I fiddled with, fooled around with and tinkered with this thing for a few hours before requesting a refund. I couldn’t get it to stick to any of my guitars well, to start. Most of my guitar bodies are not flat surfaces and the device needs a flat surface to stand on.
I also couldn’t get anything approaching a banjo-y effect to the one guitar that it would stick to.
I wasn’t real impressed with the cheap plastic construction, not for $50, but if it had worked, I’d have been happy with my purchase. As it was, it seemed like it was made specifically for a Telecaster (one of my least favorite types of guitars) but even then I’d be wary of buying one of these.
TL;DR: Sent back after just a few hours because it was fail.
ETA: I guess I’ll have to start saving money for a banjo and then drop the tuning on it down a couple of steps so I can have death metal banjo. Of course, that means I’ll have to learn to play the banjo too. <sigh> Oh well; it’s something to do.
I wondered at the time why you didn’t consider just getting a git-jo :Here’s a basic one at Sweetwater. I own/play a banjo, but a 6-string git-jo would be a lot easier.
I acquired one of those a few years ago. I’ve been meaning to take it to a luthier to see if I can get the action lowered on it as it rides pretty high off of the neck.
It’s a bit of a hassle to keep it in tune and intoned. The bridge just “floats” on top of the banjo head so it has to be adjusted every so often, especially after some hard strumming.
It does a little better with soft picking.
It’s best feature of course is its’s six strings tuned to standard guitar tunings make it very easy to just pick it up and play your favorite licks.
As a solo instrument it might be somewhat limited but it can add a nice bluegrass feel when used to support another guitar player. Not bad for a duo arrangement. IT’s just that I usually play alone.
My wife and I went to see Joe Satriani play last night. My second time seeing him, her first. I’m sure this is a secret to everyone but he’s pretty good!
There are a couple very distinctive sounds he likes to trot out regularly—a pinch harmonic with the whammy bar down to make the thing shriek like a banshee, a rapid-fire hammer-on with the pick, and scratches up and down the strings. I’m still struggling with pinch harmonics (admittedly, I don’t practice it enough) so I can’t reproduce that shriek consistently, whereas he makes it look effortless, and produces incredible sustain. The scratches and hammer-ons I can do when I’m working specifically on them, but not in the middle of a song. I apparently still have some work to do to get to that guy’s level…
I’ve recorded a track, 4Runner…inspired by my Toyota 4Runner. (Not exactly a stretch with the lyrics.) I used both guitar AND bass with heavy distortion. Those distortion settings are presets that I arrived at after meticulously adjusting various emulated analog pedals, compressers, and other sound modifiers. The guitar is called “Sneering Guitar”, the bass is called “Sardinian Bass.” I have two types of bass I use to reflect both parts of my Italian ancestry: “Alpine Bass” and “Sardinian Bass.”
My guitar is a Fender Telecaster, my basses alternate between a Jazz, a Precision, and a Bruce Thomas Profile. (And a West German upright bass.) I frequently use all three of them in the same track.
Hey, that was fun! Lots of stuff on that page that’s whimsical and funny (“theres a lot that I could share about this subject”), with a nice groove.
How did you record it?
It’s a good start but it needs a dubstep breakdown and then a furiously weird solo before the bridge brings that intro back in over the dubstep beat to close it out.
I’m prolly gonna end up with one of these or a banjo, but I like gadgets and $50 is way less than $600, so I figured I’d give it a shot. I mean, I fished an eBow out of the trash at a gig back in like 1990* and I still have it and use it ya know what I’m sayin’?
*It was hilarious! Meat Loaf’s guitar player on this tour used it for one part of one song. If you’ve never seen one, it’s basically a small electromagnet that vibrates one string while damping the two on either side of it. I love it and use it all the time and have even loaned it out to friends for recording sessions. It has a very unique sound. Anyway, the audio guy hated the thing and after this gig at The Moon he came backstage ranting, grabbed the thing, threw it at the ground as hard as he could, breaking the plastic shell, and then chucked it into the trash, never ceasing his patter for a second as he explained in great detail exactly how much he loathed the eBow. I found it after the loadout, fixed it with some epoxy and have been using it ever since.
I use a Presonus Audiobox USB interface, the most affordable one they offer, a really basic two-input setup with two inputs for cables or mic cables, output to two large JBL studio monitors. The recording program I use is called Studio One and it came for free with the Audiobox. When my tracks are done, they’re mixed and mastered at an actual studio, using Pro Tools. (Most of what’s on my SoundCloud are NOT done, they’re works in progress that I keep for reference and to share them so I get advice from other people.)
I’ve been playing bass since age 13 and I’m now almost 32, so it’s always been my strongest instrument. I have 4 basses - a Fender Precision, a Fender Jazz, and a Bruce Thomas Profile Bass which is a custom-shop variant of the Precision made by the British Bass Centre of London, and a West German upright bass.
My guitar is a Telecaster. All my drum tracks are created with an AKAI drum pad, using samples from Drumdrops (packs of WAVs that were recorded by mic-ing individual drums of various real drum kits.)
Oh - for vocals, an Audio Technica condenser mic with a pop filter, very modest gear, cost maybe $150.
I saw a git-jo at the music store yesterday. It was with evil glee, that I subjected the poor bastards to a rendition of “Rainbow connection” from the Muppets movie
I feel like I’ve hit a wall in my playing. As some of you may know, I am slowly dying from liver disease barring a transplant at some point in the future. As such, it’s become more important to me to try to improve my playing as much as possible, but I play alone.
Is there a go-to method for any of you where you have something you can play or practice to get you out of a funk? Scales? Anything?
Speaking of scales, my mastery of scales is horrid. I can play harmonic minor scales in like three positions and other than blues-type stuff, I know nothing. Should I start there?
Now Garth Brooks, there’s a guy who can handle a guitar!