor to your discomfort. Whilst there is a place for using your thumb for big stretches and wide chord voicing, it's not normally a good habit to start with. I'd use my index finger for that note, in this instance. That'll come with practise, try slowing things down to start with.
  8. People play in all sorts of different ways and in all kinds of different poses which might, or might not, suit them. But the first thing to note is that when you are doing something new with your body, in this case your hands, it can take some time to develop a bit of muscle strength and to get used to moving your hands and fingers in a new way, and this will certainly be part of it, but beyond that, there are some position and technique alterations you can make which will probably help you, so here goes... Position of the guitar: When you see classical guitar players doing a recital, you will note that they often have a foot stool and they hold the guitar like this. There is a good reason for that, and it is that with the neck raised up, your wrist does not have to stretch around the neck so much, so it stops your wrist hurting and your fingers can more easily reach around to fret stuff. Try this little experiment: put your hands in your current playing position as though you were gonna play 'air guitar', now move your fretting hand up to that classical guitar pose and see how much less your wrist has to bend around when it is up there. Now of course everyone who plays rock guitar wants to look cool and have their guitar slung down low in that classic punk style, but doing that makes this problem even worse; you don't have to go mental and have your rock guitar all the way up in that classical pose (because it looks twattish for one thing), but just moving the neck up a little bit will help and even though you are seated, it would help to have a strap a bit shorter in order to support the guitar in that position rather than having to hold it there, so, in short, shorten your strap a bit so it supports the neck up a little bit. Position of fretting hand: Again borrowing from the world of classical guitar, when being taught that, you would be told to place your thumb in the back of the centre of the neck. The reason for that is sort of similar to the first point about the position of the guitar and the ease with which it allows fretting; with your thumb in the back of the centre of the neck, your fingers are further round the neck and come down on the fretboard perpendicular to the strings, which aids in clean fretting and with your thumb behind the neck, when you fret, you have your thumb bracing the neck, so the fretting fingers have something to push against, which means less pressure is required and that stops your fingers from aching. Now of course you see rock guitarists with their thumb over the top of the neck to do lazy G chords and such, and that's okay, but they do that when their hand has developed some strength and they know what they can get away with, and even when players do do that, they still tend to brace the neck against their fingers by cradling it with the base of their thumb, so there is nothing wrong with having your thumb over the neck from time to time, just be aware that it makes it more of a stretch for your fingers when you do that. Economy of movement: A bad habit many guitar players have, is to fret a note with for example their first finger, pluck that note, then lift that finger off as they fret the next note they want with their third finger, then lift that off and fret the note they had before with their first finger by placing that down again, and so on. So their fingers are going up and down all the time and making completely unnecessary extra movements when they could have just kept their first finger down all the time instead of moving their fingers up and down like they were playing a trumpet. This, and playing across the fretboard rather than up and down it, is what helps to develop faster, easier and smoother playing. It also means that some notes could be hammered on or pulled off rather than plucked, which can also make things faster or easier to play. Plucking the strings economically: Another thing people do which slows them down and makes life harder than it needs to be, is playing all downstrokes when picking a riff out, instead of going up and down with the pick alternately. Alternating between up and down movements to pick out notes requires far less movement and so it enables you to play faster as well as requiring far less movement. It will feel awkward at first if you've been doing all downstrokes, but it is worth sticking at it to get used to it, especially if you have a desire to do any of that bloody awful 'shredding' which people seem to want to do, as you need to be able to pluck strings fast to do that. Personally, I think all that shredding stuff is shite and has little musical merit, but if it's something you'd like to end up being able to do, then alternating up and down strokes is going to be essential for it and even for more artistically meritorious playing, it definitely helps. Right hand position and movement: It looks to me like you are already doing that bit right, but just in case you are not, what makes life easier with that, is to rest the fleshy part of your hand (the bit on the opposite side to where your thumb is), on the bridge. this does a few things, it gives your hand some support, it lets you just move your thumb and forefinger in order to play, but can also allow you to pivot your hand too if you like, and it lets you roll your hand forward to mute the strings for chugging rhythm playing, which in combination with fretting hand muting, gets you all the rock music tones you want. The action of the guitar: Kind of hard to tell, and it might be the lighting on your video, but based on the shadow of your strings, it looked like the action of your guitar was a bit on the high side, and that makes fretting need more effort and can contribute to making your hand ache, especially when learning. High actions also cause tuning and intonation issues. There are a ton of videos on places like youtube about how to sort that out. Some of it will require a few specialist tools, but most of it doesn't require anything particularly special. So you might want to look into that as well. All of this is intended to help you rather than to pick holes in your playing, which is actually pretty good, so keep it up and if you find any of the above helpful, it will only improve stuff. And since you were playing some Blackmore stuff, here's an interesting thing he said about learning guitar which you might or might not have heard, he said: 'When I was learning lead guitar, I listened to a lot of saxophone solos, because they were all single notes and so I could do them on a guitar and it helped a lot.'
