The Great Ongoing Guitar Thread

Cafe Society
5946

Ministre! Welcome back to the thread! Always lovely to hear from you.

Lessee, I’ve sort of lost the gravitic pull of guitars the last few years. I think a lot of this has been my worsening tinnitus, which has gotten quite bad. I can hear it right now, it’s like thunder. I think this causes me to just hate loud sounds, obviously a problem for an electric player. So I’ve considered getting rid of my 11 (!) electrics, saving one or two, and switching to something else. I have a couple of acoustics, a low end Taylor that’s just okay, and a Chinese PRS parlor that I absolutely love. But I’m not sure I want to dive further down that rabbit hole.

Also my tiny doll sized hands have gotten so unsatisfying to apply to guitar necks as I get older. My pinky has always been useless, I can only barely move it independently of my ring finger, but at 61 my hands just hurt sometimes.

I’m thinking another instrument might scratch the itch. Maybe I’d go back to piano but I really hate the idea of owning something so large, even an electric one and I fear even a good electronic piano won’t sound all that convincing. When I tried a while ago the damper pedal action was, well, kinda good but I’d never ever mistake it for a real piano. So frustrating, but maybe I should try again, it’s been years. And I tried on a multi thousand dollar Yamaha, and left intrigued but unsatisfied.

Casting about for something new, I bought a Mandolin a few months ago, but it didn’t stick. I paid $300ish for it, and I fear what I need is a $3000ish or better mandolin, which is only middlin’ costly as these things go. It’s similar to when I bought my first acoustic guitar - I bought and returned 3 (“too boxy!” “Not enough this or that!”) and the fourth one stuck, hundreds of dollars higher priced than I was expecting. I think I just have too good taste in instruments. It’s tough to climb that ladder again without another player guiding me.

You can see a lot of the ‘gang’ are still posting, though this has become a low traffic thread for the most part. WordMan is on a gear oriented board these days, he doesn’t come around the Dope any more. E-Sabs seems to have disappeared years ago.

What itches have you been scratching? I’ll have a look at your YT stuff, sounds cool and thank you.

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PS, I didn’t even see your thread about your song Well of Friendship until just now, so I guess I’m also catching up. I just gave it the once-over but I love the arrangement with the 12 string (& 6) and backing instruments (penny whistle!). Very cool.

You have an amazing voice.

5948

If you guys want to have some fun, work out the intro to Zeppelin’s “Down by the Seaside.” It’s simple, as it’s just strumming and basic chords, but you have to include the little melody that Page adds between strums. Also, it’s all in 4/4, but one of the chord changes happens on beat 2 in order to get the pattern in synch. Very cool little piece of music that I’ve been playing lately as part of my warm-up routine.

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Anyone know the live version of Little Feats’s Willin’ and the chords to the opening acoustic intro. Chordify says Em to Gm to C and then to G C D but it doesn’t sound right to me

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5951

Could you post a link please? In PM if not appropriate for the thread. I’d love to catch up.

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As am I, and I’ve ended up, sort of accidentally, three black guitars: a black Epiphone SG (Tony Iommi signature), a black Ibanez Tallman (superficially, that’s what I got because I wanted something as non-country and non-folkish that I could find), and a black Fender acoustic bass.

5953

Here’s a kind of pointless question, but I’ve always been curious. Just as a point of interest.

Is there any real danger to using locking tuners when using heavier strings (14s, say) to the neck?

I wouldn’t think so, and I’m not looking to change my tuners (tuning is stable enough for me, and when I put on a set of 14-55 flatwounds, I was careful to wrap the strings carefully to minimize slippage).

OTOH, the tension is a little bit higher than more commonly used lighter string sets, and some part of me is suspicious…of something!

5954

I wouldn’t think locking tuners have any effect on the string tension. So you should be safe there.

I have had guitars that were damaged by heavier strings, though. One (not particularly well built) hollow body Tiesco Del Rey I have is in pretty bad shape from me putting .12-.52s on it for years. I should probably take it to a luthier to see if they can do anything for it.

5955

Thanks! Yeah that confirms my suspicion…no real reason locking tuners should be any different than regular tuning machines…and, if one is paranoid/cautious, it’s easy enough to loosen the tension if one is not going to be playing the guitar for a while.

But thanks for the reminder that I should give the truss rod maybe an eighth of a turn or so…not especially handy with the usual things that experienced guitarists often do themselves…but that’s so easy, even I can do it. If I weren’t so lazy, that is!

