Should a guitar ever be left in Open E tuning for more than a day or two?
Black Crowes, She Talks to Angels is in Open E.
Strings are tuned, E, B, E, G#, B, E. You get a E chord strumming open strings.
Raising the A and D up a full step, and G up a half is a lot of tension in the middle of the neck.
Would you leave a guitar you care about in that tuning for very long? Most teachers on YouTube teach it in open E tuning just like the Black Crowes perform it. Steve Stein teaches it in standard tuning.
The official tab is in open E.
I tune my guitars down a half step (from standard tuning) before putting them in the case. It only takes a few mins to tune when I play that guitar.
I’d have serious concerns about leaving a guitar in open E.
If you’re using light gauge strings I wouldn’t sweat it too much. David Gilmour has that insane high strung tuning and I don’t imagine his guitar techs were detuning right away… If you were to do that though I would set up the guitar specifically for it (truss rod, nut, etc.)
FWIW, I’m playing STTA in std tuning a la Steve Stine.
I’d forgotten about Nashville tuning. Tuning strings up a octave is pretty extreme.
Newer guitars with good bracing probably handle it ok. Especially if the guitar has been setup for that use.
I’m probably overly cautious with my vintage babies.
LOL I do remember almost breaking strings back in my beginner days. Tuning past the note and I kept winding trying to match my tuning fork. My teacher freaked when he saw what I’d done.
Not really. If that is how the guitar is always tuned, then a setup for that tuning (intonation, action, relief) might optimize the playability, but that tuning certainly won’t do any harm on an instrument designed to hold ~200 pounds of tension. Just changing to a heavier gauge can add up to 50 pounds of tension, so what’s a couple of full steps between friends?
I haven’t used open tunings before. I didn’t know for sure what other players did. Thank you for clearing that up for me.
One reason for owning several acoustics is being able to keep one in Drop D for classic country songs. Eventually I may keep one in open G for Stones songs. That’s been on my bucket list for awhile.
Open E is probably used less. But a few songs like She Talks to Angels get that unique voicing from open E tuning. It’s cool to play it like the band.
Something in the Air I found I could play in Open E. Melissa may be in open E. I also came up with a song in it, but I don’t like to retune so I do without. I only retune for drop D. It’s only one string, and there’s a few tunes to play. Better investment of time.
Television’s Richard Lloyd has published an autobiography: Amazon.com
Bought it immediately.
Hmm. Haven’t read Springsteen’s yet, haven’t bough the Jann Wenner biography Stick Fingers yet (but it is on the list - sounds trashy as hell). But reading Lloyd’s memoir and understanding how it crosses path with books like Please Kill Me, or From the Velvets to the Voidoids or Patti Smith’s book or David Byrne’s How Music Works. I haven’t read Richard Hell’s memoir, or the overview book Love Comes to Buildings on Fire, but find the NY Punk scene to be fascinating. I get the impression Lloyd’s book adds even more color to the scene.
Well, that was silly. Richard Lloyd spends the entire book coming back to the fact that he was a good-looking scene-maker who could play great guitar and had that It Factor, but never made it huge because of bad luck and choices. And Tom Verlaine.
But while that is the basic theme of the book, it is a poorly-written slapdash of anecdotes and silly personal philosophies. No insights on how music worked within the band Television which is the only fucking reason anyone would come to the book. Television has a great, unique sound - hearing how it came together would be fascinating. The one, and only one, insight that I found fascinating was that, while Television were being whiny snobs, they heard tracks off The Cars first album and Verlaine said “that’s it - they sound like a commercialized version of Television - they will make it and we are through.” Interesting.
Disappointing, but says a lot about what is both great and ultimately frustrating about this one-album band that clearly could not get out of its own way.
ETA: and virtually no guitar geekery. He claims to be a great guitar player - and I love the guitar work on Marquee Moon - but he doesn’t discuss how he feels about guitar once, other than knowing it was what he wanted to focus on. Oy.
I loved Marquee Moon enough to check out a few of LLoyd’s online interviews, and he came across as a mercurial character, at turns optimistic and bitter, with an inflated view of his historical importance (and mystical abilities):
In reality, he’s the assist man on a team that won the championship one year, who’s now eking out a living at autograph shows. It hurts a bit to watch what happens to people like that, but at least he has that One Great Thing to hold on to.
Now if Tom Verlaine wrote a book, I’d expect that to be worth reading.
Anyone have any experience with China Music World for buying equipment?
I was browsing around and found this. They claim it is a mahogany body with a flame maple top, maple neck with a rosewood fingerboard all for $275 bucks plus shipping. The shipping looked reasonable, like $50, but I couldn’t figure out how to get back the shipping prices.
The have some LPs for [229](http://www.chinamusicworld.com/prodetail.asp?ids=323&idss=327&idsss=448&idssss=2634). A Zakk Wylde signature LP for 252. A double octave Explorer for [372](http://www.chinamusicworld.com/prodetail.asp?ids=323&idss=327&idsss=543&idssss=2506). They have a Mayones Regius series 7 string for 395. On Reverb.com the Mayones gutiars are running $1,700 and up.
The LP bodies look a little off to me. However, some of the guitars look quite awesome. This Jacksonfor $288 is quite pretty. As is thissplatted maple 335 for $285.
A friend is letting me borrow some pedals. He’s loaned me a Cry Baby wah (which I’ve never used before, but I love it), a noise gate and a flanger. I already owned a Boss digital delay. The wah seems pretty straightforward to use, and with distortion, I sound like Slash when I solo. Are there any tips and tricks for using a wah besides just varying the speed with which you raise and lower the pedal, or leaving it “open” at either end?
Not left fully open or closed, but half-cocked. Use it to dial in a tone like a tone control. That’s what Mick Ronson did on Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, Schenker did with UFO and lots of others.
I don’t know those, but if you lookin at low price electric guitars look at Rondo music.
I own an Agile Les Paul, South Korean made
And have owned an SX Tele, also SK made.
I’ve owned 4-5 real Les Paul’s, a 91 custom shop V and a few other high end guitars… Kramer and early 80’s ESP’s
The Agile/SX guitars are full functioning playable instruments, not high end but certainly not toys.
I’ve played a bunch of epiphones from $99-$899 in stores, I can’t say which one is better, but if epi’s feel ok to you, an Agile shouldn’t hurt your feelings at a better price.
As real 50’s Les Paul 'bursts have gone up in value, there are trends and fads related to how to get “true 'burst tone” in a guitar that “only” (:smack:) costs $5,000 - $15,000 vs. $250,000 and up for a real one. Amongst the approaches:
Conversions - get a 50’s Goldtop Les paul and have a flamed maple veneer put on the top, and have the Soapbar pickup routs enlarged and install some real PAFs you harvested off of a '50’s ES-175 or something. These were huge for a while - sigh.
Replicas - e.g., Slash’s Appetite Les Paul was really a replica built by Chris Derrig. There were a few builders who could really nail the look and feel.
Modern Variants - a few builders like Gustavvson and Gil Yaron are doing their own varations. Gustavvson’s is a Telecaster shape built as a Les Paul carved top and maple+mahogany construction. But man, they are so frickin’ pricey. I have never played one but would love to check one out.