  9. Hey all, I recently picked up the guitar and have been trying to learn by watching and playing tabs found online, it's a slow progress but I feel I'm getting somewhere at least. The main area of problem is timing and discomfort in the fretting arm/hand, I mainly try to play Ritchie Blackmore songs and given I'm a complete newcomer to the field I figure I could use some help. Below is a short video of two different ways I play man on the silver mountain, watching it makes me realize that my fretting is doing a lot of motions. It doesnt feel that way when playing but it definately doesn't look as smooth as when others play, also I can only play for a shorter duration of 20 minutes or so before my hand start aching. I reckon it ain't easy but if anyone has any tips for me, I'd appreciate it.
  10. For that kind of budget, you have a lot of scope. A Telecaster is actually a good choice for what you are after in terms of sound (the Telecaster was good enough for Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones after all), although it will take some getting used to in terms of playing if you are used to playing bass. Any six string is initially going to feel small and hard to fret if you are used to playing bass of course, but you can get used to it. However, if you really can't get along with that Telecaster, then within your target budget, I'd recommend one of the Epiphone versions of the venerable Les Paul, and there is a good reason for that, which is... A Telecaster has (depending on which exact model it is) a neck width at the nut of about 1.65 inches, whereas most Epiphone Les Pauls (and the pricier Gibsons from which they are derived) have a neck width of 1.69 inches at the nut. This might not seem like a big difference between it and that Tele, but you will definitely notice the difference between that Gibson style neck and a typical Fender neck, since the profile is usually a bit fatter and more rounded on an Epiphone neck as well. What is worth noting too, is that Fenders typically have a scale length of 25.5 inches, whereas Epiphones have a scale length of 24.75 inches. This means the string tension is less on an Epiphone than it is on a Fender, and that's a plus point when learning to fret stuff. Of course if you simply want to be able to bang out a few campfire chords and sing to them when someone asks you to 'play a song', then you could always go with an acoustic or electro acoustic guitar, since these too will have a typically wider neck than the average electric guitar. If you do decide to go with an acoustic, you can go a long way with just a few chords and some 'travis picking'. But back with that Les Paul, and specifically the Epiphone versions, be aware that there are some cheap ones around which have a screw on neck, and some better ones with a set, glued in neck. It's one with a set neck which you want. You will probably find an older second hand one of those on ebay for somewhere around three hundred quid. You might get lucky and pay a bit less of course, particularly for a Les Paul Studio version which doesn't have all the fancy binding on the body (These are very good, particularly the Korean-made ones from around the early 2000s). Don't get hung up about single coil versus humbuckers in relation to the sound you are after; the truth is that it's the amp which has to most affect on how a guitar will sound, not the pick ups, but having said that, if you can find one with P90 pickups, that'll give you the best of both worlds as although P90s are single coils, they sound a lot more ballsy than a typical single coil. If you are not a 'logo snob' and are prepared to go with a copy rather than a Epiphone version of a Les Paul, then I can recommend taking a look at the Fazley Midas on the Bax Music website, which is basically a copy of a Les Paul Gold Top with P90 pick ups. They cost 140 quid and are pretty damn good in spite of that very low price. That'd leave you plenty of cash for a decent amp. Here is my Fazley Midas alongside one of my Les Pauls; as you can see, it's pretty much the same guitar but with P90s rather than humbuckers and without the 1500 quid price tag you pay for a Gibson because of that overpriced logo on the end of it:
  11. Can't go wrong with this one, offered on our very own Marketplace section by a trusted member. Way below your target budget; is that so bad a thing..? Yamaha Pacifica Tele-type guitar, ungraded ...
