I agree. Currently produced amps may sound great, but what do you do when a circuit board craps out and the company doesn’t support the product once it is discontinued? Throw it out like an old tv?
i second this^ i think the main thing is you get what you pay for. the cheap birthday present guitar sounds like a good idea to grandma but if you cheap out on a guitar you will hate playing it, if you can play it at all
"Tonewood" That will go on as long as guitars are made of wood - and then they will argue carbon fiber vs metal vs acrylic vs ceramic vs no body at all (ie Gittler). EDITED: I love that you pinned that idiotic statement by a pinhead. Good on you mate.
nobody sounds like stevie ray vaughn. they try but nobody does it like stevie. i can't tell one metal player from another because i just don't listen to it enough. same deal. i don't think you hear it.
My favorite myth is (I keep hearing it from parents who are afraid to throw money at their kid's new hobby) that at first a cheap, lousy guitar will do "and then if he/she progresses well" they will get a better one. While cheap doesn't necessarily mean bad, there is a correlation, you can't expect a $100 guitar to be good. And when it's not good, you don't feel like playing it, you're not practicing, you're not progressing. It sounds bad, it feels bad. Even worse: if the neck is bad, uncomfortable to play, you learn a bunch of bad positions and techniques. I'm not saying that the first guitar of a kid who's just starting off should be a $1800 pro instrument. But it has to be decent.
As is widely recognised now luckily $100 starter guitar will be reasonable. Heck the Harley Bentons and Wolf guitars aren't going to break the bank and they're much less than $500
I sorta cheated. I started playing in mid 70's and bought a hardtail Strat as my first guitar. If you follow R Neilson C Trick he always says in late 60's early 70's you could get good guitars for $300. Like I did. The only cheap guitars I ever bought are now with a A/E 12 string and a A/ E 6 string. $ 129 for 12 string and $83 for the 6 string. And I use both in my worship band. For the money both are great.
@@sparkyguitar0058 you were lucky to live in a country where stuff was available. Here in Romania I started by making my own pickup from my grandmother's turntable and gluing it on my lousy acoustic, wiring it into the same grandmother's radio's amplifier. Later I had someone put together a distortion pedal following instructions from a magazine. In 1992 a Strat appeared in the window of a pawn shop. Me and my friends went there almost every day just to look at it. The price was about 8 times the average monthly wages here. Try explaining that to today's kids who can walk into a guitar shop and pick the instrument that they want, many of those quite affordable...
@@ferencercseyravasz7301 Ya I hear you. As a matter of fact just watched some rich kid in a Guiter Center go pick out a $2000 Les Paul for daddy to buy. Kid doesn't even know how to play. As I answer this my $83 guitar is on my lap so I practice my worship songs for Sunday. I wonder when that kid last picked up that guitar to play. Maybe he took lessons and actually loves his guitar. Or realisticly it's already sold off for new video games. The way we learned you gotta love your guitar EVERYDAY. For me I'll lose the ability to remember so many songs while trying to learn new 1's.
@@sparkyguitar0058 I'm not saying that everyone should start with the cheapest option, quite opposite, even a first guitar has to be decent. But obviously a $2000 instrument for a kid is way over the top. As for me, I played that lousy guitar - to use a quote by Bryan Adams - till my fingers bled. And it was the first stretch of the road that took me from Heavy Metal through Conservatory to a PhD in Musicology and a life that brought me joy and happiness. So yeah, it is possible...
The starting with acoustic guitar myth, I think, is more about learning good habits with a super clean tone so when you inevitably switch to electric, you can be a cleaner, more technical player.
Yes.. You are 100% right. You should learn acoustic first. It will make you a better electric player learn a ton of chords snd scales. Within them hard chords. Finger picking. The reasons go on and on. I played metal over 30 yrs been playin acoustic for 5 yrs. Theirs so much i learned playin acoustic i missed out on them 30 yrs. If i only played acoustic first i been so much better. Lets face it electric pretty much a handful of chords. Got lame after 30 yrs. I just wish i played acoustic first.
You do realize you can play an electric without plugging in? I have played both acoustic and electric for around 40 years and I find this to not be true.
@@tomterry2662 If you only played a handful of chords after 30 years on electric, you did yourself a great injustice. I also grew up listening to metal in the 80s, but didn't limit myself to just playing power chords. Acoustic isn't the only way to learn to play clean or to learn more chords.
You can get the same effect of not masking your mistakes if you set your amplifier to the clean channel (or turn the gain to zero if it's a single channel amp).
I'm for the end of the video. Now I am a man that grew up with parents that hated Rock and Roll. My parents hated me playing guitar in the first place.They let me have an acoustic guitar to start out with. But when I was ready to start playing electric guitar,they said no way. I tried to explain to my dad that electric guitars are more easier to play and have more fret room.But you couldn't talk sense with him at all. All he thought I was out to do was make nothing but noise.But still on this day I believe electric guitars are easier to play then acoustic and I own one of both.
I remember hearing Townshend tell the story about asking Jim Marshall to build him the 8X12 cabinet. Marshall replied that he could do it, but that Pete's roadies would end up hating him cause of how much it weighed. Pete dryly replied, something to the effect of, "They get paid……."
My favorite myth is, that strings through the body are better than strings through bridge! From a 66 year old 50+ year player, in a little town in Colorado. Less than a thousand people, no traffic lights, no street lights, no music stores.
“Tone is in the hands” is my favorite myth. People like to say that then go out and buy every piece of signature gear they can so they can sound like whoever. You can’t make this stuff up lol.
I 100% agree. Less gain forces you to pick harder (actually making up for some gain) with more precision. Thus making you a better player through healthy practicing!
You have to start on acoustic. Jesus...all day long every day during Christmas for the 8 years I managed a guitar store. Same shit with bass. You need to learn guitar first? Why? They’re completely different instruments. Plus you can always tell a guitarist that just took up bass. They play it like a guitar. No groove, and don’t know wtf a pocket is to save their life.
My friend THOROUGHLY believes that electric guitar doesn't make you talented because it's "easier" to play than acoustic. The action on his electric was so high, I swear to God I could stick my wallet under the 5th fret, no BS. Proceeded to tell me that you don't have skill if you start on electric. The two are two different instruments, and I am decent on both. Especially since I've been rebuilding my epi for the last year and 3 months, trying to learn Metallica on acoustic, I'm pretty sure I have decent skill. Dudes guitar is perfectly in tune, he plays it, it's out of tune. I play it it sounds normal. Check the intonation, not a problem in the cowboy chord area. Try to figure out what's wrong. Legit his is pushing the 54 gauge low e ALL the way down to the fretboard, and his resoning is "precision is everything", and yet while practicing drums he manages to COMPLETELY mis the cymbol, and whack his own dern leg... And IM the one who doesn't know what I'm doing. Playing guitar since 7th grade and I graduate in 2021. He practices because he thinks he has to and only does it twice a year. Playing because you WANT to is the only way to go.
On starting on an acoustic, I agree with you, I personally wish I never had to go thru that probation myself, but in hindsight, I will concede that starting out on an acoustic has its merit. Firstly, whether it's on an acoustic or an electric, the base remains the base. Chords, arpeggios, scale, picking, hand dexterity, strength and endurance, coordination with both hands, what have you. That's something you have to go thru before learning Master of Puppets. Now, I am, like you are, convinced that starting on an acoustic will not do anything for you. However. Not every child's desires ought to be fulfilled in life. Sometimes, they need to earn it. If the promise of buying an electric conditional to reaching a certain level on an acoustic is not a strong enough motivation, that the acoustic ends up in a corner of the bed room, you know, maybe that child never deserved an electric in the first place. The mistake I've seen however is having a child starting on a über cheap acoustic with ridiculously high action and hardly any radius on tiny frets.
When I started playing guitar in 1992 my parents could not afford the whole deal. So I got the electric without pedals or amp. Believe it or not it took me 2 years to plug that guitar into an amp. I might not be a great guitarist but I never gave up
When I was young, my parents bought me canned beans. Believe it on not, it was 3 years before they bought me a can opener. man!!! talk about the blues!
Electric guitar is actually easier to play for a beginner who lacks callouses. Thin electric necks help beginners with smaller hands. Building up strength by playing acoustic is productive, too. Maybe the best option is whatever will inspire the learner to keep playing. I hate to see a guitar sitting in a cupboard gathering dust...
Hell ya rock on man, I watched a video that Rob Chapman put out and he talked about a guy that he knew that played a electric guitar without an amp for a long time. I don't believe in gear shaming and rock what you got the biggest factor is your passion and work effort...and you showed that..much respect and good luck to you man
i had my electric plugged into a stereo within a day,plugged into the record input on a cassette player with record and play on(and pause pressed) if you unpress pause it records the distorted guitar......after 1-2 years i had a jcm800 100 watt head and 4x12" 1960a cab and a gibson les paul custom(got both for $1200)
There is a interview with Pete.T on youtube where he is discussing the early days and the way there equipment was constantly needing to be boosted and made louder and he tell's that exact story about the marshalls and the full stack .At the same time Jimmi H. was also constantly coming in asking for similar stuff to be upgraded,so it was pete who helped develop the full stack but it was jimi pete and clapton who were constantly working with Jim.M to get what they needed from their marshall amps.
The whole vintage gear sounds better myth started in the early 70's. Gibson and Fender were producing very poor quality intruments (with some exceptions) compared to the stuff they made in the 50's and early 60's. It didn't take the pro's long to figure that out. Today, we live in gear heaven. New gear is so well made. Even low end stuff can be great. So vintage gear does not hold the same advantage it did back when this myth started.
I always encourage people interested in learning guitar to start with an electric. Yes, you gotta buy an amp. But you will have a lot more fun learning.
Of course, one reason you can discount Brian May as the source of the full stack is he started using AC30s before he even joined Queen, and other than the Deacy, he sticks with them.
top mounted jacks make building a pedal board sooo much easier to wire. That is part of the reason I went with all Strymon. If you can't get the sound you want out of the Strymon line then you haven't spent enough time trying.
One myth I wondered about was if you go over the top bar on a swing set you will turn inside out? This unfortunately for my friends Jimmy Howard it is true. He got over wild on a swing set and turned in to a pile of guts. Don't go swimming for an hour after you eat. Most of the kids did drowned. The coroner blamed the heavy lunch for the three deaths. He never asked if any of the children knew how to swim. Most inner city kid pre boys and girls club barely knew how to get water in their mouth. Forget swimmers in it. See you Wednesday and thank you.
You need more fingers! Here's another myth, the guy who owns all the expensive stuff or the one who owns the most gear is a better player. How many times have you gone to a gig where the one who is playing the $4000 PRS is chugging power chords all night while the guitarist with a modified Epiphone, Joyo pedals, and a budget amp is killing it? Too many guitarists judge that book by its cover.
You are correct, Jim! The best guitar players always seem to be using serviceable gear that they’ve been beating the hell out of forever and they’ll never get rid of it because they love it. Many players who have the money to play all of the $5000 Les Pauls that they want always seem to be average at best. Though I do admire their appreciation for high-end gear.
I am that guy with Gibson Standard LP who barely can play anything beyond power chords. But I love it and it inspires me to play and practice much more than my previous cheap guitar. Anyway gear cost and playing skills are usually not connected at all. It is just that professionals tend to spend more on what they work with.
