You want to learn from Justin. It’s just the best.
I’m wondering if anyone has taken that video game out for a run. I can’t remember exactly which one it is, but it’s the one where you plug in a real guitar, with strings and everything, not just five buttons and flip-flapper.
From what I can tell, according to whatever difficulty setting you put it on, it has you playing the actual notes and chords to the songs – like the Guitar Hero shit, but six stings and a full fret-board come at you on the screen.
I wonder because I play in a hobby band, and we write all our own material. So, essentially, I don’t know practially any cover tunes anymore at the point. I was thinking of picking it up just to teach myself some covers.
Sorry - no first-hand experience.
And **Stormcrow **- sorry, there, too - no first-hand experience. I would say that if you can find youtube or guitar-site vids on your amp and how to dial in different tones, it would be worth searching for so you can get some input and ideas on what it can do and how it can sound.
And as for your Strat - I am sure there are dozens of Beginner Guitar vids you can sample - don’t know **E-Sabs’ **recommendation, but he certainly does the research. I would just say that, like the amp, see if you can find “basic Strat 101” type videos out there - a guided tour, if you will, so you can get a sense for how the switch works the pickups and which settings work best for which songs…
Best of luck!
Before I started playing with actual people, I mostly taught myself how to play out of books. The Guitar Handbook is a pretty good one.
Without an instructor, you’re going to have to take extra care not to fall into any bad habits, and it will probably take longer. But once you’ve got the basics down and you can hold a tune, the best thing you can do is get out and play with other people, particularly with people who are further along than you are. You’ll learn more that way, and it beats the hell out of slogging through formal exercises.
So here I am at the Marriott again, about to take out my Traveler Guitar EG-1 to practice a little.
I love this guitar: it has a full-length scale and I have tossed it in overhead bins on several flights without as much as a second glance from the flight attendants.
I am not really happy with the single humbucker pickup it came with. However, I am ignorant of things such as what pickups sound good for what and so on.
I always see folks posting about their fancy XYZ pickups that they swapped in and the beautiful tones they produce, so I am looking for recommendations.
I only play jazz, so I am looking for the right pickup that is fitting for jazz guitar.
Any thoughts? Since it only has one, it won’t bother me if it costs a bit 
Well. You’re a jazz player, hm? So we’re not talking overdrive, we’re talking clean and sparkle. And that’s a travel guitar, so I think maybe a sealed pickup is a better idea than an open one.
How’s this? The Dream 180. Bit of Filtertron in your humbucker, for plenty of chime.
Now, I’m only picking this because I’m most familiar with GFS’s catalog, there are certainly other options, but what do you think of the sound as described here?
I would head over to The Gear Page or other guitar/jazz message boards and do a bit of searching, e.g., "good humbucker for jazz.’ Maybe go to the Gibson website and message boards and see what folks who own jazzboxes talk about when they talk about pickups.
ES-335’s and ES-175’s from the late 50’s are thought of highly for jazz and they have PAF’s - I am sure you know the gist: early Gibson humbuckers are referred to as PAF’s because of the Patent Applied For sticker on their underside. They are low output and often not-quite-perfect-in-a-good-way, e.g., the coils not perfectly matched in windings; the windings done unevenly (scatterwound), etc. You want the lower output because of your jazz leanings…
You can buy Seymour Duncan or other larger-volume PAF types for ~$75 - the ones that **E-Sabs **recommends may be a fine deal, too, judging by the Xaviere guitar I have started noodling with. But you could totally get boutique-y and geeky and spend a few hundred on some of the small-batch makers or even guys who do hand-wound stuff. Again, this is geeked out about a lot on various guitar message boards.
Hope that helps.
So, as stated previously, I’m just loving - loving! the new Duncan 59 bridge pickup (suggested by Kim O’ the Concrete Jungle) in my Dot, played sans pedals through a humble Blues Junior. It just sings. Sings! Classic Fucking Tone.
So I now have a GuitarFetish P90 on the way for my Dot that I’ll put in the neck position, and I’m going to move the Dot’s Duncan 59 over to my Uninspiring Schecter (awesome neck, doesn’t speak to me otherwise) in the neck position and add a Duncan Pearly Gates (I’ve heard good things) to the neck position of that guitar, so maybe it’ll have a more interesting voice. So far, so good.
So while I’m waiting for the Schecter/Dot pickups to show up, I find myself perusing Tele pickups on Duncan and other sites, wondering what would be cool to use in my AD Tele instead of the stock (awesome but regrettably low output) Samarium Noiseless pickups and thinking about ordering pickups for that guitar.
And I just kinda realized: dammit, you guys have got me on another Tone Quest. Again.
Does it ever end?
GMS (Guitar Modification Syndrome). It’s the terminal stage of GAS (Guitar Acquisition Syndrome).
It ebbs and flows. It can sure be fun.
As for Tele pickups, I have found the Seymour Duncan / Jerry Donahue sig Tele pickup to be wonderful. Based on Donahue’s own early-50’s Tele, it is on the higher end of lower-output, if you follow. Great treble bite when fully dialed up, sounds warm and wonderful clean with the Tone rolled off a bit, and thickens up amazingly well with a fuzzbox and the Volume down to 8 and Tone down to 6 or further. You would have a field day through your BJr. and pedal set…
Yeah, it is fun. Just not sure where it ends.
For the Tele, I was thinking of something more biting/punchy than my SCNs, but still low output; I still want the bright single-coil cleans. Thanks for the Donahue suggestion. I was also considering a Duncan Alnico II Pro, which seems in a similar vein. Or maybe I’ll try one of these, since it seems like it aims at a similar tone, and is less than half the price of a Duncan. Any thoughts on Lollars?
Lollars seem to be consistently well spoken for on the interwebs - as are a number of other makes. I can really speak to the Donahue because of how much I lean on mine. I did put an Alnico Pro II (I think) into the Tele Special because the Donahue+mahogany (Korina) combo didn’t clean up well enough. So in a normal Tele wood body, the Donahues are just this side of hot, but mostly a standard low-output vintage feel. They take fuzz really, really well.
I have this model Tele with Seymour Duncans. It is one of my favorite guitars.
Mine is the blonde model. Very attractive and I love the mahogany neck.
Is that standard Tele long-scale (25.5") or, based on its Gibson-inspired features, does it have a short-scale neck (24.75" or so)? Either way, looks cool.
Standard Tele scale.
Which raises the question: has Fender made 24 3/4 scale guitars before?
Oh sure; heck the Jaguar is what? A 24" scale? But otherwise a few models have been, often ones with Gibson features like the Tele jr.
Huh. I guess I’d forgotten about the Jaguar. But I’ve always wanted to meet a 24 3/4" Tele, but I thought my choices were build my own or steal yours.
Indeed. The shorter scale feels slinkier and sounds a bit thicker, but a Tele pickup in a Tele bridge sounds very…Tele in some key ways.
When Fender introduced the Blacktop series, I was really interested in the Blacktop Jaguar (http://www.fender.com/en-GB/products/blacktop/models.php?prodNo=014830). But when I played it in the shop, I was disappointed with (1) how shoulder-crushingly heavy it was, and (2) how dark the humbuckers sounded. So I passed on that one and bought another Ibanez Artcore instead.
But now they’ve released a version with P90s in it, which I might have to check out.