Guitarists of Singletrack…

Could he not use a microphone into the laptop coupled with some recording software?

I’ve been trying to teach my fingers to play an open f chord. They really don’t like it, an f barre is so much easier for me!

Does he really need the microphone? He’ll be able to plug his guitar and bass straight into the focusrite interface without needing to mic up.

Interface on it’s own is like what 70 quid? Spend the rest on some budget monitors or a set of sennheiser hd25’s

Does he really need the microphone? He’ll be able to plug his guitar and bass straight into the focusrite interface without needing to mic up.

At the moment he doesn’t and I had been looking at just getting the unit and headphones but lately he has been talking about buying an acoustic guitar, so thought I maybe it would be worth getting as it’s part of the bundle.

The main thing is that the focusrite solo sounds like it’s the right thing for him and if the software that is included is good enough for him to get started then that and the headphones are all he really needs for now and also means his Christmas present is sorted.

Thanks for the help.

If his acoustic is an electro acoustic, he’ll get better results plugging that direct into the interface too

I much prefer wireless headphones when playing, not bluetooth just wireless so they can be plugged into anything with a jack. HDR 127 on my head at present. The sound quality is nothing to shout about but they’re so practical. I can have a backing track running on the phones and walk around the house or down the garden playing my acoustic.

I downloaded both Audacity and Pro Tools First to check them out. While I haven’t tried either of them yet (waiting to get my Katana amp set up with its USB out) I noticed that Audacity seems a lot lighter configuration. They both claim 8gb and a Core i5 processor as minimum requirements. Mine is an i3 but I’m unlikely to be doing anything demanding. I couldn’t get the volume of the 3.5 input jack to get to a useful level on audacity so maybe I need to look for new drivers.

@muggomagic if you just want an impedance matcher so you can plug the bass or guitar into the audio in of the computer I have the floor unit from a Guitar Rig set up you can have for postage.

There no effects midi or owt in there just an audio buffer for guitar to line in.

Just had a little cry.
My mate Rachel’s last purchase before her death was a secondhand Birdfish.
She’d have loved this.

I think either of those focusrite bundles would be spot on.

@simondbarnes if open F when you fret all the notes of the barre F but don’t include the lowest string? So kinda a F/C slash chord really

Oh, and I don’t know if its just my ears or YT or something else but your guitar always sounds slightly out of tune to me.

So kinda a F/C slash chord really

This one, but I find it really difficult

Oh, and I don’t know if its just my ears or YT or something else but your guitar always sounds slightly out of tune to me.

It probably is, I’m rubbish at tuning it 🙂

@eddiebaby that’s really kind thank you. I have no idea what any of that does, how it works etc, if it would be useful for him then I’d definitely take you up on the offer.
It was much easier when he was just in to Lego 😀

Oh ok, that would make more sense! I add in the extra (lower) C. It feels like a C Maj to my fingers. But then I really struggle with the barre chords so some you win and some you lose.

Do you have a decent tuner? I think your intonation may be off too as it sounded really funky (and not in a good way) when you did the chord up around the 12th. That said it could just be YT messing with things. Either that, or that fact that it is a Jazzmaster so automagically adds in jazz style overtones! 🙂

Would be interested in others view on this as I’m pretty new to guitars myself.

Do you need the F on the top string? I would mute the top string using 1 to make life easy…

If you add the C on string 2 it’s still an Fmaj with C in the bass, or if you’re getting nerdy it’s also Cadd13sus4

eddiebaby that’s really kind thank you.

No problem at all fella.
But just to be precise all this will do is give a level match so he can plug his guitar and bass into his laptop via an audio in port.
There is not fancy electronic trickery, anything will need to come in after that and the sound quality will depend on the analogue/digital converters in his laptop.
I suspect at some point you’ll go down a separate audio interface route but this will let you play with a few free DAW trials and decide what you want to do and what you actually need. And then you can take advantage of the New Year Sales.
Send me your address via PM.

If your hands are big enough (and you haven’t dislocated your index finger falling off your mtb in a motel car park in Utah) then you can play a full F chord playing an E shape (like you would for a barre) moving it up a fret, two bottom strings with the index (as per chord diagram) and wrapping the thumb around the e- string on F…

Simples and great when you’ve slung the geetar waaaaay low like wot they did in the 80’s…. 😚

^ quite a good way to damage your tendons though, and a bad habit to start.

Quite a few guys I know are having to quit their bands once the injuries from that kind of thing start acting up too much.

Thumb flat on the back of the neck – HSE says so!

^ quite a good way to damage your tendons though, and a bad habit to start.

I have short, stumpy fingers so no chance of doing that anyway!

Billy Gibbons has been playing with his thumb over the top of the neck for roughly as long as I’ve been alive. I’m not sure how you’d play Tush or Sharp Dressed Man cleanly without. Thumb over the top holds down the E string and mutes the A, alternate ring on D and G and index on D and G and you have the basis of the riffs.

Grab the neck and you’ve got an F shape, move it up and you’ve got every other major chord, every punk knows that. 🙂

Hendrix used to wrap his thumb over the top of the fingerboard like that, and look what happened to him…

Yeah the thumb wrap is awkward at first until you get the hang of it (I use the side of my thumb against the string, not the flat bit). I don’t have biggest hands and prefer barre-ing (barring?) but there are a few Hendrix tunes that were played with thumb wrap and are pretty hard to play without (Little Wing springs to mind).