I use 16s tuned down on acoustic guitar, but I’ve gone done to 9s on electric guitar. Like BB King said:”Why are you working so hard?” I play Slide on a round necked Dobro with Resophonic guitar strings which only come as 16s in Australia.
Great video dude! The one that you talked about beginners playing an acoustic first, I was that guy growing up. Played acoustic till I was 15, bought my first electric off a guy I went to school with for $10. My family didn't have a lot of money at the time and thought it was just a phase I was going through. Well, the phase is still going on 46 years later lol!
You're right about most of it, but I gotta call bullshit on people sounding just like SRV. There are people that are clearly influenced by him, but you can ALWAYS tell the difference.
I am a pedal maker, I use top mounted jacks because it's what people want. It effects tone 0%. It's actually a slight pain in the ass to use them, it requires a lot of precision to drill the perfect holes in the top of a 1590B enclosure to fit the jacks right next to the power plug. I have to do a whole fucking ordeal with some custom cut washers and dremeling off the corners of the jacks to squeeze them into that spot and still have the pedal close up, but it's nice and compact and people don't bitch asking for top mounted jacks. It looks clean though, so I do like it, but it was a lot of bullshit to get it to fit there.
Guitar myths are absolutely confounding. I just can't believe the baloney so many players believe after all these years. I went through about two years of buying into gear mythology, from about the age of 12 to 14. I grew out of my gear mania early in part because I got into it in the heart of guitar gear insanity: Los Angeles in the 1980s. The town was at the height of hair metal/shred insanity. I owned or played every brand. What I learned then and what is truer than ever is that you don't need to go broke getting a great tone and a good guitar. If you can play well enough and take the time to dial it in you can get a very affordable amp, some pedals and plug right in and get amazing tones. It would surprise most players how simple and at times cheap were the rigs used to record some of the most legendary albums, or even the gear some big acts took on tour. Regarding full stacks, I'm probably in the minority here because I never liked them. I always played a head and slant cab when I was using heads and cabs. This period didn't last long because I didn't want to feel like I was moving a grand piano every time I played a gig, and some of my gigs were in small clubs and even in some cases a health food restaurant in Hollywood. I felt very bad as my JMP was blasting right in the ear of this old many trying to eat his avocado and alfalfa sandwich. The stage was too small for me and my amp. On subsequent gigs at that joint I played their house amp, a Fender Princeton, with my Rat pedal.
LOVE your videos. Always spot-on. Btw, don't listen to that ignorant, belligerent fu*k who dissed you because of your size. I didn't realize you had to be a certain weight to be a good guitar player! He's obviously off his meds. Just one observation on your Acoustic v. Electric comments though, which I also thought were both accurate and honest-as always. I'm a rock drummer, but I think people start with acoustics for lots of good reasons. First, they're cheaper. Second, you don't need an amp, you can play them anywhere. And third, I think they give you a solid foundation in good guitar playing, regardless of style... they certainly strengthen and stretch your fingers. But I think people got this idea from the way OTHER artists usually begin their careers. For example, nearly every great pianist I know started out playing classical piano to learn good technique and how to read, then transferred to electric or jazz or whatever, later. Same with professional dancers. Most of the truly great ones started in ballet to master the foundation and the basics. And finally, even the world's best actors usually begin doing live plays (especially Shakespeare), then eventually move on to television and film, wisdom being, if you can do this kind of acting, you can do ANYTHING. Just my two cents.
I like his point on the acoustic vs electric for a first guitar. Let me say though, I started on a crappy acoustic. Luckily Nirvana had enough songs on acoustic to keep me interested. When I did finally get my hands on an electric, it made me have a great respect for the instrument. Same as when I finally got and amp, and when I finally got a distortion pedal. It made me respect them even more, and I carry that to this day.
I started out on acoustic. At the time I picked up guitar, my dad's Ovation, I just wanted to learn the instrument. Yes, I intended on playing electric, but I enjoyed playing acoustic and still do. It's just that 97% of my playing has always been electric. I can't express myself as well on acoustic. I don't believe on forcing acoustic on new players. For me it was a great introduction to the instrument but I've moved on.
Couple of my thoughts. 1. On the cable myth. The big thing on them is the shielding. Some cables use thinner braided shield, allowing slightly more RF to penetrate. Also, how that shielding is transfered in the connector ends is key as well. You see a bit more of the better materials and construction in the higher end...but still doesn't mean inexpensive ones can't. 2. On the Steve Vai, I am the same way with hearing him. However, on the Whitesnake album he did, when I first heard it. I was like...that's Steve...and that's Adrian. Only to find out Steve played all of it. Adrian had a broken hand or something like that when they recorded it. 3. On the delay pedals...analog or delay isn't as a big concern as much as what type of delay circuit is uses...ie water bucket circuit. Just my thoughts and opinions is all.
Actually, Billy Gibbons used 7's when he first switched to light guage strings. Then moved to 8's. There is an interview near the end of the video where he plays La Grange at Darryl Hall's house. In that video he explains how and why he changed to light guage strings. HINT: BB King was involved, by asking him why he was working so hard. Then suggested he switch to lighter guage strings. There is more to the story, if you search RUclips using both Darryl Hall's name and Billy Gibbon's name it should come up. Then scan to about 5:41 in the video.
#14: A guitar's pickups are the sole factor in determining its tone. I don't know how many times I've heard this. It's flat-out false. Play any electric unplugged and listen close. Then plug it into a CLEAN amp, play and listen. You will hear an amplified version of the SAME TONE. Switching pickups will only change the tone by subtle amounts. It's the player and the guitar as a whole that makes the tone, and the pickups are just microphones for the guitar. The only time this MIGHT actually be true is when you crank the gain to the point that the electronics take over your sound, but by that time your "tone" has been completely overtaken by your amp and electronics.
The guitars neck has more affect on tone than the pick-ups... The woods used, how thick the fretboard is, the fret composition (nickel-silver, Stainless, bronze, etc) all have an affect on the overall resonance of the instrument. Hence the reason no two guitars sound alike, unplugged or plugged in...
yell into a pickup without strings on your guitar and be amazed at SILENCE.a pickup is an electromagnet PERIOD......a good rigid setup ,proper intonation and the electronics determine 98.5% of tone.wood is slightly below 1% of the contributing factor as far as tone ios concerned.please look up "cardboard stratocaster" made at the fender custom shop guess what it sounds exactly like? any ideas? it sounds exactly like a STRATOCASTER...........but its cardboard? theres no wood?
I'm an electrical engineer and the one thing I'll say in regards to cheap cables is I've cut a few Chinese made ones open or opened the end to inspect the filament only to find copper clad aluminum instead of pure copper. CCA isn't nearly as conductive. That's not to say a more expensive cable couldn't be CCA but I've never opened a major brand cable like Fender, Boss, GLS, Hosa etc. only to find CCA instead of pure copper.
There are many reasons that PCB amps can be less rugged than hand wired amps. If done right PCB can be good. Such as remote mounted tubes and pots, over time these things mounted on the PCB can cause problems.
PCB stands for Printed Circuit Board. if the beginner is a young, small child a classical guitar might be the right choice because the strings are easier on the fingers. I really struggled on a steel string acoustic when I was 8 y/o. got a 3/4 size electric for my 9th Bday. much more comfortable.
Guitar myth #14: the guitar makes the player. Similar to "tone is in the player's hands" argument. This is more downstream than often appreciated. A cheap Ibanez run through a cheap amp can still sound amazing if played to the gear's strengths. A $10k Les Paul run through a Marshall stack can sound awful in the hands of an inexperienced player. Don't get me wrong, gear is like a toolbox, and the right tool for the job will perform better (a Marshall tends to be rather high strung for sloppy players, while a Fender Princeton is more composed for example. ) The gear does not make the player, but the effect the look and feel of specific gear has on the player cannot be denied or quantified. There's a reason Fender and Gibson can get away with essentially the same product lines since the '50s: they are compelling aesthetics both visually and audibly. There's a reason new stuff can make such a splash when it appears on the scene (such as Mesa Boogie or PRS) individual players find the new stuff compelling and draw inspiration from them.
One observation I have about cables is that for me the price of the cable doesn't affect the tone much, if at all. What you do get with more expensive cables is, as mentioned, better quality construction. Personally I use the Lava Tightrope cable system, but it's because the cables are flexible and the type of connector allows you to plug them into jacks that many other cables would be impossible to plug into. They're also incredibly easy to make once you get the procedure down. They're sort of like the Evidence Audio SIS ones Dan from That Pedal Show uses when he builds boards.
With the Pete Townsend story, what I had heard was he was responsible for the SLP i.e. 100W amp. I haven’t heard the story about the first full stack. He kept going back to Jim Marshall saying the amps weren’t loud enough and he needed more power behind them, causing Jim Marshall to double the power amp thus creating the 100W SLP. Please correct me if that is not the case. Please and Thank You.
One thing I wanted to mention about the history of gain, and this may sound very simplistic, but it makes sense. From the recording POV, things can be very rushed. Bands have only so much time to knock out a record. So what they do to achieve the right tone in the studio will often surprise those who have never been in a studio environment. I've only recorded demos but from that I learned how different the studio is from playing live. Also, I watched way more professional artist lay down tracks and it was a revelation. The studio is such a different environment that you really can't compare it to a live situation. Bands use surprisingly little overdrive. This makes it easier to mix multiple tracks. With metal you need a big, thick sound. But you don't want mud. if you have too much mud you can't even hear a major to minor shift and it will create an unpleasant dissonance. Mustaine is simply masterful in the studio. He understands guitar tone like few others. This is why Peace Sells and Rust in Peace are so monumental in the annals of great guitar tone. I also like that he stuck mostly with Marshalls. He didn't go off over the edge with gain like Metallica and other bands did. Even on Justice which is one of Metallica's clearest sounding albums when it comes to guitar it is still way too hairy. Also, you know the story about mixing out Jason's bass. I'm not going to go anymore into that but it was a genuine asshat move on the part of Lars. In a good mix everything must stand in its proper place, siloed but mixable. I love the tone of Ellefson's bass on Peace Sells. It's so clear and powerful. As I was saying earlier, things can be very rushed in the studio. For expediency you can go one of two ways. Crank the gain all the way up and let things be what they will. The reason this is not done is for the reasons stated. Producers and sound engineers deal with distorted guitar tracks all day long, every day. It's their job. They know what works, what doesn't, and why. Now, playing live you always end up using more gain, more of everything. You use higher volume and higher resonant peaks, bigger lows, etc. Live is about taking the drama of the recording and playing it for a live audience, recreating what you can. Bands NEVER sound the same live on the album, not even a band like Rush, Dream Theatre or Return to Forever. You can only get so close. Live music is about the live experience. This means you understand that the control of the studio situation goes out the window. If you set the gain on 3 on a record, then live you might even have it ono 7 or 8. Some go to ten, and yes, some go to 11.
