I’ve been trying to use a thumbpick lately, because I like the sound, but I just can’t get used to it. It makes me feel like my thumb is too far away from the strings. Maybe I’m just too used to using my bare thumb.
I’ve been using the standard Dunlop thumbpicks (because that’s what I can find in stores). I’ve tried cutting them down and reshaping them a bit, to no avail.
Any thoughts or recommendations?
Maybe I’ll try some of those exotic thumbpicks I see online, although I really don’t want to get into an equipment chase – I’ve really tried to avoid that lately, and to just concentrate on playing.
Yep, that sounds typical. Getting comfortable with a thumb or finger pick is brutal but worth it. I look at players like Johnny Marr and others I who just use a thumb pick and I look on with envy. They can do fingerstyle with a strong thumb bass, or grab the pick with their finger and treat it like a flatpick. It seems like the best of both worlds. I just never got comfortable with that “pick at a distance” feeling.
So - if you can stick with it you’ll feel great about the investment but it is hard.
The burst finishes on today’s guitars just keep getting better and better.
I like Sweetwater because they give the weight of the guitars they have in stock. It’s surprising how much the same models can vary in weight. Just a few ounces makes a difference at a long gig.
Yeah, that is a nice feature. When I bought my last guitar (Squier Classic Vibe Tele), they had four of them and I picked the lightest. It came fairly well setup as well although it’s due for some readjusting.
When I first got that guitar, I complained of the neck being “noodley”. However, it doesn’t seem to be any longer. Either I’ve learned to play it without using a heavy fretting hand or it’s stabilized from living in my nearly constant 50-60% humidity basement. I have definitely learned to fret with a lighter touch which has made barre and harder chords much easier to play without hand fatigue like I was experiencing. I think my learning on poorly setup, high action guitars got me used to having to really push down. My only acoustic, a Guild, has a high action. I need to find a luthier to take a look. Only problem is there are none close by. 75’ish miles (maybe the town 40 miles away might have someone).
I recall repeatedly reading in guitar-related publications that playing a guitar, especially an acoustic, with high action makes transitioning to low-action, fast neck electrics much easier.
As someone who learned to play chords and fingerstyle on a high action 12 string I can tell you that isn’t really true. All the effort of pushing those strings to get a clear tone slows down your transition speed. For me at least, playing lead on my Tele is a totally different skill set than playing rhythm on my acoustics to accompany my singing even though they are considered more or less the same instrument.
wguy, take the guitar in and make a day of it. It will be well worth your time and effort to get your guitar playing its best. I just did a setup and some repairs on my friend’s Martin and when I gave it back to him it was like Christmas; he couldn’t stop playing it.
I think it gave me very bad habits of pushing far harder than I needed. And yes, it does slow transitions. In the last year I have improved greatly by learning to fret chords with only the pressure that is required. My hand doesn’t get fatigued, I can play longer, I can transition much faster and most chords play cleaner because my finger pads aren’t smashed out so much hitting other strings.
I have almost stopped playing my acoustic because of the high action. I either need to get it corrected (I love the sound of the guitar) or get rid of it and replace it with something that is easier to play. I know the belly of the guitar is bulging but I’m not sure if it will also need a neck reset. I can work on my electrics but I’m not so sure I want to mess with an acoustic. I’ve watched videos, I just don’t want to mess up my guitar. It’s almost 50 years old now…
Very much this. Looking at a too-high-action guitar as a good workout is a rationalizing for wasting time on a poorly set up guitar. Sorry but true. Having a well set up guitar makes everything better. And if a guitar can’t be set up well, you shouldn’t be playing it. wguy, good that the neck has been stable. Now get that set up!!
Oooor, keep your Guild as is, tune it to open G, run down to your “local” guitar shop and buy (or make) a slide.While you’re there, pick out a nice, relatively inexpensive fingerpickin’ guitar…like this… Now you can learn slide and you get a new guitar! Win-win!
I already have 4 guitars (along with a uke and a banjo) and my wife thinks it is too much. She thinks the same about my motorcycles and bicycles. I need a storage unit to store these things and then I can just swap them out - she wouldn’t notice, would she? Maybe I can build a hidden basement under my basement.
I think our wives may be sisters…She’s being totally unreasonable about me buying a cyclocross for commuting so I can convert my 650b back to a full on hardtail for trails and it’s a full on NO to the motorcycles. She’s pretty much given up on my guitar obsession and since my youngest moved out his room, it’s now my music room. I’m down to 6 now (3 acoustic 6 strings (tuned DADGAD, open G and standard), two acoustic twelve strings (D standard and standard tuning) and my Tele). I am likely to end up picking up another electric soon as I noted above.
Why didn’t I think of this before - I play a lot in Cheater’s G: just detune the A down to G, play the middle four strings like Open G but keeps the high E and B in standard for lead fills.
I was in Standard tuning, playing Superstition. This time I heard a bit of Zep’s Trampled Under Foot - JPJones’s organ riff -in what I was playing. I figured out it was in G and thought “hmm, if I play that in Cheater’s G, I can get a drone string going while playing the main organ riff.”
100W of easy break-up EL34s just wasn’t cutting it on bass in my rock band. We’re kind of loud, and the venues we’ve been playing recently have actually been fine with us being louder, and bigger rooms need some oomph. Get past 5 on the master of my Traynor YCS100, and it wasn’t getting any louder, it was just gonna break up more. Also, just no extra low-end oomph when you moved the master past 5, either. It would project more treble, but the low frequencies were getting lost in distortion. I played our last show through a 410HLF Ampeg cab, which helped a lot with volume compared to the 15" GK cab I was using most of the time, but only barely enough. So, I’m back to buying dedicated bass amps again.
So, I decided to skip solid state amps this time. I loved my GK MBFusion 500, but there are reasons I moved from a 500W class D power amp that weighed 5 or so pounds to a 100W guitar amp that weighs 45lbs. When you’re driving the preamp hard or using a heavy fuzz, it helps a lot to have tubes in the power amp to smooth out your sound with a little softer distortion. Heck, even when you’re not driving the preamp hard or using a fuzz, it sounds good to have the tubes smooth things out some.
With my resignation and realization that to be satisfied I would have to move to what bassists call “big iron”; I started looking at my options for big, ridiculously loud tube amps. SVTs, with their weight, and only a single channel were right out. What won out for me was the Fender Super Bassman. 15 lbs lighter than an Ampeg SVT, with the same 300W of 6550’s, and 2 switchable channels. The vintage channel is voiced like my old roommates Bassman Ten (an EQ that’s set up like a guitar amp), but with the extra wattage to make you be gentle with the EQ and not ruin its good qualities for bass by running that channel too hard. The overdrive channel is heaven, as it has a very flexible EQ that’s more like a modern bass amp (you can even boost mids!). I haven’t been excited by a Fender bass amp in years, but this one has been pretty amazing for the day or so I’ve owned it.
I think our wives may be sisters…She’s being totally unreasonable about me buying a cyclocross for commuting so I can convert my 650b back to a full on hardtail for trails and it’s a full on NO to the motorcycles. She’s pretty much given up on my guitar obsession and since my youngest moved out his room, it’s now my music room. I’m down to 6 now (3 acoustic 6 strings (tuned DADGAD, open G and standard), two acoustic twelve strings (D standard and standard tuning) and my Tele). I am likely to end up picking up another electric soon as I noted above.
(for fans of comedian Eddie Izzard)