***The Official Guitar Thread***

Another Squier bass update:
During my month off over christmas and the new year, I decided to see if I could get a fret leveling done. However there aren't too many guitar repair places around leicester any more. Sheehans in the city has been gone for a while, and so has the little music and repair shop in ibstock. Fortunately I found a place called leicestershire luthier who I had a chat with whilst they had a look at my old bass. We decided to level the frets and re-crown/polish them up. They even managed to get the action lower than it already was and keep it playable.
All in all they did a great job just as I was about to give up finding a good guitar repair place.
I did have a think about getting some tools and doing the job myself, but I really don't think I'd have made even half as good a job.
Should the frets require any further work in the future, I've been advised that a refret will be required. How long it will take flatwound strings to wear my frets I don't know, but it's good to know somewhere that can handle the job well.

The old girl is only ever going to be a 20-something year old squier and I could (and have) argue that money should be better spent on a new guitar.... but giving my first guitar a new lease of life has been fun where I could diy it and pleasantly surprising where I can't.
 
One week later after owning a katana 100 , i gotta say what an awesome little amp, if anyone is thinking of picking one up do it! you wont be disappointed
 
Mate of mine has the katana 50. He wishes he'd got the 100 for band rehearsals. That said he does like the features of the thing though. By all accounts it's a great bit of kit.
 
Nicholas Sorrell said:
I wouldn't be without my Kat100. It's so versatile and lightweight, it's hard to see me NEEDING anything else.
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I ended up returning my 100 yesterday and upgraded to the artist, nothing to do with the sound quality i really wanted midi and much prefer the controls on the front of the amp, playing though it today omg so much low end beefy as hell! i thought the 100 was loud this thing is on steroids! :p
 
Morve said:
I ended up returning my 100 yesterday and upgraded to the artist, nothing to do with the sound quality i really wanted midi and much prefer the controls on the front of the amp, playing though it today omg so much low end beefy as hell! i thought the 100 was loud this thing is on steroids! :p
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I must admit I am tempted by the Artist version, but I think the wife would kill me :D In all honesty, I wouldn't use the MIDI functions, hell I barely use half of the features of the Kat as it stands. More low end is always good, but I have my bass setup for organ rearrangement :D
 
For one of my gigging bands I've bought this - Laney AH300

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My guitar sounds are provided by a Roland GR-55 which can emulate virtually any guitar sound I want, truly a wonderful toy.
I also put two synths through it.

I'm thinking of swapping over to a Line 6 Firehawk which I've just bought and setting up sounds so I can use my Yamaha acoustic on stage because I use a lot of acoustic sounds on the GR-55 which sound excellent but I've had several comments along the lines of "If you're using acoustic sounds why don't you just play one?".

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We're after a new lead guitarist because the old one can't stand the pop music we are doing.
Amazingly we've had 6 responses from all very experienced gigging guitarists who all use pedals straight into the PA and monitor on foldback.
Exactly what we want because we all use in-ear monitors with our own mixes.
 
i was surprised with the acoustic channel on the katana, sounds really good, put the ac sim effect on it and it sounds like the real thing, i also add a 12 string effect from the line 6 M5 , lovely jubbley :D
 
Morve said:
i was surprised with the acoustic channel on the katana, sounds really good, put the ac sim effect on it and it sounds like the real thing, i also add a 12 string effect from the line 6 M5 , lovely jubbley :D
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Here in Stoke we have a local acoustic delta style Bluesman and he's bought a Katana for the clean channel.
 
SexyGreyFox said:
we all use in-ear monitors with our own mixes.
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What do you use for the in ear monitors, if you don't mind my asking? Would you recommend a setup and what have you found good and bad about it?
Sorry, lots of questions ;)
This is something our band has thought about, but were unsure if it would work, or how we would use it effectively.
My guess is that we'd all have to be DI'd or mic'd up through the mixing desk then the monitors splitting the mix back to each of us or something like that.
 
jumpy said:
What do you use for the in ear monitors, if you don't mind my asking? Would you recommend a setup and what have you found good and bad about it?
Sorry, lots of questions ;)
This is something our band has thought about, but were unsure if it would work, or how we would use it effectively.
My guess is that we'd all have to be DI'd or mic'd up through the mixing desk then the monitors splitting the mix back to each of us or something like that.
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We have a digital Presonus desk that has 6 outputs that can feed headphones so all 5 of us plus the sound man can have our own mixes.
If I'm not happy I can signal him from the stage, point at whatever to go up and down, he can switch to what I'm hearing, make adjustments and press the Save button.
I use Soundmagic E10s and I have a superb mix, on Saturday I tried my expensive triple driver Fidue A38s but in that environment they made no difference in quality.

On the last two gigs the drummer decided to use her Roland TD25 electronic kit and it's the first time I've heard a decent electronic kit but it is coming through a 3000 watt PA system.
The problem is because they are silent they need to come up more in my mix but we also have two monitors on stage that pushes a bit of sound out.
Up until a month ago I was going direct into the PA with two Roland keyboards and my Roland GR55 guitar synth but every now and then my in-ears come loose and I'm playing with no foldback so hoping I'm hitting the right notes.
I decided to buy a Laney AH300 which has 5 inputs for my gear but I only use it as a monitor, so my headphone output goes into the amp and then I come out of the amp headphone socket into my in-ears and I have the Laney on a low output which means if my in-ears come loose I've got a monitor.
The headphone output goes into a Behringer P2 which is a little amp that clips to my belt (yes I like it loud).

