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That headphone amp is interesting. Now I’m intrigued with electric.
Learner guitars - help
- Thread starter Toothpick
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Blackstar makes great portable stuff! I've got the Fly3 and the Fly3 Acoustic. My Gretsch 5420 with a tape echo sounds wonderful through the Fly Acoustic!
I was on the pre-order for the Positive Grid Spark Amp. That thing is a game changer. It sounds quite amazing. Very small and portable, but quite full and loud. Delicious tones for a modeling amp. It has a lot of features. The app that goes with the amp actually works. And there is a recording interface that really works too. It can run as a bluetooth speaker as well, which makes it just that much more useful. There is a jam-along function that interprets what chords you are playing, and dynamically creates a backing track with drums and bass in real time. Its been great. Has modeling modes for electric guitar, acoustic guitar and bass. Under $300. Its a keeper for sure. I can post a video of me playing through it if anyone cares.
The Yamaha is an excellent choice. Fender is not known for their acoustic guitars. There are a few other good choices, but none better than Yamaha for bang for your buck at $200 US.
Agree 100%The height of the strings above the fretboard - the "action" - is really important. Too high and the guitar will be hard to play, especially higher up the neck.
To understand what's going on think about the geometry. The strings vibrate in a kind of ellipse suspended at each end by the nut and the bridge. Let's call that the string envelope. The biggest deflection is around the 12th fret, bang in the middle of the string.
So, for the perfect low action, you want the nut to be at exactly the right height above the fretboard at one end and the bridge to be at exactly the right height at the other end: the lowest you can get without the strings hitting the frets.
Also, you want just the right amount of shallow curve in the fretboard to match the curve of the string envelope. The shape of the neck is adjusted using the truss rod. But only if you know what you're doing
A full setup might involve a fret level to get the frets perfectly flat, a truss rod adjustment to set the right curve in the neck, a new nut, and a new bridge. Even expensive guitars often come out the factory in bad condition.
It's hard to justify the cost of a full setup for a basic guitar but the good news is you can often make a big improvement just by lowering the bridge. Get a couple of bridge blanks (keep the original intact!) and file away. They're cheap so it's easy to experiment.
Try to keep the base of a new bridge absolutely, perfectly flat. The bridge transmits string vibrations into the top and the top is where the magic happens.
A huge part of the art of acoustic guitar making is the challenge of making a very light but also strong top with vibration modes which create a good tone. The stiffest and lightest woods like quality sitka spruce are used for this.
As for playing the thing... it'll take a few weeks for your finger pads to toughen up. You just have to get through that.
Progress tends to come in fits and starts. You might be practicing every day for a couple of months or more and nothing seems to be happening. You feel like you're not getting anywhere. But you will. The best advice for anyone learning a musical instrument is to stick with it and just don't give up.
That's all it takes. Anyone can do it. A musician is just someone who didn't give up.
Fine motor skills develop slowly as your brain gradually rewires itself. You can speed the process along a little by practicing for longer each day, if you've got the time, but whatever you do practice *every* day.
Concentrating intensely on what you're doing, but in a relaxed kind of way, is important if you want to make that baby sing. Don't tense up just listen closely to the instrument and feel how it responds.
For a while I made a living playing flute, lots of classical music & Mozart. Some of it was really hard. It really pushes your limits. But on a good day, when you're in the zone, time seems to slow down and you're not playing an instrument any more: you're just... singing.
All anyone has to do to get there is don't give up.
I'll pile on and say get a Yamaha. I used to teach guitar lessons ages ago, and I would recommend Yamaha guitars to new students. The sound is good, and the action is decent. When I first learned to play, my parents gave me a guitar they found at a yard sale. The action was so awful it almost put me off guitar playing altogether. I found a cheap nylon string guitar shortly after this, and it was off to the races after that.
If you go electric, get a Zoom G3. You can learn a lot with a device like this. It packs lot into one small box. As well as a bunch of different amp sounds you get FX, tuner, and a looper all in one box.
An electric guitar is capable of a huge range of sounds & tones. The Zoom will let you explore many of them.
Or if you're handy with a soldering iron you can make everything you need. Some of the best, classic tube amps have very simple circuits.
Guitar choice boils down to pickups. Single coils are bright & dynamic, like champagne. Humbuckers are richer and darker like an old, red wine.
Guitar-players with single coils are constantly trying to make them sound "fatter". Players with humbuckers spend all their time trying to make them sound brighter...