At a rehearsal a few years ago some idiot grabbed my $20 guitar center cable and left his 12ft monster brand cable. Never saw the guy again and so the cable is mine now I remember marketing from years ago for some expensive cable: “it’s like taking a blanket off my amp!” Not really, but I can tell a slight difference between the monster cable and a cheap cable when I’m plugged straight into the amp; the nicer cable sounds slightly better. Not sure it’s worth the price difference. A clean boost or overdrive would be a better investment. That said, it’s a solid cable and seems like it’s probably more durable than the cheap ones I normally buy
Absolutely great segment. Being a retired electronics engineer, I can tell you the gauges of the cable is the main difference. I use large cbi cables from the amp head to the cabinets .It makes for a cleaner transfer of current , thus more electrons flowing. I use the same cables from to loop my boards to the amps. I make my own cables to connect my pedals.
Another good thing about less gain is less feedback problems when trying to play a tight rhythm. I also notice the low strings distortion a lot faster than the high strings. The fact that I get plenty of chunk from a valvestate amplifier with the gain on 5 especially the avt150 head and the amp stays pretty much quiet if not low hiss.
If someone is inspired by electric guitar, handing them an acoustic can often discourage them to the point of giving up. I wonder how many great guitarists never got off the ground cuz mommy was too cheap or uninformed to shell out for an electric .
As a loooooooooong time metal guy, your dead on. We dial the gain back to preserve tonality. And ur right about slayer and megadeth. Good ear bro. I like your vids. Keep up the good work man!!!!!
I never liked heavy gauge or tuning down lower than D, and that was only for a couple songs in a set. My preferred gauge is 9 and occasionally 10-46. Otherwise, 9 is where it's at. I have also used 8s. Frank Marino uses 7s with unwound D strings.
My 2 cents, maybe just 1, but anyway. About string gauge, i thinks it's more about the mix and the frequencies in band. If i play alone 13's sound huge, but when you add bass player, drums and keyboards, it's a whole new ball game, tone wise. Also i have to comment about SRV string gauge, his top and bottom strings were heavy, but rest of the set was something like 11's, and guitar was tuned to e flat. Josh Smith uses real 13's, with 26 plain g, in standard e tuning.
MYTH #14... "If you HOLD a music man MAJESTY while making a video, All the other Guitarist will be JEALOUS!." lol oops,.. that's not a myth, it's just REALITY!!! lol
TheGeminilexx I only clickd on this video (never seen this channel before) bc the music man....... I only stayd for the zack wyld on the wall.... lolol jk cool video I'll deff.chexk out this channel
I say yes and no for lower tuning makes for a heavier tone. 9s tuned to E 440 then the same 9's tuned to D 430 the strings get all floppy/buzz. 10's at D 430 have roughly the same tension/feel as 9's @ E 440. And they are not floppy, cleans/tightens the sound back up. Might not be so much of a issue on a solid bridge. But on my Floyd Rose it does. A case can be made.
Another myth is whammy guitars are a crutch. While using a whammy too much is not cool, it's just another tool. My number one reason for liking Floyd Rose bridges is tuning stability. I like your channel. You know what you're talking about.
Firstime watcher, man you won yourself a fan here. "Vintage gear sounds better, BEeeeeep" wrongo. You said it! Thank you for being one of the few humble/honest people to say it. Keep it up love the content.
My favorite amp is a 1973 Peavey Classic. Cheap as dirt, and to me, after a speaker change, sounds wonderful. PCB.?pp6., although the pots, and jacks are not connected to the board. I also have several hand wired, and actual P2P amps. I brought my Peavey in to be repaired, and my blond Bandmaster in at the same time. Both for recaps. Guess which one was cheaper? The Fender cost 1/3rd the price of the Peavey to recapp. So, I agree, from a tone point of veiw, PCB is just as good, if not clearer that HW, but from a repair standpoint, HW is much simpler. From my limited experience. Thank You.
I used to have a vintage jcm 800 100w amp head I got someone to take the negative feedback loop out of it, great sound but too loud. I wound up selling it to guitar center..
SRV didn't have 0.13 gauge set of strings, they were a custom set with the top and low (E) strings 0.13 and 0.58 the middle ones were of a med set I believe it was (B)0.15 (G)0.19p (D)0.28 and (A)0.38. I put this on my old Fender A.S. with Texas Special P/Us and it's pretty damn close to his tone.That G and b string squeal is definitely there if you have the finger strength. I love it!
Myth #1 "better" means something on youtube. A Rolls is better than a VW bug. Unless better means "less likely to get broken into". "It is better to not jump off a cliff" unless someone is shooting at you and it is 5 ft. high...and on, and on...
I DO prefer an Analog delay over Digital...but I can see use for both. As for acoustic vs. electric as your first guitar; I agree 100% on beginning "player's choice" (in this lazy day and age)...but I found (in my world as an 80's beginner) that if you start with acoustic, and get decent on that---when you finally grab an electric YOU CAN SMOKE THAT THING! It's just so much easier to play. If either of my kids (born in the 80's) were interested in playing guitar (which they were not) I would have insisted they start on acoustic; so when they grabbed an electric, they would excel beyond their own beliefs like I did.
That was the best explanation I've heard to tell people what guitar they should start out on. Thanks again, Robert. Your experience has helped me once again. I've been asked that question so much throughout my life from friends interested in learning guitar.
The ph/acid content in your skin can kill strings ! I have found in my youth I killed strings on basses all of the time. But as I have gotten older I do not have that problem as i once had in my youth !!
Regarding cables. You don't have to pay a lot for good leads. Just research the purity. There are many leads that provide great value for money. For instance (going to hi-fi) those really expensive ($1000) speaker cables are NO BETTER than figure 8 lighting cable (which is rated as 1800 W RMS) and costs fuck all. With guitar leads and mic cables all you need is wire of a good purity and halfway decent connection points and, as you said, backup cables. In my case, my best cables are both my go-to and backups.
I wanted to learn to play the electric guitar when I was 9. Kiss was my inspiration. My mom took me to some old guy that told me I had to learn in an acoustic.my mom agreed and that broke me.i bought an electric guitar when I was 27 and taught myself to play Metallica. Now finally at 50 I’m going back and learning to play what I really like, kiss, Motley Crue, poison. What a waste of time. Took me 42 years because of that myth!
Re Vintage. My first Les Paul was a 1960 model in 1981. It was the worst Gibson I’ve played. A good guitar is a good guitar, regardless of age. A bad guitar will always be a turd 💩
Another Biiiiiig myth is BODY TONEWOOD! Talking to fender custom shop master builder told me the 95% of the sound is the neck. Body Stonewood is only for aesthetic reasons
Part 2 Okay, thanks for sticking with me. The 2nd guitar was a Left Handed Hamer Flying V, all black with red touches (knobs, switches, etc.). I am a right-handed guitarist so you can imagine the fun I had with the volume knob, etc. It had a double-locking Floyd Rose and "Hamer" on the headstock ("Hamer" was also upside down). But the pick-ups were nothing short of wicked: Rick Derringer "Stealth" pick-ups! I had never heard of them before, but GWAD they were good. I honestly cannot think of any style of rock/blues (and I'm an old blues guy myself). If I ever found a set in real good condition I buy them in a minute if I had the funds available---no kidding, that good. The Hamer had a huge, heavy, V-shaped hard she'll case, and the only other one I ever seen I saw recently was $5,000+. So okay, maybe I got rid of it a few decades too soon, but what the hell, right? Sorry if I ran on, but your show got me thinking. Thanks☮ Mark Zuelch markziz60@yahoo.com
I started on a Hofner bass, & then switched to 6 string... Have never had the desire to play an acoustic guitar, I had a go at playing one a few years ago, absolutely horrendous! I might as well tried to play a shovel...
Billy Gibbons plays 7s. Steve used a hybrid set of 13s. They were .013 -- .015 -- .019p -- .028 -- .038 -- .058. He also played in Eb which made the 13s much easier to manage.
@@RobertWJackson Yes he has however at a guitar clinic he hosted, Gibbons said he's played 7s since 1974 after getting advice from BB King. Even his signature set of strings are 7s. Touche!
Scotty D Not only that, the timeline simply isn’t right for it to be Hendrix or some of the other names. Full stacks (2 4X12s with an amp on top) were around certainly by mid 1965, well before Hendrix was in England. Here is a link showing Townshend with some very early stacks. www.thewho.net/whotabs/gear/guitar/marshallstack.html
Once they made a 4x12 cab I'm sure it didn't take any time at all for some employee of marshall to hook up 2 of them. There's no way a single rock star came up w the stack. It's some boring, nameless soul we'll never know.
@@RobertWJackson what did Pete Townsend ever do for rock n roll? 😂 😂 😂 I'm just saying why would the idea for a full stack have taken so long? Somebody at marshall had to have thought of this before.
@@mikeygabbard9268 Nobody probably thought of it before because no one was using that kind of volume before. Plus, at that time, Marshall's operation was still quite small.
Guitar cables can have different grades of copper for the wire. Yes, it seems ridiculous, but metal grades are very different for quality, even if they are all the same metal. It's kind of carats of Gold.
Yeah I have a Boss TU-3 tuner on my board just to have one pedal thats not true-bypass. Use to be a TU-2 for about 20+ years until recently when I bought the new model, just for the screen being brighter and easier to see. My TU-2 is still being used and works 100%. Boss pedals for me have NEVER failed and ive owned quite a few thru out the years and some of them survived festival season's being caught in the rain. ;-) Im not a huge fan of the top mounted jacks. But i do have two pedals that have them in my simple 6 pedal setup I use now. I started guitar on an electric and im glad I did because it had low action and made me want to play the guitar. Im not saying all acoustics are hard to play, but a lot of the cheaper acoustics at the time I was starting to learn had seriously high action and I prob would of quit trying to learn the guitar if id had a high action guitar to begin with. I got into the acoustic about 1 year into learning and I got an Ovation and I still use Ovations today and that made switching between acoustic and electric very easy. I do use and own other acoustics today, but the electric i began with that had low action and the Ovation (also with low action) were great guitars that didnt frustrate the learner right off the bat. These days the Ovations that are cheaper have high action so its not like it use to be and they are starting to become hard to even find in stores. But the guitars priced in the low low end these days are amazing compared to what was available when I started. I cant really say that learning on an acoustic first is better or not, really depends on the person. I def agree that some of the playing you hear is def in the persons hands. When I was young I couldnt hear or didnt pay attention to the fine details in certain guitar players like I do today and now when I hear someone say cover a song Im really paying attention to all the little details that made the original song by the original artist so unique. You hear a lot of guitar players who can play very well, but there is no emotion of feeling in those notes. I appreciate hearing the emotion and detail to the notes being played. A lot of that is in the hands obviously.
Hi Robert, just thought I'd comment on is amps that are point to point wired. I personally own a few amps, one in particular, the Mesa Tremoverb amp combo. If you ask any tech about working on these kinds of amps, they can be a nightmare to repair and trouble shoot. Check the Guitologist on RUclips. He does a video on repairing a Mesa Boogie circuit board. He talks about what a horror show it is to work on. Mesa amps have a printed type circuit board where they have a million relay switches and transistors in these amps that are hell to trouble shoot. Amps that are point to point wired are very easy to change out caps and resistors that may go bad. Mesa amps with a PCB circuit have to have the entire board taken out to work on it. You can also run the risk of destroying traces on these boards. So from a repairing stand point, the point to point wired amps are easier to repair for me personally. I've repaired my own Marshall and Vox AC30 amp and Blackface Bandmaster Fender amp. All of these are point to point wired. The Mesa Boogie Tremoverb amp after countless techs working on it, I finally had to send it back to Mesa themselves in Petaluma, California for repair. And when they got it , they asked me who the bloody hell worked on this amp. I replied, one of your supposed service centre techs. They were blown away, because they had botched up the amp terribly. The amp, I must say now plays very well. It did cost me a king's ransome to get the amp fixed and sent back to Canada. Anyway, just my 2 cents on amps.
