Without a doubt, Neil Young is one of the most important and influential rock composers and performers North America can claim. Time has proven this to be true. His signature nasal tone, guitar playing, highly personal and political lyric writing, and hippie cowboy stance have helped shape rock and roll as it has advanced from it\'s earliest days until now. His experimentation with every genre,...
Why not make your own guitar? Well I can think of more reasons why not, than why you should. For the most part, building a guitar is for advanced woodworkers. I don\'t mean a general contractor who builds houses either.
A guitar maker is called a \'luthier\', and by any standard a luthier is considered to be one of the most crafty wood workers jobs of all. Obviously different types of...
One of the essential keys to choosing a guitar teacher is common sense. Developing and maintaining a relationship with your teacher is critical and essential. The problem is finding the correct teacher. With the guitar now being the most common instrument of choice, it is no wonder that the amount of qualified teachers lags way behind the amount of people wanting to learn to play the guitar....
A volume swell is a musical crescendo commonly associated with the electric guitar. Crescendo, in standard musical notation, refers to a passage of music during which the volume gradually increases.
The technique is often executed by the little finger of the guitarist which is wrapped around the volume pot/knob of the guitar. When the note is struck the volume is increased from zero by a...
The matter of setting up a guitar is not a new vibe, especially if you are a regular reader of my blog. My enthusiasm for a good playing guitar is compelling and becomes infectious to people. One more time, if you want to play at your top level, than your guitar needs to be set-up, or adjusted properly, which is a rarity for a new factory guitar. Needless to say your guitar will sound better...
To most people the truth about when Jimi Hendrix got his first guitar and what types of guitars he played throughout his career is somewhat of a mystery. Although, he was unarguably the greatest guitar player ever, and with his fertile musical mind, perhaps the greatest composer of our generation or ever for that matter. No disrespect intended, putting Jimi in company with Bach, Beethoven and...
You can't deny that we live in a stressed out, high pressure world. It is not so unusual to come home from work or even a trip to the store and need some serious relax time. Maybe someone lied to you and did not come through with what was promised, and it eats you up. I mean it is time to get into the zone and forget about what is bothering you.
Either you are rich or poor. If you are poor,...
The SPC or Strat Presence Control is often called the fat control. For many players it is the most popular upgrade to perform. The original intent of the SPC was to turn the tone of a single-coil pickup into a dual-coil pickup. This is accomplished by boosting the gain in a broad mid-band fashion and reducing the highs. The result is a fatter, louder tone from any single coil pickup, but you...
A strange thought came to my mind the other day as I was replacing a truss rod in a super cheap Chinese made guitar. In the process of softening the glue used to put the fingerboard on the neck itself I wondered if every company used the correct glues.
To get at a truss rod, in most cases one would remove the neck itself. Necks are either bolted or screwed on, or they are actually glued to...
It is no little feat that Paul Barrere turns 60 today. No pun intended, if you don't know who Paul Barrere is, it's time to find out.
Before I start my verbiage about Paul B. and Little Feat, let me give you some background. Little Feat was, in the 70's as far as my wife and myself are concerned one of the greatest, tightest and fun bands ever. I know, I saw them perform live many times in...