  12. Good afternoon, @Crappy Axe, and ... ... Plenty to read and amuse you here, and lots to learn and share.
  13. Hello all I’m a bass player of 35 years experience here fed up with people saying “oh you play guitar play as a tune” My aim is to be proficient enough to twang through a few numbers for the bucket list. The time is now. I bought a dirt cheap Tele cos it looked cool. Not the best decision especially with my dumpy fingers, Dunno why I did it when people ask me about basses I always say but the best you can afford lol So what do peeps reccomend ? new or SH my budget is £300 to £500 i convincing “classic rock” rhythm tone is the only must have.
  14. Hello all bass player of 35 years experience here fed up with people saying “oh you play guitar play as a tune” My aim is to be proficient enough to twang through a few numbers for the bucket list. The time is now. I bought a dirt cheap Tele cos it looked cool. Not the best decision especially with my dumpy fingers, Dunno why I did it when people ask me about basses I always say but the best you can afford lol luv and kisses Stealth
  15. Good afternoon, @Oscarperguit, and ... ... Plenty to read and amuse you here, and lots to learn and share.
  16. Hi Everyone! I am new here and this is my first posting... Just a Dream Theater guitar solo in my studio room... Hope you all like it!
  17. Hi everyone! I am Oscar and I play since ancient times I love playing several styles of Music...from Metal to Jazz, From Baroque to Pop or Country... Best wishes for you all and... Rock on!!
  18. He may well be amenable to you sitting in whilst he goes through the check-up and rectification process, which could give some insight as to how to look after your (and your son's...) instruments. It might take him a little longer, to explain what he's doing, and enable you better to appreciate exactly what's involved in guitar upkeep. Just a thought..?
  19. Hi guys, thanks for the advice and guidance. Originally my thought was that I would perhaps have a go myself if it's fairly straightforward to learn more about guitars, however I have given it some thought and decided that I will probably seek further advice and pay somebody else to do any required work. I don't really want to spemd a great deal of time "tinkering" and then possile having to go to an expert after all. I have a local guitar tech who is friendly and highly recommended, he has done some work on my guitar previously and has set up/serviced several of my sons guitars and basses, his rates are also very reasonable. I don't know what I could have done to affect anything as all I have done is change the strings and cleaned it regularly, it is kept in a warm dry house only going out occasionally in a gig bag to jams etc. I notice that will obviously affect the tuning due to temperature change etc, and it is transported in a gig bag. Re playing it was not used very much until recently so wouldn't have thought it would be wear due to the amount of use. I have until recently largely been playing an old nylon acoustic and a 6 month old LagT88ac and have really only started to pick up the electric as my skills have developed, so I am sure that there maybe some credence in the observation that my playing technique may be contributing to the issues. I am taking the occasional lesson every 2 or 3 weeks (with the Lag transported in a hard case for protection), so I may change the routine and take along the electric next time to get an expert opinion. I appreciate any further comments and Will update on my progress. Alan
  20. If you want to do it yourself, it's fairly easy when you know what to do and have a few suitable tools. Like everything, it is easy when you know how and if you are a guitarist, it is worth knowing how to do this, because it means you will get the best out of your guitar and also not have to pay somebody to do it. So - warning, long post ensues - if you read all this, you should be good to go... There are several possible causes for the fret buzz and they could be any one of the following, or possibly several at the same time: The average ambient temperature in your house as the season has changed, has caused the neck relief to alter by virtue of the guitar wood and metal bits having cooled and contracted, or warmed up and expanded. Your typical playing in the same spots on the neck has worn some frets down a bit in some commonly used neck positions, causing the next frets up from those frequently used frets to now be a bit higher up when you fret at the slightly worn down frets, causing string contact at the unworn frets when the strings vibrate as you play. A fret, or several frets, have loosened a bit and raised up a small amount owing to a temperature shift. Vibration from repeated playing has made things settle a bit and change. Something hardware-related has vibrated loose, and this is making things buzz. The strings are making contact with the pick up pole pieces. So, first thing to check, is there anything which has worked loose? Check this by holding things such as the nut, tuning pegs, bridge, pick ups switches etc as you play. If it stops buzzing when you do that, tighten the offending thing up to secure it. Look to see it the strings are touching the pick up pole pieces when you play, if they are , lower the pick ups a bit or lower individual pole pieces by