Guitar Stuff Now is dedicated to providing aspiring and veteran guitar players alike a plethora of resources, opinions, and reviews of the best available products. Hey – Thanks for visiting. I work hard on this site – trying to bring you the best of everything guitar related. It is a work in progress. . Please Contact Me with any thoughts, ideas, requests, etc. and be sure to “like” “pin” “bookmark” “tweet” and anything else you like to do by using the social share buttons above - or follow Guitar Stuff Now by using the buttons below. Thanks again.

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Filed Under: Guitar Variants Tagged With: solo, video

The Winery Dogs Official Music Video

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Filed Under: Videos Tagged With: videos, winery dogs

Megadeath’s Dave Mustain Fires Guitar Tech and Apologizes To Audience For Poor Show

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Dave Mustain apologizes to Brisbane audience after a poor show – fires guitar tech.

Jake

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Filed Under: Videos Tagged With: dave mustaine, megatdeath, periscope

Marshall Guitar Combo Amp Kit

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The Marshall MG Series MG Series MG2CFX 2W 1×6.5 Guitar Combo Amp is an ideal amp for practicing and even performing in small to medium settings.

Boasting a bold carbon fibre clad look, solid digital effects and MG’s critically acclaimed, analogue tonal heart, the MGCF Series has arrived and is already the practice amp choice of some of the world’s leading players.

Product Features

Compact size for practice and small jams with carbon fiber look and feel, featuring critically acclaimed Marshall analogue tone and large complement of digital effects
Output (RMS): 2W, Speaker: 1×6; 5″
Channels (storable): 10 custom-voiced, Digital Effects and Digital Reverb
Internal FDD, Mp3/ Line In jack, Emulated Headphones Output and Emulated headphone Output
Includes: ChromaCast Pro Series 10ft Cable and ChromaCast Pick Sampler

Jake

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Filed Under: Sounds, Speakers, Systems Tagged With: amps, Marshall

Holding a Guitar Pick, Guitar Picking, and The Best Guitar Picks

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Holding a guitar pick is simple. But what’s the best guitar pick for me? This is determined by what kind of guitar you’re playing, as well as your style of playing.

How To Hold A Guitar Pick

The right guitar pick can make a big difference in how you play.

Guitar picking differs from finger picking because instead of your fingers, a guitar pick will deliver a sharper more defined style of playing – unless you’ve been playing with your fingers your whole life, beginning guitarists are recommended to use a pick.

The Technical Stuff

Holding a guitar pick: There is a technique that’s found to work well with your specific hand/bone structure (if you want to get technical), and it’s as follows:

Hold your picking hand out in front of you, palm up. Shake your hand in a way to relax your muscles, and return your hand again to the palm up position.

How ever your index finger comes to rest against your thumb, this is the optimal position to hold your pick.

It’s difficult as a beginner not to be tense while playing, but the key with most everything in life is to relax.

Give Your Hand A Rest

Once every couple songs/licks/techniques repeat this procedure. Not only will it give your hand a rest, but it will free up any mild cramps in your hand, and in a sense will refresh your technique giving you a new start.

What Is The Best Kind Of Guitar Pick?

What’s the best guitar pick for me? As you may find on the counter of any and most guitar shops will be a couple containers containing a bunch of different weird looking picks.

Don’t go for what’s popular. Although a standard medium gauge pick is custom, try and experience yourself with a mild range of picks.

Large flat picks are common for acoustic guitar players. This doesn’t mean you can’t experiment if you’re an electric shredder. “I love the feel of a small pick in my fingers,” says Sean ‘Guitar Wizard’ Hayes. Feel free to experiment from anything like banjo thumb picks to bread-bag-tabs (a popular emergency back up).

You can often buy a lot of picks in a lot bundle online, or cheap singles from a friend or guitar store. When it comes to guitar picks, when you find something that works, stick with it.

Video – How To Hold A Pick

Jake

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Filed Under: Getting Started Tagged With: guitar picking, guitar picks

How to Clean a Guitar In 3 Simple Steps

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Cleaning a guitar is easy, and it makes sense; the better your equipment looks while you’re performing the more people will respect you.

