# The Great Ongoing Guitar Thread **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** music\ **Created:** [January 31, 2010, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-guitar-thread/527172 "2010-01-31T23:20:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 69
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-guitar-thread/527172/1362 "2011-02-11T22:59:40Z")
Oh, while I won’t get to listen to this till later, I do like T-Rex. And Marilyn Manson. They’re both glam, right? ---
**Author:** ![Small\_Clanger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9fc348/32.png) [@Small\_Clanger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Small_Clanger)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2011, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-guitar-thread/527172/1363 "2011-02-18T17:49:59Z")
If anyone thinks it’s not possible to have too many effects, have a look at [This guy’s collection.](http://www.musicradar.com/forum/showthread.php?t=24489) Holy. Shit. It’s scary how many of those I’ve owned, I still have the huge orange Carlsboro parametric (top left). I may have a sift through the list to remind me what I’ve let go ☹ Oh, and BUMP! ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2011, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-guitar-thread/527172/1364 "2011-02-18T19:30:07Z")
> [@Small\_Clanger](#): > > If anyone thinks it’s not possible to have too many effects, have a look at > > [This guy’s collection.](http://www.musicradar.com/forum/showthread.php?t=24489) > > Holy. Shit. > > It’s scary how many of those I’ve owned, I still have the huge orange Carlsboro parametric (top left). I may have a sift through the list to remind me what I’ve let go ☹ > Oh, and BUMP! Good lord. Stompboxes are like Tribbles - before you know it, they’ve multiplied all over the place. I am avowed non-box user - only because it feels like a slippery slope I could never have time to stay ahead of - and yet I have at least 5 - 10 lying around my various gear hidey-holes… Oh, and E-Sabs? T Rex = glam. Marilyn Manson - well, whatever he is, he is past the era when Glam was its own standalone category - that was back in the 70’s (TRex’s time)…I would say maybe glam-metal or something with glam in it…maybe, but he is more into shock than provocation… ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2011, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-guitar-thread/527172/1365 "2011-02-18T19:36:59Z")
These days, you need shock with your provocation. You know. In olden times a glimpse of stocking… And I was just being cheeky. I do consider him a heir to Glam. Not sure where I place Gaga. ---
**Author:** ![Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ee7513/32.png) [@Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kim_o_the_Concrete_Jungle)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-guitar-thread/527172/1366 "2011-02-19T17:01:19Z")
> [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](#): > > I’m really not sure I understand your point. I can’t comment on the specific system of teaching that your mother and grandmother went through. In Canada, if you are studying and testing through the Royal Conservatory, you begin ear training (rhythm and melody playback) and sight reading in Grade 1. Theory co-requisites kick in at Grade 5; by Grade 9, you must have Grade 3 History to advance as well. I don’t have the syllabus handy, but the British ‘Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music’ has something similar. Er, yeah. That kind of was my point. Back in the bad old days, proper music education was a rather elitist concern. Neither my grandmother growing up in rural NSW during the depression, nor my mother who was coal-miner’s daughter ever had a snowflake’s chance in hell of getting into the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. It would never have occurred to them to even try. Their musical education would have been rather light on the theory with a pretty heavy emphasis on rote learning scales, chords, and standard notation. It’s not very conducive to actually understanding what you play. Maybe it’s just a personal quirk, but I really need to understand something before I can do it. I’ve never been good at faking anything, or blindly memorizing long lists of instructions. If I’m going to play music, I have to be able to look at it and say, okay, there’s a chorus, and that’s a bridge, and this is my root note, so these ones are my dominant, sub-dominant, relative-minor, and so on. I’ve discovered that, for me at least, a lot of the most immediately useful theory is about how stuff relates to the key signature. > [@](#): > > So your grandmother and your mother read music well enough to play in public. That’s _impressive_. I don’t understand why you seem to think it makes them any less impressive that they couldn’t play if you took away the music. They were reading stuff off a page and mechanically reproducing it. They weren’t bad at doing that (I understand that my mother actually did pretty well), but they weren’t really very engaged with the music on any more than that purely mechanical level. My grandmother played hymns on the organ at her church. My mother went to the local Eisteddfod playing [this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op7GsUAiRnM) (but on the piano accordion, rather than the violin). That would have been in the late 50s, or early 60s. I don’t think she’s actually played anything at all in the past thirty years. The thing is, they both decided they had more important things to be doing with their time, and never pursued music any further. It didn’t click with them the same way as it did for me. > [@](#): > > If you can realize those composers’ specific instructions with just the roman numerals, you go right ahead - I’ll stick to reading the notation, thanks very much. I don’t see a lot of electric guitarists playing works by those composers. I’ll leave the classical stuff to the classical guys. Around here, the likes of John Williams and Slava Grigoryan have that gig pretty well sewn up. And to be frank, I don’t think Slava’s making much bank. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-guitar-thread/527172/1367 "2011-02-20T14:51:41Z")