PCBs are just fine. The whole point-to-point wiring of vintage and boutique amps that appeals to cork sniffing snobs is sheer malarky. I only care if an amp sounds good and is reliable. I don't care where it was made or how it was made, but how well it was built. That's all that should mattter.
Pete does talk about the stack idea in his book. He says if i remember correctly, somewhat paraphrased of course, that he started stacking 2 of them on top of each other and would strap them together and thats how the stack supposedly started.
If you want to play electric guitar, it's best to have an electric and an acoustic guitar. The acoustic guitar helps to build your muscles, tendons and finger dexterity. 👍
The subjects of true bypass and cable quality are quite related. The issue here is "tone-sucking" which is the decrease of high frequencies and this is all about impedance and capacitance. (I am speaking broadly and simplifying things in the following explanation) IMPEDANCE is the resistance that a component puts up to the passing of a signal. In electricity in general, a lower impedance should feed into a higher impedance to get the maximum transfer of energy. In all areas of audio specifically, bad impedance matching can have a dramatic effect on tone. CAPACITANCE is about the way an electric voltage on one side of a thin insulator can effect or be affected by the presence of a voltage on the other side of the insulator. The amount of capacitance produces a different consequence at different frequencies. The existence of capacitance is in fact what makes tone controls possible at all. Guitar pickups are a high impedance output and for maximum volume and tone transfer, they should be feeding into something of even higher impedance. A guitar pickup may have an output impedance of perhaps 50 thousand Ohms and for this reason guitar amplifiers will have an input impedance of perhaps a million ohms or more to get maximum transfer of energy and minimum roll-off of high frequencies. If you plug your guitar into the Line Input of a mixing desk, this might have an input impedance of perhaps 10 thousand Ohms and although the resulting signal might be adequate and useable it will probably be noticeably quieter and duller. - if you plug your guitar into a Mic input which has an impedance of perhaps only 1 thousand Ohms, then you will get a signal which is so very quiet and extremely dull in tone that it is likely to be useless. A buffer is an electronic device which is used to overcome these type of problems by matching impedances and signal levels, so the buffer will "show" the guitar a more ideal impedance of perhaps a million Ohms or more, whilst the output of the buffer will have a very low impedance of perhaps a couple of hundred Ohms, enabling it to drive signal into most things. Some buffers have such a very low output impedance that they can drive a signal into almost anything without loss of level or tone, e.g. even into a 4 Ohm loudspeaker. The Tone Control on your guitar is in fact a small value capacitor connected to the signal on one end and to the Earth/Ground of the system on the other. This provides a path by which the high-frequency part of the signal can bleed off into Earth instead of going out down the guitar cable and the Tone potentiometer (= a variable resistance) allows you to adjust how much of this happens, thereby enabling you to adjust how much you roll-off the highs. Unfortunately, a guitar cable is by definition a capacitor as an unavoidable consequence of it's construction. It has a central conductor for the signal which is nothing more than a simple insulated wire. It also has an Earth wire which is usually made of lots of fine wires braided together and arranged to wrap around and totally enclose the signal wire and this is to provide a shield. External interference such as the 50 or 60 cycle hum from the mains or any radio waves are shorted to Earth by the enclosing braid so that they do not get onto the signal wire in the centre. So what we now have is by definition a capacitor - two conductors separated by a thin insulator. High quality guitar cables will be made of high purity copper so that they offer the least resistance to the signal and will be constructed in a way which creates the least capacitance to minimise tone-sucking. Maximising those factors whilst having flexibility and the robustness to survive reliably is what makes a high-quality audio cable. Back in the early days, when the Wah, the Fuzz and the Univibe were invented, transistors had not been around very long and circuit design was not very developed. Used in the most common and most useful configuration, transistors intrinsically have a low input impedance, unlike valves which intrinsically have a very high input impedance. Field Effect Transistors (FET's) do have a high input impedance and also distort in a more valve-like way when driven hard but they had not been invented yet. So the early designers of guitar effects either did not concern themselves with the low input impedance of their gadgets or else they did and had designed in buffers which were later taken out by the penny-pinching bean-counters of the company. No doubt those same penny pinchers also swapped out the True Bypass of the Double-Pole, Double-Throw switches (DPDT)for the cheaper Single-Pole, Double-Throw (SPDT) The result of this was that these gadgets were sold in a configuration which left their low-impedance inputs permanently connected to the guitar signal path as the On/Off switch merely chose whether their output was from the dry signal arriving at their input or from the output of their circuitry. Any one of these early gadgets would cause some tone-sucking on it's own but by the time you had three or four of them all linked up, your guitar signal with all effects turned off sounded ultra muffled. True Bypass was the answer. Rip out all those SPDT foot-switches and replace with DPDT's. (although you might need the knowledge to also add a resistor in the right place to stop loud clunks when you switched something on) A single permanently connected buffer between the guitar and the start of the effects chain is an alternative solution which would also solve all of these problems. The guitar only ever "sees" the high input impedance of the buffer and the buffer's low-impedance output can comfortably drive any or all of the subsequent effects without any loss of tone. By definition, a buffer is something which does not in any way alter the signal and a properly designed one won't. Modern effects are all designed to have a high impedance input which is good for guitars or indeed anything else which is plugged in to drive their input. The "True Bypass Is Best" thing arose either from the problem described above and relating to the very early guitar effects or from one other source. Some players are of the opinion that "the only true way" is the minimalist approach that the only thing in between the guitar and the amp should be a short audio cable. There is perhaps some possible merit to this because the less you have between the amp and the guitar the purer your signal will be. Some of the buffers in modern pedals are integrated circuits with many transistors in them. Most are also electronically switched instead of an actual mechanical switch like the old DPDT stomp-switches and therefore your dry signal is still passing through hundreds of transistors even when all effects are off/bypassed. For that reason, I might concede that the purists who only ever play with a guitar plugged directly into a traditional all-valve amplifier might perhaps have a point. Perhaps. Possibly. :-) For the other 99.999% though, the buffers built into modern gear are just fine. The moment that you switch on any single one of your effects, that "straight into the amp" argument instantly evaporates anyway. Legendary guitar pedalboard maker Pete Cornish makes similar points here:- www.petecornish.co.uk/case_against_true_bypass.html
Hey man; awesome video as usual. I actually experienced the last one when I learned to play. My uncle was an awesome guitar player, mostly played Iron Maiden kind of stuff and Iron Maiden has always been my favorite band so I really looked up to him. I had wanted to learn to play since I was old enough to listen to music and imagine myself playing with the band (around age 5), so when I finally got the courage to try (age 15), I asked him if he could help me learn. He was a les Paul player but he told me that the only way to learn was on a steel string acoustic and he bought me one and circled some chords in a book. That was all he did for me, he basically taught me to teach myself, which I'm grateful for. I hated the acoustic and I don't even own one today ten years later. But I really wanted to learn so I stuck it out. I think that it actually helped me as a player. But I totally see where you're coming from, if I hadn't wanted it so badly, I probably would never have learned. Anyway, sorry for the novel man. Ha. Thanks for the great uploads
I know the Pete Townsend story is true because, I asked Jim Marshall about it at a trade show. He had to make slanted top cabs because the straight cabs on top tended to be a bit unbalanced.
Speaking of cabinets, many years ago 2 of my buddies had the opportunity to each buy a 9x12 cabinet (and each speaker was ported ... just for your information) from the band Manowar. Those cabs were monsters !!! Then shortly after that, Manowar decided to go back out on tour. Instead of buying them back from my friends, they rented them. And that's the last thing I ever heard about those cabs, this was back in the early 90's ♫♫♪♫ :D
Don't you worry buddy I have been keeping my eye out for a Gibson reverse v as soon as I find one I will pick it up for you I know how much you like them
I always heard that the full stack came about not because Pete wanted a 8x12 but just a louder amp in general. The speakers of the time couldn't handle the power so the only solution was more speakers. Then the part about the 8x12 getting cut in half to create 2 4x12's is the same just arrived there a little definitely. Not saying I'm right just what I always heard.
Robert, Metal nut vs bone nut? zero fret vs standard setup? nitro vs poly finish insofar as tone? Does tone wood really matter considering many guitarists use pedals anyway.
04:55 I think I read an interview with Jim Marshall years ago, where he did confirm this story. Only alteration was that Pete's roadies objected to the cartage of it & why Pete got Jim to make 2 4x12 cabinets instead.
![Tee Grizzley - Detroit (Feat. 42 Dugg) [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/aeKfTtt0x14/mqdefault.jpg)
The main benefit to handwired amps is the fact that they can be much easier to repair than PCB amps when a component fails.
I agree. Currently produced amps may sound great, but what do you do when a circuit board craps out and the company doesn’t support the product once it is discontinued? Throw it out like an old tv?
This is true. They also are easier to mod.
Hand wired also have better chassis.. Circuit boards are cheap. . you can burn holes in them with solder gun..
agreed
Repairing components on PCB boards is challenging and requires practice. It definitely can be done.
The "learn acoustic before you can play electric" attitude is exactly the reason I got discouraged and stopped playing for 7 or 8 years.
Many times the cheap acoustic has pretty high action and those guitars can barely be played by pros let alone beginners.
i second this^
i think the main thing is you get what you pay for. the cheap birthday present guitar sounds like a good idea to grandma but if you cheap out on a guitar you will hate playing it, if you can play it at all
Same. Thanks dad.
I play bass now.
"Tonewood" That will go on as long as guitars are made of wood - and then they will argue carbon fiber vs metal vs acrylic vs ceramic vs no body at all (ie Gittler).
EDITED: I love that you pinned that idiotic statement by a pinhead. Good on you mate.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
For the record, acrylic guitars sound like trash. But they look cool.
I put a set of Duncan Blackouts in my Acrylic Warlock and now it sounds great. 🤷🏻♂️
@@RobertWJackson yeah, it was probably the pickups on the one I played.
nobody sounds like stevie ray vaughn. they try but nobody does it like stevie. i can't tell one metal player from another because i just don't listen to it enough. same deal. i don't think you hear it.
Amen brother.
My favorite myth is (I keep hearing it from parents who are afraid to throw money at their kid's new hobby) that at first a cheap, lousy guitar will do "and then if he/she progresses well" they will get a better one. While cheap doesn't necessarily mean bad, there is a correlation, you can't expect a $100 guitar to be good. And when it's not good, you don't feel like playing it, you're not practicing, you're not progressing. It sounds bad, it feels bad. Even worse: if the neck is bad, uncomfortable to play, you learn a bunch of bad positions and techniques. I'm not saying that the first guitar of a kid who's just starting off should be a $1800 pro instrument. But it has to be decent.
