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I’d pick one or two things for a week, set a small goal, then switch it up. Short focused sessions helped me progress way faster than trying everything at once.

Welcome Antonio!

That’s great thank you, extremely helpful. Over thinking is what I do best hence just keeping things simple with the acoustic. Don’t get me started on the C major chord I was trying last night. Oh crikey, what I hash I made of that. Think I’ll just stick with the the two fingers easy C for now

A lot to unpack, there. Nothing wrong with 3/4 guitars, for children or for strapping six-foot adults. One gets used to whatever (think ukulele, mandolin, acoustic bass, six-string electric bass, 3/4 or full-size double bass and more...), and I, personally, hold it to be a Good Thing to swap instruments and enjoy the difference. As for the three fingers vying for space on the fretboard : it all comes with practice. There are also 'techniques' (a.k.a. 'cheating'...) for many issues. An example could be to not play all three strings at once, or use a 'half-barre' to play an 'A' with one finger across those strings. It comes as a surprise to many to find out that it is not always necessary, nor even desirable, to play all of the six strings at once. For my part, for instance, I most often use 'drop two' or 'drop three' chords, which only use four strings at any one time (usually one of the two bottom strings and three others...), so there are seldom three fingers crowded onto the same fret. I don't 'strum' chords, I 'pluck' them with more of a 'claw' right-hand fingering, with the thumb for the bass notes. Finger-picking is great fun, too. Enough for now; don't over-think all this stuff, and, if you find something difficult, let it rest before coming back to it. If you have any way at all of taking even a few lessons with a Good, Experienced guitar tutor, you'll learn a lifetimes-worth of Good Habits and Good Technique, in whatever style you're interested in. Well worth saving up for. That's my tuppence-worth; others may chip in with complementary, contrasting, or even contradictory approaches. Keep it all fun, though.

Is a 3/4 guitar out of the question? Was just looking at the Taylor GS mini. Thought these were more of a kids guitar rather than for a 47 year old male. I struggle fitting all three fingers on the same Fret for the A cord now so with the frets being closer together on a 3/4, would this cause any issues? I know it would be a case of trying it, i’m just bouncing around ideas.

Good evening, @alimpo83, and... ... Plenty to read and amuse you here, and lots to learn and share.

Hi everyone, I'm Antonio and I'm from Portugal. Started playing when I was twelve, up until 19-20, then stopped playing in a rock band for 20(!) years. Only played at home and family gatherings during that time. It's been two years since I've (re)started, having a blast with my 40 something solo guitarist, 55 years old bass player and 52 years old drummer musician friends. I'm a rhythm guitar and main singer on a rock band, again! I'm 42, btw. I play a Gretsch g2420 and a Epiphone Les Paul 100, both in vintage tobacco sunburst. My amp is a small valve Bantamp Bluejay with a Falcon 8' speaker, Jet series, love it. I've built a small pedal board, featuring a Electro Harmonix Crayon, a Tc Electronic Skysurfer, a Behringer Fx600, a Boss SY-200. It's simple and functional, has everything I need for now. Finally, I have my TC-helicon Voicelive Play, for the voice effects, use AKG and Shure mics. We have a small PA, a Mackie one, works great, for small venues. I'm having a blast!

If you learn nothing else from your musical endeavours, learn Patience. It's a long-haul exercise; we are all learning still, decades later. That is why it's so worthwhile. Allow me, if you will, to advance my often-quoted words of encouragement when learning guitar (they apply to many other domains, too...)... 'It's the first forty years that are the hardest, after which things may, sometimes, tend to get very slightly easier'.

So really then you are better learning on acoustic? Having tried it (just for a matter of minutes) it felt totally different. Whereas I’m always looking at where I am placing my fingers on the frets with an electric, I found i couldn’t see my fingers on the APX600 without either tilting the guitar or leaning really forward. I only tried it for a few minutes and it’s the first time I’ve ever held an acoustic.

There’s nothing wrong with learning on electric. However, it is generally easier to play than an acoustic and learning on an acoustic will help with your fingering strength and technique more, which can be very easily transferred to electric, not so much the other way around. And…

And thank you for the welcome

Tbf, I just want to keep things as simple as possible. That’s why I like the idea of acoustic for its simplicity.

