Skinnyman

Fitted a pair of Area T pickups to the Tele and can’t believe the difference! Completely hum-free and a gorgeous tone - I really like the tone of the bridge pickup. Thanks for the suggestion!

Hi Ed and welcome! Thats a nice collection - what’s the Les Paul-shaped beauty?

Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! Please tell me you have a YouTube channel? Edit: found it. Subscribed!

I realised that just after I’d posted. D’oh!

This was meant to be a challenge and make people really think - and it seems to have worked! I completely understand and agree about Lester and Leo and their influence - but the question is about guitarists so they can’t make the final cut. If we do get round to a poll then I’d rather keep it to 3 candidates from everyone so how about ranking them in order of importance and influence to you?

After a little bit of googling I think I’m going to go for a set of the Area T’s. Will update with progress once they turn up

I’m liking this idea - I get to fix the hum, let off some GAS at the same time and get a bit of a project as well! Win-win, I say!

Hi Colin, welcome to the forum! There are a lot of good online resources but I’d also suggest that early on in your journey you arrange at least a few one-on-one lessons with a tutor (albeit it’ll have to be online in the current circumstances!) just to make sure you start off with good habits and technique from the off. I assume that as a complete novice your first steps will be learning chords so I’d suggest an acoustic to start with - plenty of time to get electrified later when you move on to picking - and there are loads of good entry-level guitars around at pretty good prices. From personal experience, I can recommend Adam Black guitars as good entry-level instruments. Also Faith and Takamine as well as the big players such as Fender, Squier and Epiphone. Good luck with the first steps - if you need any help or advice and you can’t find it already on the forum then don’t be afraid to ask! There’s no such thing as a daft question

Thanks, Dad, that makes a lot of sense. Having eliminated all the other sources (poor shielding, dud cables, bad amp grounding,etc), then I guess it has to be environmental and a “feature” of single coils. I managed to eliminate it on my Strat by fitting Kingsman hum cancelling pickups (which are excellent) but, as you say, doing the same with the Tele is going to lose the twang. I’ll just have to live with it I guess

Now that’s a band I haven’t listened to for a while. They're going on the turntable right now....!

Following on from my success at getting rid of the hum from the Les Paul, I’ve been giving similar treatment to a couple of other guitars with equal success - and then I can to the Telecaster. It’s a bog standard MIM telecaster which has always hummed a bit even at low gain/volume settings. The hum doesn’t alter at all when I touch the bridge or strings and it hasn’t gone away when I’ve shielded the pickup cavities and the cavity that the controls sit in. It’s not the amp or the lead as I’ve tried different guitars, leads and amps in all combinations to conclusively prove that it’s the guitar. So now I’m out of ideas. Could this just be a question of “they all do that, sir”? Is this an inherent feature of a telecaster? Or am I missing something obvious?

As the title suggests, who are your top three guitarists? Not necessarily “who’s the best” as that’s a much bigger question - who are your favourites, the guys (or girls) who’ve influenced you or had the most profound effect? My three; Andy Latimer (Camel) Pat Metheny Dave Gilmour (Pink Floyd) Once we have a decent selection in I’ll create a poll of the candidates so we can decide who’s the most influential/respected/liked guitarist out there

I think this is something we’d all like to know but it’s probably a subject that’s better discussed in its own thread in Off Topic....... This may be a good time to start such a thread?

I saw Camel live on the Pressure Points tour and it’s just a regular Les Paul that Andy Latimer plays We were on the second row and my then wife slept soundly through the whole performance Ive got a GR55 which I use from time to time - its a fantastic piece of kit once it’s set up for the guitar you’re using. I just wish I could find more use for it (I’ve used it mainly with bass but it’s far more flexible on guitar)

Greetings David and welcome! Metal and neo soul? Interesting Look forward to seeing some of your material - we never stop learning!

Hi Patrick and welcome. That Gretsch is lovely You suggest you don’t play it? Is that because it’s “too nice” (I have a couple like that) or because you’re concentrating on the acoustic? Its too good to sit on a stand and not be used - get it played!

