I need some stuff to go with my new Guitar, recommendations for amp, cable, strap all sorts

Sounds like you're coming along great :)

I too noticed that you can flip the in-game display, but I haven't yet decided which way around I prefer it, possibly flipped because I'm used to reading tab

Also not sure I love the arcade stuff - seems a bit too gimmicky in some respects (perhaps I've not allowed it enough time)

The session mode however is awesome :)
 
I have calluses on the tips of my fingers too!

Also only last night I noticed in the lessons, it tells you what fingers to use for each note...I dunno why I've not seen that before, or may be it only kick in after certain point?

p.s. I also bought myself a GS Mini to practice on the sofa when watching TV and what not. Spent an hour the other day just going through the intro for a song, picking strings. Started off needing to look at it, pick down for all strings, ending me picking without looking and picking the right direction. :)

At one point I even tried a bit of fingerpicking too ! Which isn't as loud as I've seen some people can do, I am not sure what their secrets are.
 
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I hadn't noticed about the fingers, but I'm fairly comfortable knowing what fingers to use (been playing a good 15 years or so!)

Fingerpicking really is just about getting the technique just right (much like pull-offs, hammer-ons etc) once you practice enough you get it

Been reading about the custom mods and extra songs you can get that way - seems good, although I'll probably exhaust the songs that come with the game first
 
Hopefully it will all click at one point with practice. Certain chords for example is rather difficult at the moment, I just couldn't get my fingers to bend that way so that I press down on some strings and not accidentally pressing on others i don't meant to.

p.s. The DLC is quite good, although I don't see much savings in from buying a pack than the songs that I like. I haven't found a pack where i like every song in it. Also, its quite expensive, it's about £3-4 per song!
 
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Raymond Lin said:
Hopefully it will all click at one point with practice. Certain chords for example is rather difficult at the moment, I just couldn't get my fingers to bend that way so that I press down on some strings and not accidentally pressing on others i don't meant to.
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All practice :) You'll get there I'm sure... It's certainly worth keeping in mind that although you don't want to accidentally press down on the wrong notes, it is actually quite a useful skill to know how to deaden the strings that you don't want to make a sound at all (either using spare fingers on your fretting hand, or your palm or fingers of your picking hand)
 
Raymond Lin said:
At one point I even tried a bit of fingerpicking too ! Which isn't as loud as I've seen some people can do, I am not sure what their secrets are.
Click to expand...


Mainly it is the length of your fingernails - you'll see many of the fingerstyle guitarists (andy mckee, antoine dufour, ewan dobson, daniel voth etc) have false nails. If you play enough, your own nails will actually wear down faster than they can grow!
Other than nail length, it's the string attack (in much the same way as you alter the slope of your pic) and how hard you hit the string that you use as emphasis on certain notes.

Also, where on the string you pick makes a huge difference - pluck the strings close to the bridge and you get a much brighter sound where the emphasis is on the 'treble' frequencies (you may find faster picking easier here as the strings have less flex). Pluck closer to the fretboard and you get a deeper warmer and more bassy sound.

A good picking exercise is to play a chord and use all 4 fingers and your thumb to pick each string in turn, up and down the strings, letting each note sound out clearly. Once you have that in the bag, try and pick one note harder than the others out of the sequence - this will teach you to be precise with the thumb/finger sounding that string/note louder.


Pro tip - when picking, use an 'anchor point' to stop your hand flailing about and causing your fingers to miss the strings.
- when using 4 fingers & thumb picking, try and use your elbow joint on the hip of the guitar. (you can use the heel of your palm against the bridge too, this helps when you want to do right hand string muting)
- when picking with 3 fingers & thumb (so thumb, index, middle, ring finger) you can use your little finger as a rest. Imagine you are posh and are drinking a cup of tea :p I find planting the little finger somewhere near the bridge/pick guard area to be best. It allows you to move your hand over the strings with a finer degree of control.
 
Amp wise, go for Fender Mustang range, preferably III, make sure it's V2. Range of built in virtual amps to chose from, fantastic sounding first amp, superb engineering, very good both quiet and for gigging, headphone socket, outputs for recording, effect loop, footswitch provided (with Mustang III v2) massive library of sounds, superb value, it will last you for years, no matter what genre you play.
 