This setup also means we can have a full band practise and the only sound you hear is our singing while we are full blast in our headphones.
This makes for an amusing sight at a gig because we soundcheck with our headphones and no sound coming through the PA, you can see people confused :)
Just near the end of the soundcheck the sound man will turn the volume up on the PA for a quick 10 second test.
 
Have been getting back into things realising I've been living life in some rubbish reality where I'm not awesome at guitar.

I definitely have some raw ability to duplicate as I have picked up things relative quickly - a long way to go to being at my best. It’s pleasing how quickly it comes back.

Decided to try and do the Tornado of Souls solo, which is just ridiculous and way out of my league... but what strange notes. I’ve never played a solo before that has made me go ‘huh these licks are really weird’ - particularly those string bends. Such oddness. I guess that’s what makes it unique. Great!
 
Got a question for those on here who I'm sure are accomplished shredders... I'm not inexperienced at guitar in general (played almost 20 years now) but came to the realisation recently that I've never really committed to nailing some certain parts of songs/solos, so I'm trying to learn a few that will help me fill that gap... with that in mind:

Master of Puppets, I learnt ages ago and can still rattle through the whole song and James' solo just fine, but I've never really been able to get Kirk's solo to sound right so have just played a flurry of muffled notes that sound approximately correct and moved on (inb4 "just like Kirk you mean, fnar fnar" :p) But taking it from the top... that first high speed shreddy lick, I can hear that it's a 6 note (or 2 3 note) pattern; 17p12 on the high E to 13 on the B (group 1) then 12h13 on the B to 12 on the high E... and it feels like the fastest way (for me) to play it is with an upstroke across the E then B and then a downstroke the other way through B then E... I have been setting a metronome up and repeating this at a slower speed and can get it so figured I'd just work my way up but does anyone get what I mean when I say it just doesn't resemble the sound of the recording? (obviously it's slower, but I mean it feels like it would still sound wrong sped up)... does there just come a point once you get it fast/fluid enough that it suddenly sounds right? Not sure if I'm articulating this very well but trying to work out if I'm going about it the right way :D
 
uncle_rufus said:
Got a question for those on here who I'm sure are accomplished shredders... I'm not inexperienced at guitar in general (played almost 20 years now) but came to the realisation recently that I've never really committed to nailing some certain parts of songs/solos, so I'm trying to learn a few that will help me fill that gap... with that in mind:

Master of Puppets, I learnt ages ago and can still rattle through the whole song and James' solo just fine, but I've never really been able to get Kirk's solo to sound right so have just played a flurry of muffled notes that sound approximately correct and moved on (inb4 "just like Kirk you mean, fnar fnar" :p) But taking it from the top... that first high speed shreddy lick, I can hear that it's a 6 note (or 2 3 note) pattern; 17p12 on the high E to 13 on the B (group 1) then 12h13 on the B to 12 on the high E... and it feels like the fastest way (for me) to play it is with an upstroke across the E then B and then a downstroke the other way through B then E... I have been setting a metronome up and repeating this at a slower speed and can get it so figured I'd just work my way up but does anyone get what I mean when I say it just doesn't resemble the sound of the recording? (obviously it's slower, but I mean it feels like it would still sound wrong sped up)... does there just come a point once you get it fast/fluid enough that it suddenly sounds right? Not sure if I'm articulating this very well but trying to work out if I'm going about it the right way :D
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I shall investigate the picking for you later. There are always different ways of picking between strings and I’m very much of the Paul Gilbert school of jumping over the strings with the the pick rather than ‘sweeping’ the pick.

Instinctively I would pick down on 17 e, pull off to the 12e, pick down on the 13b, hammer off and pull onto the 12b and 13b then up stroke on the 12e, back to down picking on the 17e. Then I’d get lazy and stop picking the 17e and just hammer it on and pull of :p
 
Nitefly said:
I shall investigate the picking for you later. There are always different ways of picking between strings and I’m very much of the Paul Gilbert school of jumping over the strings with the the pick rather than ‘sweeping’ the pick.

Instinctively I would pick down on 17 e, pull off to the 12e, pick down on the 13b, hammer off and pull onto the 12b and 13b then up stroke on the 12e, back to down picking on the 17e. Then I’d get lazy and stop picking the 17e and just hammer it on and pull of :p
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Cool, I'll give that a try too... I think the reason I stopped doing the 13p12h13 on the B was because (to my ear) that was leading me to get the wrong emphasis on the notes... e.g. (bad explanation incoming)... I was ending up playing something with the kind of rhythm "dah-dah doo-doo-doo dah" (i.e. the middle bit being the 13p12h13) but actually I think it should be more like "doo-doo-doo dah-dah-dah" (i.e. two triplets) if that makes any sense... but perhaps once you get the speed up fast enough that is a subtlety that doesn't even matter?
 
I think it sounds like ‘dah-doo dah-doo-doo dah’ (picked notes being the dah), which follows what I wrote above but I’m not near my guitar so I shall investigate upon my return home :)
 
@uncle_rufus having tried this out I’m afraid I’m really not sure. It was far easier for me to pick everything as that kept it all crisp but that was at nowhere near full speed and picking all of that at pace would be really really challenging!

I guess you’ll have to revert to youtube! Soz!
 
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