Everybody loves a nice glimmer and shine while staring in awe at their hero. But the best way to keep a guitar clean goes a long way; nobody wants to give their guitar a full wipe down (or maybe you do, it is your baby after all) every time you play it.

The 3 Steps To Cleaning A Guitar

Three simple steps to keeping your guitar in tip-top appealing condition:

Number 1: Find a good cleaner that will leave a streak free shine and not damage your finish. Pledge is found to be best at this. A simple roll of paper towel will do, as its tough enough to clean your axe but gentle enough not to scratch the finish. Typically you’ll want to clean your guitar every (or every other) time you re-string your guitar.

Number 2: Once you’ve gotten all the pick-dust and grime out of the hard to reach places, its time to condition your fret board. Fast Fret is the most common, and what I recommend for putting a nice layer of armor on your fret board for the beating your fingertips will dish out later.

Number 3: Correlating with Number 2, keep your Fast Fret handy; keeping your strings in good condition is just as if not more important than having your guitar look nice. Once you’ve ever-so carefully restrung your guitar, give the strings a nice coat with these wonder-chemicals to ensure maximum protection.

Here’s A Good Guitar Cleaning Video

Jake

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Filed Under: Getting Started

How to Play the Guitar

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You may as well drop an A-bomb on your musician friend. The biggest and most difficult question anyone can answer easily is “How do you play a guitar?” Although difficult it’s not impossible to answer.

A couple things to consider when asking this:

What Appeals To You? Why Do You Want To Learn To Play?

What kind of guitar related music appeals most to you? This is the best response to anyone asking, as well as the most important in regards to getting a positive start, setting goals, achievements, etc. for anyone with the spark of desire to play.

As the great Bert Casey once said, you’re training your fingers to do something they’ve never done before. This is especially true to those who’ve never played an instrument or have never had previous musical experience.

Where Do You Want To Show Off Your Talent?

Campfire or Bar-gig? As I’ll explain, what your future consists of and what your interests are correlate heavily on how you should start.

Commitment

Do you have the time to commit? Like anything, learning something new takes time. Interestingly, with the guitar it’s better to sit down for one day for an hour straight drilling your fingers on the fret board versus sitting down for 10 minutes each day of the week.

Eddie Van Halen described his practice sessions as reaching a meditative type state after playing for a couple hours, where he would feel the best inspiration and feel the most progress. Good news is your guitar isn’t asking you for 120 minutes every day when you first start.

Practice Until Your Fingers Are Numb

Even if you wanted to this would be difficult as your finger tips aren’t tough enough to handle that kind of work. Once you’ve reached the ‘numb tip’ stage, it’s a good time to call it a hard days’ work.

A Very Popular Learning Guitar Video For You

Where do you see yourself in a year? Unless you’ve acquired the Pick of Destiny you’re going to have to work.

Good News

Some more good news – if it’s fun, it’s not work. The biggest reason people never get good is because they gave up when they were actually progressing the most, not feeling any gratification from their efforts.

The Best Way To Learn

The best way to learn guitar is with others; you can build off one another, and talk out your difficulties and ultimately push each other to where you need to be.

Not every one will learn as much as they can paying $20/hour for guitar lessons. The best way to start is with an acoustic guitar – not too cheap but not too expensive either. Once you’re comfortable and nimble with the basic chords, it’s time to plug it in.

Jake

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Filed Under: Getting Started

How To String a Guitar, Fast and Easy

By Jake Leave a Comment

A good, basic guitar string winder costs about 6 bucks.

The fastest way to string a guitar? With a String Winder of course.

What this magic little invention does is reduce the time you spend winding those everlasting string pegs.

What this tool does is fit over [most] guitar pegs, given they’re spaced out enough; once this is done you can easily wind your strings with a simple cranking motion.

But keep in mind even though you might be able to wind your strings like a boss, you want to be sure you’re making your effort worthwhile.

How To Wind Guitar Strings

The proper way to wind guitar strings depends on what kind of guitar head you’re dealing with.

With most guitars, you’re dealing with an extruding peg which you’ll see in the example below.

A common problem you’ll experience without the following knowledge is simply described as string slipping. The good news is there’s an easy solution that provides almost 100% against this.