Booo digital amps!!! :p

My vote for a beginner amp goes to one of those new little Blackstar amps like the HT-5R... cracking sound for the price and size... Although to my ear the Clean tones out of them weren't brilliant but it depends what you're looking for
 
uncle_rufus said:
Booo digital amps!!! :p

My vote for a beginner amp goes to one of those new little Blackstar amps like the HT-5R... cracking sound for the price and size... Although to my ear the Clean tones out of them weren't brilliant but it depends what you're looking for
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My vote goes for the Blackstar ID30 which is digital.
Over the last few months I'm getting a lot of praise for my live sound which I never got with my Marshall Valve TSL602.
You should stop being so prejudiced against digital, even magazines like GUITARIST agree that the difference is negligible and they even did a blind test where virtually everybody failed.
 
Dimple said:
My vote goes for the Blackstar ID30 which is digital.
Over the last few months I'm getting a lot of praise for my live sound which I never got with my Marshall Valve TSL602.
You should stop being so prejudiced against digital, even magazines like GUITARIST agree that the difference is negligible and they even did a blind test where virtually everybody failed.
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'twas slightly tongue in cheek, hence the smiley :rolleyes:

I've played digital amps which I love the sound of - most recently the Line 6 DT25 which is absolutely phenomenal and I agree it is possible to get very good sounds out of them... But it does depend what you're trying to play - that very nice blues tone right around the breakup which responds perfectly to little nudges of the guitar volume knob can be tricky on a digital amp.

Currently I have a Laney Lionheart LH20 with the matching cab
 
uncle_rufus said:
'twas slightly tongue in cheek, hence the smiley :rolleyes:

I've played digital amps which I love the sound of - most recently the Line 6 DT25 which is absolutely phenomenal
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The DT25 is full of real valves and weighs nearly as heavy as my TSL602.
I was going to buy one since I have 2x JTV-59s and a POD HD500 to make up the Dream Rig but the weight of the valve amp put me off.
 
I have a Yamaha THR-10 :)

Digital, and it can do a lot of sounds. It's not loud but that's the entire point.

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jumpy said:
Mainly it is the length of your fingernails - you'll see many of the fingerstyle guitarists (andy mckee, antoine dufour, ewan dobson, daniel voth etc) have false nails. If you play enough, your own nails will actually wear down faster than they can grow!
Other than nail length, it's the string attack (in much the same way as you alter the slope of your pic) and how hard you hit the string that you use as emphasis on certain notes.

Also, where on the string you pick makes a huge difference - pluck the strings close to the bridge and you get a much brighter sound where the emphasis is on the 'treble' frequencies (you may find faster picking easier here as the strings have less flex). Pluck closer to the fretboard and you get a deeper warmer and more bassy sound.

A good picking exercise is to play a chord and use all 4 fingers and your thumb to pick each string in turn, up and down the strings, letting each note sound out clearly. Once you have that in the bag, try and pick one note harder than the others out of the sequence - this will teach you to be precise with the thumb/finger sounding that string/note louder.


Pro tip - when picking, use an 'anchor point' to stop your hand flailing about and causing your fingers to miss the strings.
- when using 4 fingers & thumb picking, try and use your elbow joint on the hip of the guitar. (you can use the heel of your palm against the bridge too, this helps when you want to do right hand string muting)
- when picking with 3 fingers & thumb (so thumb, index, middle, ring finger) you can use your little finger as a rest. Imagine you are posh and are drinking a cup of tea :p I find planting the little finger somewhere near the bridge/pick guard area to be best. It allows you to move your hand over the strings with a finer degree of control.
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Thanks, I will keep that in mind, very much appreciated with all the tips!
 