tightening them with a flat head screwdriver. Next press and hold each string down at the high end frets and keep that held down, then move your hand halfway up the neck and tap the strings down onto the frets at around the sixth fret position. You should hear a very slight tap as the string contact the frets, indicating that there is a suitable neck relief gap. The size of this gap is your neck relief amount. To explain what this is: When you play, your strings swing back and forth, and they need some room to do this so they don't hit the frets and buzz, so contrary to what a lot of people think, your guitar's neck is not meant to be completely flat and straight, the neck needs to have a slight bow in it to give the strings some room to swing about as they vibrate. How much of a bow is needed depends on the string gauge you use, because thicker heavier gauge strings can swing around quite a lot as you play, whereas with light strings, not so much. This is the price you pay for having the better tone which thicker strings produce. So, if there is a sufficient gap you can observe and hear when you do that aforementioned tapping test, your truss rod does not need adjusting, but if the neck is more or less flat and there is no neck relief bow, you will need to adjust the truss rod a little. This is not hard to do. Here's how: The truss rod in the neck of your guitar is actually a pair of steel rods, one of which is fixed to the neck, the other can move because is attached to the fixed rod by means of a threaded bolt at one end; loosening or tightening this allows this threaded rod to either push or pull against the fixed one, which then makes the neck either bow backward or forward, which is how the amount of neck relief is adjusted. On an Epiphone Les Paul, this is accessed by removing the three posi screws from the bell-shaped truss rod cover, then inserting an allen key (wrench if you are a Yank) into the truss rod's allen bolt and turning it either right or left. Be aware that you should always make fairly small adjustments and then give the guitar a bit of time to react to the adjustment before making further adjustment, because you need to give the wood of the fretboard time to move slowly as it is pushed or pulled by the truss rod. Large or sudden adjustments can weaken the glue join between the neck and the fretboard, so the golden rule here is to work slowly and only make small adjustments, then wait a while to see what effect that adjustment has had, and then if necessary make a further adjustment. So, the easy way to remember what to do is with the phrase 'righty tighty, left loosey' i.e., looking down the neck from the tuner end of your guitar, turning the allen key to the right will tighten the truss rod, and turning it left will loosen it. IMPORTANT BIT: You should only turn the allen key about a quarter of a turn, then wait a few minutes to see if it has done the job before making a further adjustment. So, if you need more of a bow in your neck to give the strings some room to move, you will be loosening (turning the key left), or if there is too much bow in the neck you will be tightening (turning it right). REMEMBER, GO SLOW, A QUARTER OF A TURN, THEN CHECK. Don't be afraid to make this adjustment, if you follow the above guide, you won't break anything, you'd need to really be very hamfisted and seriously overtighten a truss rod enough to break it. The theory here by the way, is that if you loosen the truss rod a bit, it allows the string tension to pull a bit of a bow into the neck, whereas if you tighten it, the rod pulls back against the string tension and thus makes the neck flatter. Once you understand this is what is going on, it's fairly simple and pretty much common sense to make such an adjustment and it is worth knowing how to do it, because most guitars will probably need this doing maybe once or twice a year as the season changes and the ambient temperature varies. So, that's how to adjust a truss rod. But, this might not be your problem. It could also be a few worn or high frets. This too is fairly easy to fix, but you will need the right tools to do it properly. Having a guitar technician set up a guitar will cost you about fifty quid, but you can buy the necessary tools to do it yourself for considerably less than that, and it is not rocket science, so this is the smarter choice. Your shopping list will be: A fret file such as this. A fretboard levelling ruler and fret rocker set, such as this. A fretboard sanding beam, such as this. Some steel wool. Some fine emery paper. A copper or plastic faced fret hammer, such as this. A neck support such as this. Note that you might find these cheaper, those links I added were just a general guide to what you need to get hold of. You may have some stuff like this already, or tools which can be used which are similar enough to suffice. With these tools, here's what you do: Take the strings off and adjust the truss rod (if necessary) until the fretboard is completely flat (the neck may already be like this with the strings off. Use the fretboard levelling ruler to check this). The reason you want the fretboard completely flat when filing frets, is that you need the fret levelling beam to ride level across the frets when sanding them in order to get them at the same height. Rest the guitar down flat when working, placed