The Guitar Thread




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A guitar that you really love and want to play is a good one to learn on. Get the best you can afford that takes your fancy, IMO. Thereā€™s something to be said for learning on acoustics, as many people say, but if you really want strat then go for it. Just donā€™t scrimp on the amp. The best electric guitar in the world sounds only as good as what itā€™s plugged into. It took me way too long to realise that, ironically on the back of bad advice from a very good player. He recommended something he heard was good, but hadnā€™t actually heard.

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Does anyone here record with GarageBand? I wanna DI a guitar into my audio interface to play guitar over tracks. As the program gives you a bunch of amps and guitar sounds to mess with, does it matter if youā€™re only using a budget guitar?

Iā€™d like to buy a cheap secondhand no name brand electric guitar to use for this purpose as I only have acoustic, but is that gonna greatly diminish the sound I could achieve with a better one?

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Ok, stupid question time.

We have a Epiphone Les Paul Special 2, AFD guitar. So itā€™s a cheap guitar, maybe $250-$350 I think.

Thereā€™s a really super fine copper wire on the neck pickup that has broken. I have googled that it can be fixed at home but I have less repair skills than guitar skills.

Is it going to be cheaper to replace the pickup (and can I use any pickup) or get someone to reattach the wire?

The pickup is an Epiphone Ceramic Plusā„¢; Zebra-coil.

Any advice would be handy.

Thanks for that. I actually have an amp which used to be my grandfathers; itā€™s an old Peavey amp and he used to play Western swing and bluegrass through it, so I guess it probably works well for clean playing.

Last 2 sessions of the year got cancelled, so I canā€™t make any more progress on my tele for a while. I am disappoint!

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Ya got a picture? Its hard to imagine what you mean.

Iā€™ll have to get him to restring it, he says it sounds like ā– ā– ā– ā–  (could be his playing) and he thinks itā€™s this broken wire.

Find it hard to know how those wires would break through normal playing.

I have found the amp sims are fine but the speaker sims are garbage. Try downloading this and hunting for cab IRā€™s that you like the sound of. Itā€™s made a huge difference for me. GarageBand is a much lighter software than logic so I can do far more with it.

*I have a free gods cab IR that I use on a lot of heavy stuff for example.

**the eminence amp is good for high gain tone as well.

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Thanks, Iā€™ll look into that. Iā€˜ve only just started learning it all, so any tips like these are most welcome. So with a good cab sound, it should work ok with a budget guitar?

I canā€™t afford to go all out on gear, so looking for ways to get bang for buck. I quit doing home studio stuff when my kids were born but now years have gone by and Iā€™ve got the urge again.

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Hard to tell but it does sorta look like the pick up wire is starting to unspool.

Im not sure how that would be fixed, but Im not technically gifted by any stretch.

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Itā€™s thought me how much a cab/speakers make. It gives me a whole suite of flavours that I didnā€™t think some amps were capable of.

The lesson bits youā€™re referring to are ok, but I often load GarageBand in the back ground and play to YouTube lessons.

I also often use the built in drum programming with the names drummers as I find it much easier to play to a click with it being behind a drum kit. I spent a fair bit of time getting the drum tones were I wanted them and itā€™s made being inspired to write things a lot easier.

I also often use the pitch shift to write bass tracks using either the svt emulations or the guys who do that Nadir make a bass amp plug in, which is good. Again it benefits greatly from good IRā€™s.

Iā€™m down with the bug as of last night but when Iā€™m back up and have my laptop with me I could email you some IRā€™s to mess with if youā€™re happy to PM an email address.

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My kid YouTubed a bit of stuff, and itā€™s one of those ā€˜easy when you know howā€™ (and have a soldering iron).

Iā€™m tempted to buy one a give it a go, but he can just use the other pickup and the guitar would be playable.

Having taken the removable plate off the back of the guitar Iā€™m surprised they donā€™t plugs, rather than everything soldered.

Just go for it. man. It isnā€™t that hard, really. And as you say - if it goes wrong - use the other pickup, and take it to get repaired hahaha

Maybe practice your soldering on some thin wire contacts first. It a useful skill in any case.

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If one coil of a humbucker is ā– ā– ā– ā– ā– ā– , youā€™ll have a single coil pickup (thatā€™s not designed to be a single)

Either way you can get a cheap ish pickup for 30 or 40 off eBay or whatever, the brand names are expensive. 10 min job to swap it.

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For the fashion conscious guitar players among you ā€¦

Does it come in sunburst?

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Need to know two strong blokes to be able to pick you up to shake the dropped pick out.

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Or just visit the right nightclub and have a couple too many drinks