Weren’t Chopin, Liszt and Mozart brilliant improvisers? Didn’t the jazz saxophone genius Sonny Rollins park himself out on a NY bridge in the middle of the night practicing for hours at a time because he knew he had more to learn and wasn’t willing to compromise? My point is that this feels like a false dichotomy: learning how to read and to “mechanically translate” the notations on a page to music is an important craft-skill to have. Being able to improvise - which means you understand the underlying structures of the music enough to build on to it - is also an important craft-skill to have. The fact that some musicians come at Music from one end of the spectrum or the other is just a that - a fact of life. I can’t read music and exist in the Improv end of the specturm - but I am not kidding myself that I would not be better off if I had a solid grounding in music theory and sight-reading. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-guitar-thread/527172/1368 "2011-02-20T23:47:59Z")
> [@Small\_Clanger](#): > > If anyone thinks it’s not possible to have too many effects, have a look at > > [This guy’s collection.](http://www.musicradar.com/forum/showthread.php?t=24489) > > Holy. Shit.! Wow. That’s quite something. Why would someone own six Big Muffs? Yeah, I know, there’s slight (and – to someone – really really important) differences between them. But still. Of course, I’m one to talk – I have I think 5 overdrive stomps, and can’t part with any of them. But I can’t even begin to count how many overdrive/fuzz boxes this guy has. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2011, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-guitar-thread/527172/1369 "2011-02-22T21:28:53Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > Good lord. Stompboxes are like Tribbles - before you know it, they’ve multiplied all over the place. I am avowed non-box user - only because it feels like a slippery slope I could never have time to stay ahead of - and yet I have at least 5 - 10 lying around my various gear hidey-holes… You too??? I am NOT a stomp box guy at all, and yet I have fuzz, wahwah, phaser, reverb, delay, equalizer, overdive, etc etc etc. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2011, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-guitar-thread/527172/1370 "2011-02-24T06:56:43Z")
So I finally went acoustic guitar shopping. A little. Background info: I’ve played electric since I was a teenager, and I’m pushing 50 now, but I have never owned an acoustic and would like to. I think I’d like an acoustic-electric with a cutaway. I have no idea if I like spruce or cedar top, or probably a lot of other things. Anyway, my boy (12) had bugged me that he needed strings and, much more importantly, really wanted a much cooler guitar strap than that skull-decorated strap he had, which is soooo last year 🙂 , so we went to Guitar Center on the understanding that I could hole up with the acoustics for a bit while he shopped for whatever in the rest of the store. The GC acoustic room is dimly lit so it’s darned hard (for me anyway) to find specific guitars, esp. way up three tiers high. Someone up thread had mentioned Seagull, others Takamine, as guitars in my $500-$700 range, so I figured I’d start there. Nope, couldn’t find either brand. Lotsa cheap Epiphone, Yamaha etc stuff (who buys a $129 acoustic anyway?) as you go in, then going around the room you get the Wall of Taylors (well, 1 1/2 tiers worth), the Wall of Martin, and the Wall Of Everything Else (a few banjos, ukes, and the token Dobro) etc. I couldn’t get someone to help me, so I pulled a couple of Taylors off the wall and fiddled a bit and was pretty pleased with one, except for the $1000+ tag on it. I didn’t even try the Wall of Martins, as I had visions of myself falling in love and dropping two or so mortgage payments on some Guitar! I Had! To Have! GAS is a bitch. I did try the dobro (I’ve always thought these looked and sounded way cool) and it was quite fun, but not as nasal as I’d have expected, it sounded like really any other small acoustic to me. Finally I pried loose a GC employee, who climbed way up into the rafters and wedged loose a Takamine acoustic/electric (and I should have jotted down the model, but it was probably a EG363SC or similar, looking at their website – an acoustic-electric with a cutaway) and… I was underwhelmed. Maybe the strings were put on when Clinton was in office, but it was really thuddy. I fiddled a bit, but wanted to try something else, but the GC employee who got it for me was gone and there was nowhere to park the guitar and I could hardly just set it on the floor, so I went out looking for someone to park it for me. At that point SqueegeeJr just had to show me all the straps and guitars he’d fiddled with. Also the acoustic room had a couple of other shoppers making lotsa noise. So I cut the expedition short. On the plus side, when I emerged from the Womb Of Acoustics, my boy was comfortably walking around GC trying out guitars, where previously he was far too bashful to just dig in and have fun trying new stuff, for fear he’d be Judged Unworthy in front of someone, even with me helping him, so it was cool to see him all relaxed and having fun there. Sadly, he was still impressed with Dean and BC Rich axes that looked dreadful, but what’s a parent to do? 🙂 SqueegeeJr went home with a leather guitar strap with playing card symbols on it (that I thought was dreadfully overpriced @ $38, but he spent his own money, shrug). I’ll go shop at GC next time in the middle of the day when the Acoustic Womb is vacant and I can get some sales help finding guitars. ---
**Author:** ![Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ee7513/32.png) [@Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kim_o_the_Concrete_Jungle)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2011, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-guitar-thread/527172/1371 "2011-02-24T12:21:53Z")
I had a lot of trouble finding an acoustic I liked. I’m mostly used to playing electrics with thin necks and low action, which suits my small hands. But a lot of acoustics are pretty much the opposite of that. In the end I settled on an Ibanez EW20, because the neck was the most comfortable for me, and because I liked the sound of the built-in preamp. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2011, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-guitar-thread/527172/1372 "2011-02-24T12:30:07Z")