Good evening, @NickNSD1978, and... ... Plenty to read and amuse you here, and lots to learn and share. There is no 'downside' to learning on different guitars, quite the opposite. A Good Acoustic (this would include the one you mentioned...) will stand you in good stead for a lifetime, and will complement your prowess, not hinder it. If you have space at home and the budget for it, I highly recommend having both 'on hand'; play and learn on whichever one takes your fancy that day. It's All Good.

I’ve been learning to play for about 6 weeks now on a hired electric Stratocaster. My aim has always been to transition to acoustic at some point but I wasn’t sure where this journey would take me. Six weeks in and I love it. I know I still have a long way to go. I visited GuitarGuitar yesterday and tried a Yamaha APX600. Feels very different to electric. Am I best sticking with electric for the moment or move over to something like this sooner rather than later. Didn’t know if it would step me back in my learning.

I guess it depends on what you see as noiseless. EMG's original series and Lace Sensors vs Fender seem worlds apart. I'm not a fan of Lace, they do indeed sound dead. EMGs have their own character which is evocative of eighties and nineties guitar tone. Thwey have a place. The Fender noiseless are indeed noiseless, the original replican 54 pickups they replaced were both weak and noisy, virtually impossible to record with.

^Very true. With regard to fuzz, I discovered that you can have it set up for searing, violin type lead sounds (I’m think Eric Johnson here) but, back the volume on the guitar off and it delivers a very nicely, slightly overdriven tone and most stops in between. In short, classic fuzzes clean up really nicely.

feel free to make an offer - there's a les paul that I have my eye on!

What stuck with me from many years ago was an editorial in UK Guitarist magazine (I think now long gone; the last time I went looking, only "Guitar Techniques" still seems to exist). The essence of it was that these things are a trade off. As I recall, the exact phrase was "sure, that super-powered deathbucker in your lignium vitae plank will tear your brain out, but in term of following your every slap and tickle like a good Strat, forget it." A lot of it is, of course, horses for courses. The guitar a guy in a covers band who does whatever the equivalent of the top forty is now every weekend for paying punters likely has need of somewhat more versatile gear than a guy in an original metal band who has highly specialised stuff for his specific niche. The big revelation for me, though in the "sometimes less really is more" vein was back in the 90s when I first got my Sovtek Big Muff (one of the green ones, branded "Sovtek-Electro Harmonix" and made in Russia. Still got it in mint condition in the wooden box, I gather they're quite the collectible now. I suspect the only bit of gear I've ever bought that, adjusted for inflation, is worth more now that it was when I bought it!). I was initially horrified, thinking it was unusable, sounded nothing like the Hendrix sound and the rest of it. Then I turn it way down so it was basically a clean boost (which it does surprisingly well), and upped the gain just enough to suddenly find the magic. That's when I also started listening more closely to the guitar tracks on a lot of my favourite stuff, and realised that there's a whole lot less distortion gonig on there than I'd always assumed.

Hope you don't mind me sharing this here! After a few years of experimenting with fingerstyle guitar and alternative tunings, I remember Open C major tuning (CGCGE) being a bit of an eye-opener. So I made a little video about it - thought a few GC residents might find it interesting!

I used to have a set of "hot" humbuckers in my SG...not bad for coaxing more distortion out, but the clean tones never sounded quite right! A producer once told me that overwound pickups seemed a bit of a waste of time to him, "when there are so many easy ways to hit a preamp harder these days." I could have gone on about how the higher impedance changes the centre frequency of the circuit and therefore the overall tone, but I thought [a] he had a fair point, and [b] the people enthusiastically refitting their guitars with hot pickups probably weren't thinking about the nuances of LRC circuits...

Bugger, hope you get that back. Would you mind giving an outline of how this app scam works? Were they targeting the guitar?

I've never cared for the "noiseless" pickups as to my ear the ones I've tried just felt somehow sterile. The idea of vintage noiseless seems odd to me.... I suppose the idea is the compromise of the earlier sound without the hum, but the real joy of a vintage style pickup for me is stuff like the hum. Unless you're going for full on hard metal, I think a lot of folks overemphasise hot-winding in pickups, but it's definitely true there's quite the wide range in singled coils - especially the early, hand-wound stuff where more variation happened.