As is widely recognised now luckily $100 starter guitar will be reasonable. Heck the Harley Bentons and Wolf guitars aren't going to break the bank and they're much less than $500
I sorta cheated. I started playing in mid 70's and bought a hardtail Strat as my first guitar. If you follow R Neilson C Trick he always says in late 60's early 70's you could get good guitars for $300. Like I did. The only cheap guitars I ever bought are now with a A/E 12 string and a A/ E 6 string. $ 129 for 12 string and $83 for the 6 string. And I use both in my worship band. For the money both are great.
@@sparkyguitar0058 you were lucky to live in a country where stuff was available. Here in Romania I started by making my own pickup from my grandmother's turntable and gluing it on my lousy acoustic, wiring it into the same grandmother's radio's amplifier. Later I had someone put together a distortion pedal following instructions from a magazine. In 1992 a Strat appeared in the window of a pawn shop. Me and my friends went there almost every day just to look at it. The price was about 8 times the average monthly wages here. Try explaining that to today's kids who can walk into a guitar shop and pick the instrument that they want, many of those quite affordable...
@@ferencercseyravasz7301 Ya I hear you. As a matter of fact just watched some rich kid in a Guiter Center go pick out a $2000 Les Paul for daddy to buy. Kid doesn't even know how to play. As I answer this my $83 guitar is on my lap so I practice my worship songs for Sunday. I wonder when that kid last picked up that guitar to play. Maybe he took lessons and actually loves his guitar. Or realisticly it's already sold off for new video games. The way we learned you gotta love your guitar EVERYDAY. For me I'll lose the ability to remember so many songs while trying to learn new 1's.
@@sparkyguitar0058 I'm not saying that everyone should start with the cheapest option, quite opposite, even a first guitar has to be decent. But obviously a $2000 instrument for a kid is way over the top. As for me, I played that lousy guitar - to use a quote by Bryan Adams - till my fingers bled. And it was the first stretch of the road that took me from Heavy Metal through Conservatory to a PhD in Musicology and a life that brought me joy and happiness. So yeah, it is possible...
The cable one get hilarious when you go to the audiophile community.
The starting with acoustic guitar myth, I think, is more about learning good habits with a super clean tone so when you inevitably switch to electric, you can be a cleaner, more technical player.
Yes.. You are 100% right. You should learn acoustic first. It will make you a better electric player learn a ton of chords snd scales. Within them hard chords. Finger picking. The reasons go on and on. I played metal over 30 yrs been playin acoustic for 5 yrs. Theirs so much i learned playin acoustic i missed out on them 30 yrs. If i only played acoustic first i been so much better. Lets face it electric pretty much a handful of chords. Got lame after 30 yrs. I just wish i played acoustic first.
You do realize you can play an electric without plugging in? I have played both acoustic and electric for around 40 years and I find this to not be true.
@@tomterry2662 If you only played a handful of chords after 30 years on electric, you did yourself a great injustice. I also grew up listening to metal in the 80s, but didn't limit myself to just playing power chords. Acoustic isn't the only way to learn to play clean or to learn more chords.
play an electric with out the amp at least when warming up it will make a difference, learn clean intonation with fingers then go .
You can get the same effect of not masking your mistakes if you set your amplifier to the clean channel (or turn the gain to zero if it's a single channel amp).
I'm for the end of the video. Now I am a man that grew up with parents that hated Rock and Roll. My parents hated me playing guitar in the first place.They let me have an acoustic guitar to start out with. But when I was ready to start playing electric guitar,they said no way. I tried to explain to my dad that electric guitars are more easier to play and have more fret room.But you couldn't talk sense with him at all. All he thought I was out to do was make nothing but noise.But still on this day I believe electric guitars are easier to play then acoustic and I own one of both.
i own 10+ of both,electric guitars are definitely easier when setup properly.
I remember hearing Townshend tell the story about asking Jim Marshall to build him the 8X12 cabinet. Marshall replied that he could do it, but that Pete's roadies would end up hating him cause of how much it weighed. Pete dryly replied, something to the effect of, "They get paid……."
My favorite myth is, that strings through the body are better than strings through bridge! From a 66 year old 50+ year player, in a little town in Colorado. Less than a thousand people, no traffic lights, no street lights, no music stores.
Similar to the “strings wrapped around a Tune-O-Matic tailpiece on a Gibson gives it more sustain” myth. Also complete CRAP. LOL
“Tone is in the hands” is my favorite myth. People like to say that then go out and buy every piece of signature gear they can so they can sound like whoever. You can’t make this stuff up lol.
RIGHT??? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤦🏻♂️
Haha so true!
Style definitely is. Tone isn't
I 100% agree. Less gain forces you to pick harder (actually making up for some gain) with more precision. Thus making you a better player through healthy practicing!
The thing with high gain is; A, you can have a really fizzy and saturated gain or B, you can have a much tighter sound with less gain.
You have to start on acoustic. Jesus...all day long every day during Christmas for the 8 years I managed a guitar store. Same shit with bass. You need to learn guitar first? Why? They’re completely different instruments. Plus you can always tell a guitarist that just took up bass. They play it like a guitar. No groove, and don’t know wtf a pocket is to save their life.
My friend THOROUGHLY believes that electric guitar doesn't make you talented because it's "easier" to play than acoustic. The action on his electric was so high, I swear to God I could stick my wallet under the 5th fret, no BS. Proceeded to tell me that you don't have skill if you start on electric. The two are two different instruments, and I am decent on both. Especially since I've been rebuilding my epi for the last year and 3 months, trying to learn Metallica on acoustic, I'm pretty sure I have decent skill. Dudes guitar is perfectly in tune, he plays it, it's out of tune. I play it it sounds normal. Check the intonation, not a problem in the cowboy chord area. Try to figure out what's wrong. Legit his is pushing the 54 gauge low e ALL the way down to the fretboard, and his resoning is "precision is everything", and yet while practicing drums he manages to COMPLETELY mis the cymbol, and whack his own dern leg... And IM the one who doesn't know what I'm doing. Playing guitar since 7th grade and I graduate in 2021. He practices because he thinks he has to and only does it twice a year. Playing because you WANT to is the only way to go.
On starting on an acoustic, I agree with you, I personally wish I never had to go thru that probation myself, but in hindsight, I will concede that starting out on an acoustic has its merit.
Firstly, whether it's on an acoustic or an electric, the base remains the base. Chords, arpeggios, scale, picking, hand dexterity, strength and endurance, coordination with both hands, what have you. That's something you have to go thru before learning Master of Puppets.
Now, I am, like you are, convinced that starting on an acoustic will not do anything for you. However. Not every child's desires ought to be fulfilled in life. Sometimes, they need to earn it. If the promise of buying an electric conditional to reaching a certain level on an acoustic is not a strong enough motivation, that the acoustic ends up in a corner of the bed room, you know, maybe that child never deserved an electric in the first place.
The mistake I've seen however is having a child starting on a über cheap acoustic with ridiculously high action and hardly any radius on tiny frets.
When I started playing guitar in 1992 my parents could not afford the whole deal. So I got the electric without pedals or amp. Believe it or not it took me 2 years to plug that guitar into an amp. I might not be a great guitarist but I never gave up
When I was young, my parents bought me canned beans. Believe it on not, it was 3 years before they bought me a can opener. man!!! talk about the blues!
Electric guitar is actually easier to play for a beginner who lacks callouses. Thin electric necks help beginners with smaller hands. Building up strength by playing acoustic is productive, too. Maybe the best option is whatever will inspire the learner to keep playing. I hate to see a guitar sitting in a cupboard gathering dust...
Hell ya rock on man, I watched a video that Rob Chapman put out and he talked about a guy that he knew that played a electric guitar without an amp for a long time. I don't believe in gear shaming and rock what you got the biggest factor is your passion and work effort...and you showed that..much respect and good luck to you man
i had my electric plugged into a stereo within a day,plugged into the record input on a cassette player with record and play on(and pause pressed) if you unpress pause it records the distorted guitar......after 1-2 years i had a jcm800 100 watt head and 4x12" 1960a cab and a gibson les paul custom(got both for $1200)
There is a interview with Pete.T on youtube where he is discussing the early days and the way there equipment was constantly needing to be boosted and made louder and he tell's that exact story about the marshalls and the full stack .At the same time Jimmi H. was also constantly coming in asking for similar stuff to be upgraded,so it was pete who helped develop the full stack but it was jimi pete and clapton who were constantly working with Jim.M to get what they needed from their marshall amps.
The whole vintage gear sounds better myth started in the early 70's. Gibson and Fender were producing very poor quality intruments (with some exceptions) compared to the stuff they made in the 50's and early 60's. It didn't take the pro's long to figure that out. Today, we live in gear heaven. New gear is so well made. Even low end stuff can be great. So vintage gear does not hold the same advantage it did back when this myth started.
I always encourage people interested in learning guitar to start with an electric. Yes, you gotta buy an amp. But you will have a lot more fun learning.
Of course, one reason you can discount Brian May as the source of the full stack is he started using AC30s before he even joined Queen, and other than the Deacy, he sticks with them.
top mounted jacks make building a pedal board sooo much easier to wire. That is part of the reason I went with all Strymon. If you can't get the sound you want out of the Strymon line then you haven't spent enough time trying.
One myth I wondered about was if you go over the top bar on a swing set you will turn inside out? This unfortunately for my friends Jimmy Howard it is true. He got over wild on a swing set and turned in to a pile of guts. Don't go swimming for an hour after you eat. Most of the kids did drowned. The coroner blamed the heavy lunch for the three deaths. He never asked if any of the children knew how to swim. Most inner city kid pre boys and girls club barely knew how to get water in their mouth. Forget swimmers in it. See you Wednesday and thank you.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
lol
You need more fingers! Here's another myth, the guy who owns all the expensive stuff or the one who owns the most gear is a better player. How many times have you gone to a gig where the one who is playing the $4000 PRS is chugging power chords all night while the guitarist with a modified Epiphone, Joyo pedals, and a budget amp is killing it? Too many guitarists judge that book by its cover.
You are correct, Jim! The best guitar players always seem to be using serviceable gear that they’ve been beating the hell out of forever and they’ll never get rid of it because they love it. Many players who have the money to play all of the $5000 Les Pauls that they want always seem to be average at best. Though I do admire their appreciation for high-end gear.
I am that guy with Gibson Standard LP who barely can play anything beyond power chords. But I love it and it inspires me to play and practice much more than my previous cheap guitar. Anyway gear cost and playing skills are usually not connected at all. It is just that professionals tend to spend more on what they work with.
PRS Rocker Says the guy with the screenname "PRSROCKER" hahahaha
I have two epiphones but I stink. Rock on!
Nobody thinks that.
I know this is an older video, but I can’t stand to see mean comments. The video was great Robert just like every video. Keep up the good work
Thanks buddy. 😉🤘🏼🤘🏼🤘🏼
best not to read comments then,or stop being an oversensitive woman
I use 16s tuned down on acoustic guitar, but I’ve gone done to 9s on electric guitar. Like BB King said:”Why are you working so hard?” I play Slide on a round necked Dobro with Resophonic guitar strings which only come as 16s in Australia.
Great video dude! The one that you talked about beginners playing an acoustic first, I was that guy growing up. Played acoustic till I was 15, bought my first electric off a guy I went to school with for $10. My family didn't have a lot of money at the time and thought it was just a phase I was going through. Well, the phase is still going on 46 years later lol!