Yeah, this one is also a hollowbody archtop (a cheap one!), but I’ve not noticed any bowing of the neck, and my playing (well, in my case, I’d call it “playing”!) style is fairly light on the strings…don’t really dig in hard with the pick. Much as I’d like to pick as heavy and relentlessly as Pat Martino, that’s a bit ahead of my abilities at strict alternate or even economy picking. Most often just play with a hybrid (pick+fingerstyle) style or just the thumb, à la Wes.

5956

Well, in the case of the Tiesco, it’s not the neck that’s having a problem - that’s a pretty stable three piece affair. The problem is the pocket in the body that holds the neck is slowly folding in. It needs more than a twist of the truss rod, unfortunately. :expressionless:

5957

Oh!

Yeah, with my limited knowledge, I’d say that’s time to bring in the specialist!

5958

Thank you. He doesn’t name the chords up on the neck, is that first one Em?

5959

He does say in the video. G

5960

Have you considered the ukulele? I find it much easier to deal with than the mandoline, and you can do some pretty remarkable things with it.

For example, three videos of Trey Gunn (a current influence of mine…) on ukulele.

https:// youtu.be/y-8Xq7YY0YA

https:// youtu.be/poQQrJzVN5U

and this, where he uses the ukulele to establish the accompaniment before switching to the Warr guitar for the solo -

https:// youtu.be/p8scS78ahmM .

As far as I can tell, ukulele is way easier on your hands than mandoline, though your mileage may vary…

My big guitar project at the moment is working out the solo arrangements of all the songs I’ve recorded with a full band. I haven’t figured out the best way to juggle my time so that I can practice and write, as well as doing all the self-promotion stuff - I’m given to understand that this never ends…

Much of my energy at the moment is spent in multi-instrumentalism. I’ve got an alto sax and a bass trombone that I’m working on, as well as a bodhrán and a mridangam - I started working on Karnatak music in July of 2020, and it has done wonders for my sense of rhythm. It’s also a rabbit hole of epic proportions.

Hoping for another actor-muso production sometime in the near future - I did ‘Man of La Mancha’ last Nov./Dec., where I played the role of The Governor/The Innkeeper, and played guitar plus euphonium throughout. Gods, it was a blast!!

All those YouTube links, there’s a pointless space after the //, in the hopes that it will let me post… I’m getting that ‘you can’t post media links here’ error message.

5961

Well, I don’t really like the sound of nylon strings. That rubber-bandy sound. I’ve resisted getting a classical or whatever guitar with nylon strings for this reason. Metal strings are just such a brighter and happier sound for me. Also reentrant tuning makes me itch a bit, though I suppose I could get used to it. Though I’m sure I’d never be good on theorbo.* :wink:

You know, I love how your posts send me dashing to google:

For Warr guitar, I know about the Chapman Stick ever since I saw Tony Levin use one in like 1980. I guess this is similarish. I actually ran into Chapman player Robert Culbertson at a street fair years ago; he was happy to talk all things Stick as long as you liked. Super nice guy.

I actually know about bodhrán because I saw it first watching Titanic and a guy I worked with had one but had no idea how to play it.

Karnatak - wow, very cool genre. I googled up this video up. The rightmost woman on the (3 string?) fiddle sounds amazing, also the percussion. Hell, the singing is amazing. Very fun. I can’t tell where the drone sound is coming from, something offscreen? You hear it even when the fiddle is silent.

That’s a new bug in Discourse which is discussed in a Site Feedback thread here. Dr Strangelove found a workaround: either paste video link in last and click Post immediately, or compose your whole post in a text editor, paste it and post. You’ll be unable to edit your post after that and will get the error message you saw.

(and now I’ll be unable to edit this post so hopefully I didn’t mess up)

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* Forgot to add (and can’t edit!) I actually ran into a guy in a train station in Bologna last month carrying a really long instrument case. I asked him if it was theorbo, expecting to be wrong. It was a theorbo! Me and the guy chatted for a bit, and I asked him about his instrument a little, about the drone strings and such, but we were waiting for an imminent train and we parted fairly quickly. Wish I could have seen the instrument, so cool. :sunglasses:

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:point_up_2:
In case anyone was wondering what a theorbo is. I saw this video years ago and remain intrigued. In spite of the gut strings :slight_smile:

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Ben is an old bud of mine - our paths seem to keep crossing…