@simondbarnes I’d put money on everyone being able to get their thumb round. It’s easier standing than sitting. IMO It’s worth experimenting with just to give you more options and to get a (tiny) bit of insight into the mind of Hendrix.

But yeah, the ‘proper’ way (who decides what’s proper?) it to keep your thumb glued to the back of the neck.

I’ve injured myself badly biking and climbing.

That’s why I can’t do the grab F chord as my index tendon got **** under the knife during reseat surgery. **** the HSE 😂

Uncle Larry (Tommy Buk) was extolling the thumb technique on his home skoolin videos…

Forgot about Billy G right enough.

But I did qualify by saying ‘if your hands are big enough’…

Are we starting a yearly guitarist thread like the F1 threads?

That would be nice

Also love to see some pedals/boards and/or rigs

I’m in the middle of building a new guitar if anyone is interested in some pics?

Are we starting a yearly guitarist thread like the F1 threads?

It could get a bit unwieldy if it rolls over, so why not?
Anyone want to keep the ‘wisdom’ in one place or happy to see a split?

Yeah I’d never really thought about it much, but I guess the good advice does start to get buried a bit once you’ve got a thread as long as this one.

I’m happy either way Eddie.

Yes, Sammy.

My refret is waiting for another packet of frets. The 0.6m feeler guage drops into the slots easily and the old frets have a thick tang of around .63 so I ordered some Fender frets with that dimension. When the Fender frets arrived I made a few up but they were loose. My vernier calipers told me they are .51mm, the diagram on the sellers site is wrong. So I’ve ordered some Dunlops with a .6mm tang and I’m hoping they’ll hold without glue.

I’ve spent a lot of time hunting down reliable tang specs and still haven’t found them for some brands, Göldo for example.

Ok, going for a black burst tele with twin P90s and gold hardware:

Now that’s what I call solid body. One lump of wood, where did it come from?

Looks interesting ^^^

Is it nitro?

Its the “classic” swamp ash from a guitar wood supplier. Obviously it could be any old rubbish for all I know but it seems to have been stable in the 6 months I’ve been working on it on and off.

Its stained black with Osmo Polyx Hardwax coating. I really really enjoyed doing the shaping and wood work, but the finishing has been really stressful and painful. The finish is ok, but I’m not doing it for a third time so its now “good enough”!

I think if I do one again I’ll send it out for the final clear coating as I just don’t think I can do it justice at home with no workshop facilities.

The neck I bought from Crimson guitars in the UK and is beautiful. I had stainless steel frets put on it (which were a pain to level and dress) but hopefully that’s the last time I ever need to do that. I’ve got a pair of Tonerider vintage P90s for it and bling gold HW. 🙂

That’s nice! My summer project of a proper nitro, gold base coat Candy Apple Red came undone with the red clear coat on top of the gold. It was (amazingly) too warm when I sprayed the gold, so the propellant evaporated before the paint hit the body, leaving it like sandpaper (after a diligently rubbed smooth grain filled and primered base). I tried a couple of coats of red, hoping it would all melt together, but it just made it worse, so I’m halfway through stripping it back (which does look cool in itself in a distressed kind of way) and I’m probably going for a less ambitious finish…

Did you use rattle cans or “proper” spray equipment? I get the impression that rattle can finishes are a lot harder to get the “dipped in glass” look people want to achieve.

A wee early Xmas present to myself 😁

A special run for Guitar Guitar. Player Series roasted maple neck and US made Custom Shop pickups.

It’s absolutely fantastic. The neck is unbelievably smooth. Not usually a fan of maple necks but this might be the nicest I’ve ever played. The pickups sound gorgeous. No harsh mids, beautifully balanced. Sounds great clean or heavily distorted

Nice guitar, check intonation. I bet the G string is about 15 cents sharp at the 12th fret. If those are the original strings they’ll probably all be a bit sharp at the 12th.

It wasn’t too bad. High E needed an adjustment. The action is perfect. 1.5mm on the low E at the 12th which is bang on

My bad, that’s a two point bridge which sit further back than the vintage bridge so the saddles sit further forwards. I hadn’t realised they’d started putting two points on the Mexican Strats, I’m trying to think of a reason to buy an American over that and can’t.

That Spider III is the Brootz

Anyway, someone asked about rigs:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CI1SIRLjpSo/

Japanese Tokai Les Paul from about 2003. Owned form new. Has a P90 in the neck.

An early 1970s Orange OR120 that my tech says is putting out about 200W on full chat.
Through a Marshall 4×12 bass cab (VBC412).

Second head is a 15W modular head randall MTS in a cab I built for the amp chassis.

Pedaltrain is 3 fuzzes a drive and a tuner, going into a TC Nova System for all modulation/delay/pitch shifting and stereo effects.

Massive overkill for the house but sounds like God on Earth

That’s nice! My summer project of a proper nitro, gold base coat Candy Apple Red came undone with the red clear coat on top of the gold.

I was gonna suggest you check out my thread but I see you already have! I’ll reply on there momentarily.

My lockdown project complete: guitar content

CAR is hard!