You're right about most of it, but I gotta call bullshit on people sounding just like SRV. There are people that are clearly influenced by him, but you can ALWAYS tell the difference.
I am a pedal maker, I use top mounted jacks because it's what people want. It effects tone 0%. It's actually a slight pain in the ass to use them, it requires a lot of precision to drill the perfect holes in the top of a 1590B enclosure to fit the jacks right next to the power plug. I have to do a whole fucking ordeal with some custom cut washers and dremeling off the corners of the jacks to squeeze them into that spot and still have the pedal close up, but it's nice and compact and people don't bitch asking for top mounted jacks. It looks clean though, so I do like it, but it was a lot of bullshit to get it to fit there.
Also, on PCB vs P2P amps, the only reason P2P is better is because it's easier to service and mod. It has zero to do with tone.
Guitar myths are absolutely confounding. I just can't believe the baloney so many players believe after all these years. I went through about two years of buying into gear mythology, from about the age of 12 to 14. I grew out of my gear mania early in part because I got into it in the heart of guitar gear insanity: Los Angeles in the 1980s. The town was at the height of hair metal/shred insanity. I owned or played every brand. What I learned then and what is truer than ever is that you don't need to go broke getting a great tone and a good guitar. If you can play well enough and take the time to dial it in you can get a very affordable amp, some pedals and plug right in and get amazing tones. It would surprise most players how simple and at times cheap were the rigs used to record some of the most legendary albums, or even the gear some big acts took on tour. Regarding full stacks, I'm probably in the minority here because I never liked them. I always played a head and slant cab when I was using heads and cabs. This period didn't last long because I didn't want to feel like I was moving a grand piano every time I played a gig, and some of my gigs were in small clubs and even in some cases a health food restaurant in Hollywood. I felt very bad as my JMP was blasting right in the ear of this old many trying to eat his avocado and alfalfa sandwich. The stage was too small for me and my amp. On subsequent gigs at that joint I played their house amp, a Fender Princeton, with my Rat pedal.
LOVE your videos. Always spot-on. Btw, don't listen to that ignorant, belligerent fu*k who dissed you because of your size. I didn't realize you had to be a certain weight to be a good guitar player! He's obviously off his meds.
Just one observation on your Acoustic v. Electric comments though, which I also thought were both accurate and honest-as always. I'm a rock drummer, but I think people start with acoustics for lots of good reasons. First, they're cheaper. Second, you don't need an amp, you can play them anywhere. And third, I think they give you a solid foundation in good guitar playing, regardless of style... they certainly strengthen and stretch your fingers.
But I think people got this idea from the way OTHER artists usually begin their careers. For example, nearly every great pianist I know started out playing classical piano to learn good technique and how to read, then transferred to electric or jazz or whatever, later. Same with professional dancers. Most of the truly great ones started in ballet to master the foundation and the basics. And finally, even the world's best actors usually begin doing live plays (especially Shakespeare), then eventually move on to television and film, wisdom being, if you can do this kind of acting, you can do ANYTHING. Just my two cents.
I like his point on the acoustic vs electric for a first guitar. Let me say though, I started on a crappy acoustic. Luckily Nirvana had enough songs on acoustic to keep me interested. When I did finally get my hands on an electric, it made me have a great respect for the instrument. Same as when I finally got and amp, and when I finally got a distortion pedal. It made me respect them even more, and I carry that to this day.
I started out on acoustic. At the time I picked up guitar, my dad's Ovation, I just wanted to learn the instrument. Yes, I intended on playing electric, but I enjoyed playing acoustic and still do. It's just that 97% of my playing has always been electric. I can't express myself as well on acoustic. I don't believe on forcing acoustic on new players. For me it was a great introduction to the instrument but I've moved on.
Couple of my thoughts.
1. On the cable myth. The big thing on them is the shielding. Some cables use thinner braided shield, allowing slightly more RF to penetrate. Also, how that shielding is transfered in the connector ends is key as well. You see a bit more of the better materials and construction in the higher end...but still doesn't mean inexpensive ones can't.
2. On the Steve Vai, I am the same way with hearing him. However, on the Whitesnake album he did, when I first heard it. I was like...that's Steve...and that's Adrian. Only to find out Steve played all of it. Adrian had a broken hand or something like that when they recorded it.
3. On the delay pedals...analog or delay isn't as a big concern as much as what type of delay circuit is uses...ie water bucket circuit.
Just my thoughts and opinions is all.
Actually, Billy Gibbons used 7's when he first switched to light guage strings. Then moved to 8's. There is an interview near the end of the video where he plays La Grange at Darryl Hall's house. In that video he explains how and why he changed to light guage strings. HINT: BB King was involved, by asking him why he was working so hard. Then suggested he switch to lighter guage strings. There is more to the story, if you search RUclips using both Darryl Hall's name and Billy Gibbon's name it should come up. Then scan to about 5:41 in the video.
#14: A guitar's pickups are the sole factor in determining its tone.
I don't know how many times I've heard this. It's flat-out false. Play any electric unplugged and listen close. Then plug it into a CLEAN amp, play and listen. You will hear an amplified version of the SAME TONE. Switching pickups will only change the tone by subtle amounts. It's the player and the guitar as a whole that makes the tone, and the pickups are just microphones for the guitar.
The only time this MIGHT actually be true is when you crank the gain to the point that the electronics take over your sound, but by that time your "tone" has been completely overtaken by your amp and electronics.
I did a couple of videos on that subject a few months back actually.
The guitars neck has more affect on tone than the pick-ups... The woods used, how thick the fretboard is, the fret composition (nickel-silver, Stainless, bronze, etc) all have an affect on the overall resonance of the instrument. Hence the reason no two guitars sound alike, unplugged or plugged in...
Pickups, pickups, pickups. Save your fancy wood cash for acoustics.
yell into a pickup without strings on your guitar and be amazed at SILENCE.a pickup is an electromagnet PERIOD......a good rigid setup ,proper intonation and the electronics determine 98.5% of tone.wood is slightly below 1% of the contributing factor as far as tone ios concerned.please look up "cardboard stratocaster" made at the fender custom shop
guess what it sounds exactly like? any ideas? it sounds exactly like a STRATOCASTER...........but its cardboard? theres no wood?
Robert, even though I'm strictly an acoustic player now days, I still appreciate any guitar gear talk. I learned a lot from this video!
I'm an electrical engineer and the one thing I'll say in regards to cheap cables is I've cut a few Chinese made ones open or opened the end to inspect the filament only to find copper clad aluminum instead of pure copper. CCA isn't nearly as conductive. That's not to say a more expensive cable couldn't be CCA but I've never opened a major brand cable like Fender, Boss, GLS, Hosa etc. only to find CCA instead of pure copper.
There are many reasons that PCB amps can be less rugged than hand wired amps. If done right PCB can be good. Such as remote mounted tubes and pots, over time these things mounted on the PCB can cause problems.
PCB stands for Printed Circuit Board. if the beginner is a young, small child a classical guitar might be the right choice because the strings are easier on the fingers. I really struggled on a steel string acoustic when I was 8 y/o. got a 3/4 size electric for my 9th Bday. much more comfortable.
Guitar myth #14: the guitar makes the player. Similar to "tone is in the player's hands" argument. This is more downstream than often appreciated. A cheap Ibanez run through a cheap amp can still sound amazing if played to the gear's strengths. A $10k Les Paul run through a Marshall stack can sound awful in the hands of an inexperienced player.
Don't get me wrong, gear is like a toolbox, and the right tool for the job will perform better (a Marshall tends to be rather high strung for sloppy players, while a Fender Princeton is more composed for example. )
The gear does not make the player, but the effect the look and feel of specific gear has on the player cannot be denied or quantified. There's a reason Fender and Gibson can get away with essentially the same product lines since the '50s: they are compelling aesthetics both visually and audibly. There's a reason new stuff can make such a splash when it appears on the scene (such as Mesa Boogie or PRS) individual players find the new stuff compelling and draw inspiration from them.
One observation I have about cables is that for me the price of the cable doesn't affect the tone much, if at all. What you do get with more expensive cables is, as mentioned, better quality construction. Personally I use the Lava Tightrope cable system, but it's because the cables are flexible and the type of connector allows you to plug them into jacks that many other cables would be impossible to plug into. They're also incredibly easy to make once you get the procedure down. They're sort of like the Evidence Audio SIS ones Dan from That Pedal Show uses when he builds boards.
a bit of cork sniffing never hurt anyone
With the Pete Townsend story, what I had heard was he was responsible for the SLP i.e. 100W amp. I haven’t heard the story about the first full stack. He kept going back to Jim Marshall saying the amps weren’t loud enough and he needed more power behind them, causing Jim Marshall to double the power amp thus creating the 100W SLP. Please correct me if that is not the case. Please and Thank You.
I like top-mounted just because I can unplug my pedals without tearing it off the Velcro so I can switch from running them in series or parallel.
Not to split hairs here, but PCB means Printed Circuit Board. I worked at Sprague for 14 years.
One thing I wanted to mention about the history of gain, and this may sound very simplistic, but it makes sense. From the recording POV, things can be very rushed. Bands have only so much time to knock out a record. So what they do to achieve the right tone in the studio will often surprise those who have never been in a studio environment. I've only recorded demos but from that I learned how different the studio is from playing live. Also, I watched way more professional artist lay down tracks and it was a revelation. The studio is such a different environment that you really can't compare it to a live situation. Bands use surprisingly little overdrive. This makes it easier to mix multiple tracks. With metal you need a big, thick sound. But you don't want mud. if you have too much mud you can't even hear a major to minor shift and it will create an unpleasant dissonance. Mustaine is simply masterful in the studio. He understands guitar tone like few others. This is why Peace Sells and Rust in Peace are so monumental in the annals of great guitar tone. I also like that he stuck mostly with Marshalls. He didn't go off over the edge with gain like Metallica and other bands did. Even on Justice which is one of Metallica's clearest sounding albums when it comes to guitar it is still way too hairy. Also, you know the story about mixing out Jason's bass. I'm not going to go anymore into that but it was a genuine asshat move on the part of Lars. In a good mix everything must stand in its proper place, siloed but mixable. I love the tone of Ellefson's bass on Peace Sells. It's so clear and powerful. As I was saying earlier, things can be very rushed in the studio. For expediency you can go one of two ways. Crank the gain all the way up and let things be what they will. The reason this is not done is for the reasons stated. Producers and sound engineers deal with distorted guitar tracks all day long, every day. It's their job. They know what works, what doesn't, and why. Now, playing live you always end up using more gain, more of everything. You use higher volume and higher resonant peaks, bigger lows, etc. Live is about taking the drama of the recording and playing it for a live audience, recreating what you can. Bands NEVER sound the same live on the album, not even a band like Rush, Dream Theatre or Return to Forever. You can only get so close. Live music is about the live experience. This means you understand that the control of the studio situation goes out the window. If you set the gain on 3 on a record, then live you might even have it ono 7 or 8. Some go to ten, and yes, some go to 11.