And here's the crux of it for me: I think as guitar players (same as hifi nerds), we can get too fixated on *measurable* differences, when what we really should be concerned with is differences we can actually hear with our own ears. Once you dispense with aesthetics and durability (both important concerns, tbf), all that matters is does it sound good to you. An awful lot of guitar upgrades are more about superstition and mojo imo. Which is fine - I like a bit of that myself (for whatever reason I've always liked to have a pick screwed in underneath the guard on a Strat, tucked away in the cavity) - but I know if I gave in to too much I'd be in real danger of spending crazy money on all sorts of add ons that didn't add the the sound - and possibly also either doubling the spend by having it professionally fitted, or taking something away from the guitar itself by not properly installing it, or somehow upsetting the equilibrium about what made that particular guitar special in the first place.

Yeah, I think that came in with the change of image, when he grew the beard and went all cosplay-biker. The one I always remember him with was the LP custom with the Confederate Battle Flag on it - back in the 80s when nobody in the UK really realised what it signified, and thought it was just sort of a cowboy flag (don't even get me started on the closet-racist idiots in the rockabilly scene who turn up waving it at weekenders, wearing their Golly badges and claiming it's just their "rock and roll rebel flag, nothing to do with racism" (not even the racism spewed on their own facebook pages - honest, guv!). Most of the surface of the guitar was sanded to the bare wood by this point. He used to claim in interviews that shortly after he'd had it painted, he saw the guy from Warrant with a flag guitar just like it, didn't want to be associated with him, and went straight to the garage with coarse sandpaper and the guitar in hand. I have a dim memory I read somewhere that Rory called that his "number 3" (or was it 2?) - number one being a vintage Tele that I think was mostly used in the studio. Great section on his instruments here: https://rorygallagher.com/instruments/ In early 2025, a statue of Rory was unveiled outside the Ulster Hall in Belfast: Some got funny about him being sculpted with the Tele at the time and not the Strat, but it was based on a famous photo of him playing live, with the Tele, at the Ulster Hall back in the day. Rory was much respected in Belfast for insisting on still playing there annually right through the peak of the Troubles when a lot of big names (including, notably, Belfast's own and one of the biggest pricks in the music industry, Van Morrison) just refused to go near the place. Big influence on the next generation of Irish guitar players, not least Jake Burns (who imo has never gotten the full credit he deserves as either a songwriter or a guitar player). It's interesting how Hank was a huge figure for a whole generation of guitarists, but that has very much not carried over to another generation. (I'm sure the same could be said for many of my guitar heroes - or, hell, even guitar in general for the kids coming after us now.) In an odd way, while yes most of us who are aware of the Shadows might think of the Strat first, I think he now has somewhat of a bigger following among Burns enthusiasts, for the obvious reason. Buddy Holly.... maple board, two tone burst, early Stratocaster.... nobody else comes to mind as fast. Arguably the most important man in guitar-based rock and roll, next only to Leo Fender. It Was Buddy who popularised not only the solid body electric guitar in mainstream rock and roll, but also the bass guitar with the Crickets, and the "two guitars, bas and drums" set-up that is still the basis of so, so many bands today. He very much comes to mind when I see a 70s Strat with the black pickup covers and knobs on white plate, especially with a white body and rosewood board. I vaguely remember him playing a signature model some time back that dispensed with the middle pickup... did he have the middle pickup unwired in his original? I've heard of a surprising number of players having quite unconventional wiring for stage guitars that is often much more limited than you'd expect from the standard look to them. I guess that's partly for aesthetics, and maybe not to give away a secret? Possible... the one in the top photo above looks white to me. I think natural was an official finish from 69, though, that was at the peak of its popularity in the 70s and into the 80s, so he may well have had one. Possibly it got more studio use? I've heard it said that when Jimi had a bit more money later on, he preferred black or white solid finish Strats for stage, and kept the burst ones for the studio, as he figured the solid colours looked better in B&W photos. Who knows, though... there's a lot of glorious myths that take on a life of their own (TV Yellow, Jimi's parakeets, and all the rest).