Hiya! Welcome to guitarchat! Whereabouts are you and wherever it is, I hope you’re coping in these difficult times? If you don’t mind, maybe you could share a little about yourself? How long have you been playing? Do you gig or just play for your own entertainment? What sort of music do you play? And what sort of gear do you have (and what would be your dream guitar/amp)?

On sheer numbers, I guess I should call my self a guitarist as they outnumber the basses - not by much but there’s definitely more of them. And my go to instrument for noodling on is an acoustic guitar. So although I play bass in a band, I’d probably consider myself a guitarist. Not a very good one, if I’m honest but ability wasn’t mentioned in the question.

This is me thinking with my fingers as I type but perhaps we need to augment and amend the content a bit? We’ve been relying on the content growing organically and, for all the reasons stated, it just isn’t happening. Maybe it’s time to start pushing content onto the site to seed it (and the search engines) with content so that non-BCers start seeing GC in search results? I think that within the overall guitar-playing community, there’s a distinct sub-group of learners. A much bigger group, and on a much longer journey, than those on BC and, if my experience was anything to go by, very intimidated by those who can play. So perhaps the site needs a dedicated (and very visible) learner section where newcomers to guitar can have a “safe space” to ask dumb questions, get novice-specific advice? Reviews of all the tuition sites out there, for example. Sites like Guitarbots. Who’s used them? Are they any good? Within the general site, gear reviews - and, again, reviews of YT review sites. Playing and composition videos (especially while we’re all locked away). I know the site has the potential for all of this but maybe it needs a group of people to submit the posts and, most importantly for the search engines, start discussing them? It will feel artificial at first but that will change as the audience grows..... Sorry, this turned out to be a bit more of a ramble than I anticipated but, hopefully, within all this blather there are one or two valid thoughts. I think I need a lie down now.

I just watched the KDH video and some of the Chapman rebuttal. Then I started to lose the will to live... You're right - this is the internet in the 21st century. What was supposed to be the information superhighway has turned out to be an open sewer where we get to watch all sorts of random 5h1t flow past. I must admit that I didn’t really care for “Chappers” presentation style when he was just doing them for Andertons (I still don’t care for their videos - good informative material rendered unwatchable by schoolboys as far as I’m concerned) but I get that that’s just my opinion and, if I’m honest, I’m really not his target demographic. It seems like a lot of people like his stuff so good luck to him. I hadn’t heard of Chapman guitars and I’m not really that interested in them - but, again, good luck to him. The market will decide if they’re any good or not - personally, I think he’s going to struggle but, hey, at least he’s giving it a go. But whatever the accuracy of his statements, KDH is symptomatic of so many YouTubers these days - cynicism, criticism and sarcasm presented as “investigative journalism”. I’d have more interest if he’d bothered to check the spelling of “challenge” and could think of another way of editing his material without trying (badly) to be a guitar-centric version of Paul Joseph Watson; Shouty, outraged and sensationalist. It’s easy to criticise anyone. It’s easy to take the p155, to lampoon, belittle and sneer - and pretend that you’re a consumer champion or exposing some hideous corporate malfeasance. But if he gets a following and people are happy for him to be outraged on their behalf then, again, good luck to the guy. Welcome to the 21st century

What can I say? I was young and needed the cash.

Count me in!

It could be phasing and worth checking (how would you check this?) I’d certainly make the company aware but there’s a good chance that the speakers need to be broken in. It’s a while since @BasalGangliaposted this - I wonder how he got on?

I checked all of the contacts before I did anything and they were all in place. It’s very much like my Rick basses which also needed shielding.

My Les Paul Trad has always had a low-level electrical hum - the sort that stops when you touch the strings. I’ve had some time on my hands recently and started playing it a lot more and now the hum has started to really wind me up. So I’ve just spent a happy morning shielding the control cavity with copper tape and - like magic - the hum has now gone! Happy day! Im now wondering if this might work on the irritating noise coming from Mrs S*...... *Just kidding, obvs. The next 12 weeks will fly past in the wink of an eye