At a rehearsal a few years ago some idiot grabbed my $20 guitar center cable and left his 12ft monster brand cable. Never saw the guy again and so the cable is mine now
I remember marketing from years ago for some expensive cable: “it’s like taking a blanket off my amp!” Not really, but I can tell a slight difference between the monster cable and a cheap cable when I’m plugged straight into the amp; the nicer cable sounds slightly better. Not sure it’s worth the price difference. A clean boost or overdrive would be a better investment.
That said, it’s a solid cable and seems like it’s probably more durable than the cheap ones I normally buy
Absolutely great segment. Being a retired electronics engineer, I can tell you the gauges of the cable is the main difference. I use large cbi cables from the amp head to the cabinets .It makes for a cleaner transfer of current , thus more electrons flowing. I use the same cables from to loop my boards to the amps. I make my own cables to connect my pedals.
Are all pedals drain the battery if both cables were left plugged in?
If you’re using batteries to power them, then yes. I’m not aware of any exceptions, at least.
I use a cabel
Another misconception - metal bands use lots of bass in guitar tone. Nope. Your ears are tricked into thinking the bass guitar is the guitar track.
Another good thing about less gain is less feedback problems when trying to play a tight rhythm. I also notice the low strings distortion a lot faster than the high strings. The fact that I get plenty of chunk from a valvestate amplifier with the gain on 5 especially the avt150 head and the amp stays pretty much quiet if not low hiss.
The reason it sounds like Steve Vai is because Vai has his own playing style, his own technique. Technique is not tone.
If someone is inspired by electric guitar, handing them an acoustic can often discourage them to the point of giving up. I wonder how many great guitarists never got off the ground cuz mommy was too cheap or uninformed to shell out for an electric .
I am highly appreciating your level headed clear thinking.
Thanks!
As a loooooooooong time metal guy, your dead on. We dial the gain back to preserve tonality. And ur right about slayer and megadeth. Good ear bro. I like your vids. Keep up the good work man!!!!!
Thanks man!
Yeah dial the gain back....But what about the Pedal that the guitar is running thru before you plug your cord into an amp ?!?!?!?!?!
I never liked heavy gauge or tuning down lower than D, and that was only for a couple songs in a set. My preferred gauge is 9 and occasionally 10-46. Otherwise, 9 is where it's at. I have also used 8s. Frank Marino uses 7s with unwound D strings.
My 2 cents, maybe just 1, but anyway. About string gauge, i thinks it's more about the mix and the frequencies in band. If i play alone 13's sound huge, but when you add bass player, drums and keyboards, it's a whole new ball game, tone wise.
Also i have to comment about SRV string gauge, his top and bottom strings were heavy, but rest of the set was something like 11's, and guitar was tuned to e flat. Josh Smith uses real 13's, with 26 plain g, in standard e tuning.
That pick grip stuff, rather than something like that, I’ll just score a cross hatch on the pick with something sharp.
I think the el cheapo cables that come with guitars are junk, but the difference between mid-range and high-end cables is negligible at best.
MYTH #14... "If you HOLD a music man MAJESTY while making a video, All the other Guitarist will be JEALOUS!." lol oops,.. that's not a myth, it's just REALITY!!! lol
TheGeminilexx I only clickd on this video (never seen this channel before) bc the music man....... I only stayd for the zack wyld on the wall.... lolol jk cool video I'll deff.chexk out this channel
I say yes and no for lower tuning makes for a heavier tone. 9s tuned to E 440 then the same 9's tuned to D 430 the strings get all floppy/buzz. 10's at D 430 have roughly the same tension/feel as 9's @ E 440. And they are not floppy, cleans/tightens the sound back up. Might not be so much of a issue on a solid bridge. But on my Floyd Rose it does. A case can be made.
Another myth is whammy guitars are a crutch. While using a whammy too much is not cool, it's just another tool. My number one reason for liking Floyd Rose bridges is tuning stability. I like your channel. You know what you're talking about.
Firstime watcher, man you won yourself a fan here. "Vintage gear sounds better, BEeeeeep" wrongo. You said it! Thank you for being one of the few humble/honest people to say it. Keep it up love the content.
Thanks man! Welcome to the family! 🤘🏼🤘🏼🤘🏼
My favorite amp is a 1973 Peavey Classic. Cheap as dirt, and to me, after a speaker change, sounds wonderful. PCB.?pp6., although the pots, and jacks are not connected to the board. I also have several hand wired, and actual P2P amps. I brought my Peavey in to be repaired, and my blond Bandmaster in at the same time. Both for recaps. Guess which one was cheaper? The Fender cost 1/3rd the price of the Peavey to recapp. So, I agree, from a tone point of veiw, PCB is just as good, if not clearer that HW, but from a repair standpoint, HW is much simpler. From my limited experience. Thank You.
I used to have a vintage jcm 800 100w amp head I got someone to take the negative feedback loop out of it, great sound but too loud. I wound up selling it to guitar center..
SRV didn't have 0.13 gauge set of strings, they were a custom set with the top and low (E) strings 0.13 and 0.58 the middle ones were of a med set I believe it was (B)0.15 (G)0.19p (D)0.28 and (A)0.38. I put this on my old Fender A.S. with Texas Special P/Us and it's pretty damn close to his tone.That G and b string squeal is definitely there if you have the finger strength. I love it!
Myth #1 "better" means something on youtube. A Rolls is better than a VW bug. Unless better means "less likely to get broken into". "It is better to not jump off a cliff" unless someone is shooting at you and it is 5 ft. high...and on, and on...
I DO prefer an Analog delay over Digital...but I can see use for both. As for acoustic vs. electric as your first guitar; I agree 100% on beginning "player's choice" (in this lazy day and age)...but I found (in my world as an 80's beginner) that if you start with acoustic, and get decent on that---when you finally grab an electric YOU CAN SMOKE THAT THING! It's just so much easier to play. If either of my kids (born in the 80's) were interested in playing guitar (which they were not) I would have insisted they start on acoustic; so when they grabbed an electric, they would excel beyond their own beliefs like I did.
That was the best explanation I've heard to tell people what guitar they should start out on. Thanks again, Robert. Your experience has helped me once again. I've been asked that question so much throughout my life from friends interested in learning guitar.
I've heard people talk about buying strings that turned stale after playing a couple times on their guitar. I don't believe it myself.
The ph/acid content in your skin can kill strings ! I have found in my youth I killed strings on basses all of the time. But as I have gotten older I do not have that problem as i once had in my youth !!
Regarding cables. You don't have to pay a lot for good leads. Just research the purity. There are many leads that provide great value for money. For instance (going to hi-fi) those really expensive ($1000) speaker cables are NO BETTER than figure 8 lighting cable (which is rated as 1800 W RMS) and costs fuck all. With guitar leads and mic cables all you need is wire of a good purity and halfway decent connection points and, as you said, backup cables. In my case, my best cables are both my go-to and backups.
I wanted to learn to play the electric guitar when I was 9. Kiss was my inspiration. My mom took me to some old guy that told me I had to learn in an acoustic.my mom agreed and that broke me.i bought an electric guitar when I was 27 and taught myself to play Metallica. Now finally at 50 I’m going back and learning to play what I really like, kiss, Motley Crue, poison. What a waste of time. Took me 42 years because of that myth!
Style comes from the hands. Pinch, attack are not tones. Tone comes from the tone knob, amp settings and speaker choice and of course pedals. IMO.
Re Vintage. My first Les Paul was a 1960 model in 1981. It was the worst Gibson I’ve played. A good guitar is a good guitar, regardless of age. A bad guitar will always be a turd 💩
Another Biiiiiig myth is BODY TONEWOOD! Talking to fender custom shop master builder told me the 95% of the sound is the neck. Body Stonewood is only for aesthetic reasons
Part 2
Okay, thanks for sticking with me. The 2nd guitar was a Left Handed Hamer Flying V, all black with red touches (knobs, switches, etc.). I am a right-handed guitarist so you can imagine the fun I had with the volume knob, etc. It had a double-locking Floyd Rose and "Hamer" on the headstock ("Hamer" was also upside down).
But the pick-ups were nothing short of wicked: Rick Derringer "Stealth" pick-ups! I had never heard of them before, but GWAD they were good. I honestly cannot think of any style of rock/blues (and I'm an old blues guy myself). If I ever found a set in real good condition I buy them in a minute if I had the funds available---no kidding, that good.
The Hamer had a huge, heavy, V-shaped hard she'll case, and the only other one I ever seen I saw recently was $5,000+. So okay, maybe I got rid of it a few decades too soon, but what the hell, right?
Sorry if I ran on, but your show got me thinking. Thanks☮
Mark Zuelch
markziz60@yahoo.com
Putting pedals side by side like that are fine if you have tiny feet or a looper.
I started on a Hofner bass, & then switched to 6 string... Have never had the desire to play an acoustic guitar, I had a go at playing one a few years ago, absolutely horrendous! I might as well tried to play a shovel...
Billy Gibbons plays 7s. Steve used a hybrid set of 13s. They were .013 -- .015 -- .019p -- .028 -- .038 -- .058. He also played in Eb which made the 13s much easier to manage.
Billy Gibbons has played everything from 7’s to 11’s.
@@RobertWJackson Yes he has however at a guitar clinic he hosted, Gibbons said he's played 7s since 1974 after getting advice from BB King. Even his signature set of strings are 7s. Touche!
It was Pete Townshend that was responsible for the stack. This has come directly from Jim Marshalls mouth...
Scotty D Not only that, the timeline simply isn’t right for it to be Hendrix or some of the other names. Full stacks (2 4X12s with an amp on top) were around certainly by mid 1965, well before Hendrix was in England.
Here is a link showing Townshend with some very early stacks.
www.thewho.net/whotabs/gear/guitar/marshallstack.html
Once they made a 4x12 cab I'm sure it didn't take any time at all for some employee of marshall to hook up 2 of them. There's no way a single rock star came up w the stack. It's some boring, nameless soul we'll never know.
If you consider Pete Townshend boring and nameless, then yes, you are correct. LOL
@@RobertWJackson what did Pete Townsend ever do for rock n roll? 😂 😂 😂 I'm just saying why would the idea for a full stack have taken so long? Somebody at marshall had to have thought of this before.
@@mikeygabbard9268 Nobody probably thought of it before because no one was using that kind of volume before. Plus, at that time, Marshall's operation was still quite small.
Guitar cables can have different grades of copper for the wire. Yes, it seems ridiculous, but metal grades are very different for quality, even if they are all the same metal. It's kind of carats of Gold.
Great job dispelling the true bypass myth. It's best to have a mixture of true bypass and buffered bypass pedals.
Seasons in the abyss is one of the best albums
Yeah I have a Boss TU-3 tuner on my board just to have one pedal thats not true-bypass. Use to be a TU-2 for about 20+ years until recently when I bought the new model, just for the screen being brighter and easier to see. My TU-2 is still being used and works 100%. Boss pedals for me have NEVER failed and ive owned quite a few thru out the years and some of them survived festival season's being caught in the rain. ;-)
Im not a huge fan of the top mounted jacks. But i do have two pedals that have them in my simple 6 pedal setup I use now.