on some towels to avoid scratching it, and be sure to support the neck with either a proper neck support stand, or you can if necessary improvise with something suitable such as a few paperback books or similar. When you are sure the neck and fretboard are totally flat, check to see if any frets are higher than they should be by using the fret rocker tool. You will hear it tapping as you rock it across several frets if there are any high frets. Be sure to check thoroughly, across the entire width of the frets. If you find any high frets, mark the top of them with a felt tipped pen. Check to see if these marked frets are high by virtue of not being properly seated and if this is the case, tap them home with your copper or plastic-faced fret hammer. DO NOT use a regular steel hammer, the steel face of a regular hammer is too hard and will dent the frets. Be sure the neck is supported when doing this and be careful not to twat the fretboard! Have a few practice taps with your fret hammer on something else first, to get used to using it. If you are sure all frets are properly seated and you still have high frets when checking them with your fret rocker tool, you will need to sand some of them level. Some sanding beams are equipped with sanding surfaces, others are merely a flat beam which you can attach emery paper to. In either case, use this to sand the offending proud frets down to the level of the others. You don't need to go mental, a few passes will probably do the job. When you think they are fairly close to matching the other frets in height, now you need to 'crown them' again (give them a curved top like they had before you sanded them). This is what your fret file is for. Either tape off the fretboard to protect it, or if your fret file came with some metal fret masks (most of them do) use these to protect the fretboard and give the fret a few passes with the file to round the top of it off again. With all that done, you will need to polish them a bit. Actually, just playing the guitar will eventually do that, but they will feel a bit scratchy as you do that, so polishing them is something you will likely prefer to do. IMPORTANT: Get a plastic bag and put this around the guitar body and tape it closed at the neck. This is to avoid any steel wool shards coming into contact with your pick ups, as they will stick to the magnetic poles and if any shards go into the pickups, they can short circuit them, so you don't want to do that. Now, place your fret masks over the frets, and polish them across-wise with the steel wool. It won't need much. You can also get fret polish and fret rubbers for this purpose, but steel wool will usually do the job okay. After you've done all that, check everything with your fret rocker and if all is good, you are pretty much done. BUT, whilst the strings are off, you might as well treat the fretboard with a bit of lemon oil to make sure the fretboard wood is not too dry. Don't over use that stuff; tip some on a tissue and then apply it from that. Too much lemon oil on a fretboard will make the wood damp and that can make frets work loose, and you don't want to do that, so use lemon oil sparingly. Now, give it a good wipe off to make sure there are no metal shavings on it from all that filing and sanding, take off the plastic bag, string your guitar up, tune it and see if you need to adjust the truss rod to put the relief back in (remember you possibly levelled the fretboard to do all that sanding, and if you did that with the truss rod, simply adjust the rod back to where it was). With all that done, you will probably find you can lower the bridge and get a better action. On an Epiphone LP, that's just a case of adjusting the two flathead screws on the bridge with a suitable screwdriver to lower it a bit. But you are not quite done yet. Having lowered the action, it is very likely that you will need to adjust the intonation (string length) by moving the bridge saddles either backwards or forwards a touch. The reason for this is that with the strings now lower down and closer to the frets, when you fret a string now, it won't have to stretch as much to make contact with the frets, so the chances are you may need to move the bridge saddles forward a bit to shorten the string lengths ever so slightly. Test the need to do this by tuning the guitar, then playing a twelfth fret harmonic, then fretting at the twelfth and seeing if that fretted note is sharp or flat compare to the harmonic. If it is sharp, move the saddle back to lengthen the string a touch, if it is flat, move the saddle forward to sharped the string pitch a little. There are many videos on youtube which show you how to do this sort of thing, but be aware that there are some numpties out there who haven't got a clue what they are doing, so don't just watch one video, watch a few to get a good grounding on the correct way to do stuff. I can recommend watching this guy, he is very clued up and no nonsense about doing this kind of thing and watching his videos will give you the confidence to give this sort of thing a go. You can do it. Just go slow and you will be fine. You are right by the way, I have 26 electric guitars, including some pretty expensive Gibsons Les Pauls, and my Epiphone Les Paul Studio is better than some of the Gibsons.
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