That's also definitely a plus point of digital - the noise :D

To really get the most amazing sound out of my amp it has to be turned at least halfway up, but at home if I turn it past about 2 on the volume stuff starts literally falling off the shelves!!! Still sounds great at low volumes but yeah :p Been thinking about buying a simple attenuator/power brake for using at home to take some of the output volume away
 
uncle_rufus said:
That's also definitely a plus point of digital - the noise :D

To really get the most amazing sound out of my amp it has to be turned at least halfway up, but at home if I turn it past about 2 on the volume stuff starts literally falling off the shelves!!! Still sounds great at low volumes but yeah :p Been thinking about buying a simple attenuator/power brake for using at home to take some of the output volume away
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Actually, my brother in law has a Blackstar HT-1 and I have tried it with my T5. It gives a great clean acoustic sound when it needs to and even for a 1W, it gets loud !

For versatility though, my Yammy is hard to beat, without any need of an attenuator. :)
 
Raymond Lin said:
I have calluses on the tips of my fingers too!
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You'll be holding scolding hot plates and cups in no time! :D

Not sure if you've sorted your amp/kit yet but if not I would suggest a small little tube amp, there are some nice ones around that are 1-5W that are plenty loud but nothing too loud. My local retailer have been selling the Blackstar HT1R tube amps and have had good reviews apparently. Orange do small amps as well. Depends what you want but occasionally I use my 10w Kustom solid state when I want to noodle around.

As far as pedals go I would hold off until you know what sort of music you want to be playing as there is a lot of money to be wasted/spent/saved. I started off with a multi-fx unit which did the job OK but for me I went the modular route and have 20+ separate stomp boxes from all different brands which combined give me the sound I'm after - the world is your oyster!



This was my setup 2 years ago and has changed quite significantly since then, probably a good £1100 worth including board (picture was before I moved over to George L's cables). My point is I must have £3k+ of kit when I've landed on a few hundred pounds worth of kit that matches the style I want to play - it's VERY easy to get carried away, especially when you start going down the boutique pedal route and tube pedals etc.

Picked up some vintage stuff including an original Color Sound Tone Bender which I keep meaning to have a play with. It is very addictive... even now I'm resisting the urge to order another pedal I'm after. Oh and of course there are of course various pedal mods you can do as well... it's a bottomless pit!
 
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If anyone is in the market for a valve amp I couldn't recommend the L20H more... The cleans are so nice and sound quite similar to a friends Vox AC30, with a excellent sounding spring reverb tank... But where it beats the AC30 imo is that it's drive channel is also awesome sounding, anything from a nice subtle breakup to a very driving rock sound...

It can't quite do metal on its own but it takes pedals very well and I with a few pedals (nice to meet another pedal-nut boxman ;)) I can get any sound I could want out of it

The blackstars are great little amps, I'm tempted to get a HT-1 purely for recording purposes when I don't want the noise of the bigger amp
 
uncle_rufus said:
If anyone is in the market for a valve amp I couldn't recommend the L20H more... The cleans are so nice and sound quite similar to a friends Vox AC30, with a excellent sounding spring reverb tank... But where it beats the AC30 imo is that it's drive channel is also awesome sounding, anything from a nice subtle breakup to a very driving rock sound...

It can't quite do metal on its own but it takes pedals very well and I with a few pedals (nice to meet another pedal-nut boxman ;)) I can get any sound I could want out of it
Click to expand...

The L20's are very nice, was tempted by one amongst a few others but I ended up going for a Vox AC15 H1TV (hand wired). I couldn't afford vintage so this was the next best thing for me - sounds SO smooth through the Strat and sings through the Dusenberg but can go for it with the Les Paul, it really gave me the versatility I needed. Do need an attenuator but unfortunately I don't play enough to warrant the spend at the moment, seem to be doing almost all acoustic gigs these days.

Absolutely, definitely a need for pedals! Sometimes one does the job, other times you need racks of the things! One guitarist mate I know only uses a modified Boss Blues Driver (keeley I believe) and the sound he gets is just lovely! Made me start stripping my setup down a bit to find the sound I wanted using the least amount of pedals. It is a slippery slope though! I still can't be without fewer than 3 delays on my board though but resisting the urge for two reverb pedals :/ It's when you start looking at pedals that cost more than your guitar you know you're in trouble! :eek:
 
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One thing to keep in mind is I have seen so many mediocre guitar players with racks of FX...

Get good first :p

I insecure guitar player hides behind his FX rack :D
 
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