I started guitar on an electric and im glad I did because it had low action and made me want to play the guitar. Im not saying all acoustics are hard to play, but a lot of the cheaper acoustics at the time I was starting to learn had seriously high action and I prob would of quit trying to learn the guitar if id had a high action guitar to begin with. I got into the acoustic about 1 year into learning and I got an Ovation and I still use Ovations today and that made switching between acoustic and electric very easy. I do use and own other acoustics today, but the electric i began with that had low action and the Ovation (also with low action) were great guitars that didnt frustrate the learner right off the bat. These days the Ovations that are cheaper have high action so its not like it use to be and they are starting to become hard to even find in stores. But the guitars priced in the low low end these days are amazing compared to what was available when I started. I cant really say that learning on an acoustic first is better or not, really depends on the person.
I def agree that some of the playing you hear is def in the persons hands. When I was young I couldnt hear or didnt pay attention to the fine details in certain guitar players like I do today and now when I hear someone say cover a song Im really paying attention to all the little details that made the original song by the original artist so unique. You hear a lot of guitar players who can play very well, but there is no emotion of feeling in those notes. I appreciate hearing the emotion and detail to the notes being played. A lot of that is in the hands obviously.
Hi Robert, just thought I'd comment on is amps that are point to point wired. I personally own a few amps, one in particular, the Mesa Tremoverb amp combo. If you ask any tech about working on these kinds of amps, they can be a nightmare to repair and trouble shoot. Check the Guitologist on RUclips. He does a video on repairing a Mesa Boogie circuit board. He talks about what a horror show it is to work on. Mesa amps have a printed type circuit board where they have a million relay switches and transistors in these amps that are hell to trouble shoot. Amps that are point to point wired are very easy to change out caps and resistors that may go bad. Mesa amps with a PCB circuit have to have the entire board taken out to work on it. You can also run the risk of destroying traces on these boards. So from a repairing stand point, the point to point wired amps are easier to repair for me personally. I've repaired my own Marshall and Vox AC30 amp and Blackface Bandmaster Fender amp. All of these are point to point wired. The Mesa Boogie Tremoverb amp after countless techs working on it, I finally had to send it back to Mesa themselves in Petaluma, California for repair. And when they got it , they asked me who the bloody hell worked on this amp. I replied, one of your supposed service centre techs. They were blown away, because they had botched up the amp terribly. The amp, I must say now plays very well. It did cost me a king's ransome to get the amp fixed and sent back to Canada. Anyway, just my 2 cents on amps.
PCBs are just fine. The whole point-to-point wiring of vintage and boutique amps that appeals to cork sniffing snobs is sheer malarky. I only care if an amp sounds good and is reliable. I don't care where it was made or how it was made, but how well it was built. That's all that should mattter.
Pete does talk about the stack idea in his book. He says if i remember correctly, somewhat paraphrased of course, that he started stacking 2 of them on top of each other and would strap them together and thats how the stack supposedly started.
metal bands often use gain of 6 or less,guitar strings of high gauge are not better and actually sound less defined
If you want to play electric guitar, it's best to have an electric and an acoustic guitar.
The acoustic guitar helps to build your muscles, tendons and finger dexterity. 👍
Nah, I think that’s a myth. You can develop those things on electric guitar just as effectively as you can on acoustic.
The subjects of true bypass and cable quality are quite related.
The issue here is "tone-sucking" which is the decrease of high frequencies and this is all about impedance and capacitance.
(I am speaking broadly and simplifying things in the following explanation)
IMPEDANCE is the resistance that a component puts up to the passing of a signal.
In electricity in general, a lower impedance should feed into a higher impedance to get the maximum transfer of energy. In all areas of audio specifically, bad impedance matching can have a dramatic effect on tone.
CAPACITANCE is about the way an electric voltage on one side of a thin insulator can effect or be affected by the presence of a voltage on the other side of the insulator. The amount of capacitance produces a different consequence at different frequencies.
The existence of capacitance is in fact what makes tone controls possible at all.
Guitar pickups are a high impedance output and for maximum volume and tone transfer, they should be feeding into something of even higher impedance. A guitar pickup may have an output impedance of perhaps 50 thousand Ohms and for this reason guitar amplifiers will have an input impedance of perhaps a million ohms or more to get maximum transfer of energy and minimum roll-off of high frequencies.
If you plug your guitar into the Line Input of a mixing desk, this might have an input impedance of perhaps 10 thousand Ohms and although the resulting signal might be adequate and useable it will probably be noticeably quieter and duller.
- if you plug your guitar into a Mic input which has an impedance of perhaps only 1 thousand Ohms, then you will get a signal which is so very quiet and extremely dull in tone that it is likely to be useless.
A buffer is an electronic device which is used to overcome these type of problems by matching impedances and signal levels, so the buffer will "show" the guitar a more ideal impedance of perhaps a million Ohms or more, whilst the output of the buffer will have a very low impedance of perhaps a couple of hundred Ohms, enabling it to drive signal into most things. Some buffers have such a very low output impedance that they can drive a signal into almost anything without loss of level or tone, e.g. even into a 4 Ohm loudspeaker.
The Tone Control on your guitar is in fact a small value capacitor connected to the signal on one end and to the Earth/Ground of the system on the other. This provides a path by which the high-frequency part of the signal can bleed off into Earth instead of going out down the guitar cable and the Tone potentiometer (= a variable resistance) allows you to adjust how much of this happens, thereby enabling you to adjust how much you roll-off the highs.
Unfortunately, a guitar cable is by definition a capacitor as an unavoidable consequence of it's construction. It has a central conductor for the signal which is nothing more than a simple insulated wire. It also has an Earth wire which is usually made of lots of fine wires braided together and arranged to wrap around and totally enclose the signal wire and this is to provide a shield. External interference such as the 50 or 60 cycle hum from the mains or any radio waves are shorted to Earth by the enclosing braid so that they do not get onto the signal wire in the centre.
So what we now have is by definition a capacitor - two conductors separated by a thin insulator. High quality guitar cables will be made of high purity copper so that they offer the least resistance to the signal and will be constructed in a way which creates the least capacitance to minimise tone-sucking. Maximising those factors whilst having flexibility and the robustness to survive reliably is what makes a high-quality audio cable.
Back in the early days, when the Wah, the Fuzz and the Univibe were invented, transistors had not been around very long and circuit design was not very developed. Used in the most common and most useful configuration, transistors intrinsically have a low input impedance, unlike valves which intrinsically have a very high input impedance. Field Effect Transistors (FET's) do have a high input impedance and also distort in a more valve-like way when driven hard but they had not been invented yet.
So the early designers of guitar effects either did not concern themselves with the low input impedance of their gadgets or else they did and had designed in buffers which were later taken out by the penny-pinching bean-counters of the company. No doubt those same penny pinchers also swapped out the True Bypass of the Double-Pole, Double-Throw switches (DPDT)for the cheaper Single-Pole, Double-Throw (SPDT)
The result of this was that these gadgets were sold in a configuration which left their low-impedance inputs permanently connected to the guitar signal path as the On/Off switch merely chose whether their output was from the dry signal arriving at their input or from the output of their circuitry.
Any one of these early gadgets would cause some tone-sucking on it's own but by the time you had three or four of them all linked up, your guitar signal with all effects turned off sounded ultra muffled. True Bypass was the answer. Rip out all those SPDT foot-switches and replace with DPDT's. (although you might need the knowledge to also add a resistor in the right place to stop loud clunks when you switched something on)
A single permanently connected buffer between the guitar and the start of the effects chain is an alternative solution which would also solve all of these problems. The guitar only ever "sees" the high input impedance of the buffer and the buffer's low-impedance output can comfortably drive any or all of the subsequent effects without any loss of tone.
By definition, a buffer is something which does not in any way alter the signal and a properly designed one won't.
Modern effects are all designed to have a high impedance input which is good for guitars or indeed anything else which is plugged in to drive their input.
The "True Bypass Is Best" thing arose either from the problem described above and relating to the very early guitar effects or from one other source.
Some players are of the opinion that "the only true way" is the minimalist approach that the only thing in between the guitar and the amp should be a short audio cable. There is perhaps some possible merit to this because the less you have between the amp and the guitar the purer your signal will be. Some of the buffers in modern pedals are integrated circuits with many transistors in them. Most are also electronically switched instead of an actual mechanical switch like the old DPDT stomp-switches and therefore your dry signal is still passing through hundreds of transistors even when all effects are off/bypassed. For that reason, I might concede that the purists who only ever play with a guitar plugged directly into a traditional all-valve amplifier might perhaps have a point. Perhaps. Possibly. :-)
For the other 99.999% though, the buffers built into modern gear are just fine. The moment that you switch on any single one of your effects, that "straight into the amp" argument instantly evaporates anyway.
Legendary guitar pedalboard maker Pete Cornish makes similar points here:-
www.petecornish.co.uk/case_against_true_bypass.html
I believe that it would depend on the individual , what they like and don't like...what kind of sound they're looking for ...keep Rocklin!!!!
Hey man; awesome video as usual. I actually experienced the last one when I learned to play. My uncle was an awesome guitar player, mostly played Iron Maiden kind of stuff and Iron Maiden has always been my favorite band so I really looked up to him. I had wanted to learn to play since I was old enough to listen to music and imagine myself playing with the band (around age 5), so when I finally got the courage to try (age 15), I asked him if he could help me learn. He was a les Paul player but he told me that the only way to learn was on a steel string acoustic and he bought me one and circled some chords in a book. That was all he did for me, he basically taught me to teach myself, which I'm grateful for. I hated the acoustic and I don't even own one today ten years later. But I really wanted to learn so I stuck it out. I think that it actually helped me as a player. But I totally see where you're coming from, if I hadn't wanted it so badly, I probably would never have learned. Anyway, sorry for the novel man. Ha. Thanks for the great uploads
I know the Pete Townsend story is true because, I asked Jim Marshall about it at a trade show. He had to make slanted top cabs because the straight cabs on top tended to be a bit unbalanced.
Speaking of cabinets, many years ago 2 of my buddies had the opportunity to each buy a 9x12 cabinet (and each speaker was ported ... just for your information) from the band Manowar. Those cabs were monsters !!! Then shortly after that, Manowar decided to go back out on tour. Instead of buying them back from my friends, they rented them. And that's the last thing I ever heard about those cabs, this was back in the early 90's ♫♫♪♫ :D
hearsay my friend
Don't you worry buddy I have been keeping my eye out for a Gibson reverse v as soon as I find one I will pick it up for you I know how much you like them
Myth: ignoring all the experts on The Gear Page will make you a guitar-playing hack.
But if you start buying pedals with top mounted jack...the pedal company wants you to buy more pedals.
I always heard that the full stack came about not because Pete wanted a 8x12 but just a louder amp in general. The speakers of the time couldn't handle the power so the only solution was more speakers. Then the part about the 8x12 getting cut in half to create 2 4x12's is the same just arrived there a little definitely. Not saying I'm right just what I always heard.
I've also noticed that I have to use even less gain while recording than I actually use live
Yep. Gain goes a lot farther than a lot of people realize.
Robert, Metal nut vs bone nut? zero fret vs standard setup? nitro vs poly finish insofar as tone? Does tone wood really matter considering many guitarists use pedals anyway.
all things effect tone but the difference is minuscule and essentially irrelevant
04:55 I think I read an interview with Jim Marshall years ago, where he did confirm this story. Only alteration was that Pete's roadies objected to the cartage of it & why Pete got Jim to make 2 4x12 cabinets instead.