> [@SteveG1](#): > > You too??? > > I am NOT a stomp box guy at all, and yet I have fuzz, wahwah, phaser, reverb, delay, equalizer, overdive, etc etc etc. Yeah - me, too. They are simply too cool and useful to ignore completely. Argh. \*\*squeegee \*\*- don’t get me started about acoustics. I am taking a week off so am not online a lot this week, but yeah, acoustics are as geek-tastic as electrics. Today I was supposed to get down to a top-shelf acoustic dealer in the NY area, Mandolin Brothers, but I need to help my son with a science project…maybe a bit later. At some point I can try to break down the major food groups of acoustics if that would be helpful… ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2011, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-guitar-thread/527172/1373 "2011-02-24T16:28:08Z")
It’s gonna need to include 'classical guitars played with a pick so long they got holes in ‘em’, I’m guessing. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-guitar-thread/527172/1374 "2011-02-25T00:43:37Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > Yeah - me, too. They are simply too cool and useful to ignore completely. Argh. … Yeah, but they can be fun sometimes. I still like to break out the wah wah pedal and desecrate Hendrix’s Voodoo Child once in a while 😃 ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-guitar-thread/527172/1375 "2011-03-03T16:30:03Z")
[60 Years of the Fender Telecaster](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2XTzTa0INM)- offical Fender clip, about 6 minutes… ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-guitar-thread/527172/1376 "2011-03-03T16:47:17Z")
Oh - and an NPR piece I heard about but have yet to listen to fully: > **[HV111- Guitar Heroes](https://hearingvoices.com/2011/02/hv111-guitar-heroes/)** > > Pickers, pluckers, and players, from the bad bluesman, Charley Patton, to a Master Class with Christopher Parkening. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-guitar-thread/527172/1377 "2011-03-04T06:42:26Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > [60 Years of the Fender Telecaster](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2XTzTa0INM)- offical Fender clip, about 6 minutes… Nice video, **WordMan**. Of course, I’m a huge Tele fan already, so I admit bias. But it was cool to see all those players talking and playing Tele. The NPR piece sounds interesting, and I’ve banked it into my iPod for next time I have to drive somewhere for 53 or more minutes. I can’t listen to a podcast at home, I get too distracted. Driving is perfect for that sort of thing. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-guitar-thread/527172/1378 "2011-03-04T12:28:37Z")
> [@squeegee](#): > > Nice video, **WordMan**. Of course, I’m a huge Tele fan already, so I admit bias. But it was cool to see all those players talking and playing Tele. > > The NPR piece sounds interesting, and I’ve banked it into my iPod for next time I have to drive somewhere for 53 or more minutes. I can’t listen to a podcast at home, I get too distracted. Driving is perfect for that sort of thing. I listened to it all the way through - worth a listen, but not super great. The bit on charlie Patton simply doesn’t play enough of his music. A couple of the middle pieces sound like some non-players attempt to explain something he doesn’t understand - “it’s guitar, it’s an icon of cool” :rolleyes: there’s a bit on a Chinese guitar like instrument that sounds interesting and an extended piece on classical player Christopher Parkening, a disciple of Segovia, and the recording of a Master class he gives. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2011, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-guitar-thread/527172/1379 "2011-03-05T02:58:27Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > …extended piece on classical player Christopher Parkening, a disciple of Segovia, and the recording of a Master class he gives. I heard Christopher Parkening play in Ann Arbor around 1980. He played a baroque lute (which is different than that bathtub most of us think of when we think of lute). I don’t know if it was original or a reproduction, but it was a fascinating concert. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2011, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-guitar-thread/527172/1380 "2011-03-08T16:48:20Z")
A new thread on the General Questions board asking about toggle switches on electric guitars: > **[Toggle switch on my guitar.](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=599889)** > > I’ve never been able to figure out exactly what the 5 position toggle switch does on my guitars. I assume it adjusts what combo of the 3 pickups are used as I can tell a tonal difference, but I’m not able to pick out enough of a difference to know... ---
**Author:** ![phungi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/phungi/32/395_2.png) [@phungi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phungi)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2011, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-guitar-thread/527172/1381 "2011-03-08T19:53:46Z")
Having followed the discussion on Xaviere guitars, I took the plunge on an [XV-820](http://www.guitarfetish.com/XV-820-Single-Cutaway-Solid-Body_c_157.html) telecaster copy. It was “blemished” so there was a 15% discount off an already low price… ended up $135 shipped. Arrived today, intonation is spot-on, was hard pressed to find a blemish… only played it for a few minutes to test out the feel, and the action is really low, no fret buzz, and the the GFS pickups sound great… I was skeptical, but nearly all the online feedback/ratings are consistently high… I am really amazed that you can get such a quality guitar at such a low price. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-guitar-thread/527172.md?page=68) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-guitar-thread/527172.md?page=70)