Personally, I’ve had this happen in the middle of a decent sized gig; being the lead guitarist, having your high E string give out during a star solo/lick moment is the last thing you want to happen, especially when you know it could have been prevented.

image credit to fretnotguitarrepair.com

Getting Started

So let’s get started. The simplest way to look at this technique of stringing your guitar: Make your string wraps around the top of your excess string for your first revolution around the peg.

Every other revolution around the peg will be underneath the excess string. This creates a pinching effect, which will hold your string in place and help you avoid string slipping.

The picture to the left shows a more complicated way of preventing this slipping from occurring. Check out the video below for a quick way to learn this method; once you get good at it you can be sure to have the upper hand on the friction of your strings.

How to String an Electric Guitar For Dummies

Changing strings on an electric guitar is a vital skill for any guitarist. This video lesson shows how to replace a string on your electric guitar, regardless of string brand or gauge, and get back to playing music.

Jake

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Filed Under: Getting Started Tagged With: guitar strings, how to string a guitar

12 String Guitars Are Cool – Here’s How To Tune Them

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What’s really cool about a twelve string guitar? The difference is obvious – you have twice the strings. Twice the strings means twice as good right? It’s pretty close.

A Takamine 12 String Guitar

Of course this is dependent upon your ability to play the guitar in general; but it doesn’t take as much as you think to be able to sound like a master musician for your peers, and more importantly, your girlfriend.

The real difference you get playing a 12 string guitar is the sense of body and tone.

Take for instance the bottom E string: You have your usual E string, but just in front you’ll find another thinner string, [hopefully] tuned to exactly one octave above it.

This is consistent throughout the whole guitar, aside from the top few strings which have another replicating string tuned to exactly the same note. The effect you’ll experience is exactly why it was invented in the first place.

Tuning A 12 String Guitar

Tuning a 12 string guitar isn’t quite as difficult as it seems. Simply said (from the top lowest to the bottom highest):
eE aA dD gG BB EE; lower case letters represent one octave pitch above it’s paired string.

First, recognize and start with your 6 main strings; tune the bottom E string with a tuner [or by ear], then tune it’s paired string – this is easy because it’s the same note, just one octave (12 frets) higher.

From this point on you can either tune the paired strings during or after tuning your 6 main strings. The 5th fret on the 6th (bottom, lowest) string will match the 5th string perfectly when in tune.

This is consistent for all of the strings on your guitar except for the 3rd and 2nd string, where the 4th fret on the 3rd string will match the open 2nd string.

Quick Tip: The 3rd (G) string’s pair is the most common string to break; use .009 gauge or thinner to increase string life.

Here’s An Excellent Video By Dave Doll On How To Restring And Tune Your 12 String

Songs to learn for 12 string guitars: Any song sounds cooler on a twelve string guitar. The difference is that finger picking versus picking (with well, a pick) sounds much smoother, and even though you sacrifice volume your tone will ultimately sound better.

If you’re a classical guitarist, your classical guitar playing style is much similar, except your fingers need to be less plucking and more sweeping in motion to make sure you’re hitting both paired strings evenly for each note.

Check Out Some 12 String Guitar Songs in the Videos Below

Amazing 12 string guitar piece written by Mark Shobbrook called Blue House

And maybe some day, you’ll be as cool as this guy:

stevie ray vaughan – rude mood – 12 string guitar

Jake

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Filed Under: Getting Started Tagged With: 12 string guitar, guitars, how to, songs tuner, tuning guitars, twelve strings

Best Guitar Strings

By Jake 10 Comments

Ernie Ball guitar strings are one of the most well known and popular brands.

You want the best guitar strings you can afford.

Without them you can’t play, right?

Some of the most popular brands are popular for a reason – they make good strings, simple stuff.

Keep an eye out for brands such as Ernie Ball and Elixir. I’ve been using strictly these two strings just about every round of rockin’ out since day 1 – again, for a reason.

Typically a decent set of strings will run you about $5, where as Elixir advertises for about twice as much.

With cheap guitars to the best brand name guitars virtually nothing matters more than your strings.

Bass guitar strings are another story. Regular, flat wound bass strings, what’s all that about?

The best bass guitar strings will certainly burn a hole in your wallet if you’re a beginning guitarist; the good news is with bass guitars is there’s an easy fix: the older the strings get, the more you’ll have to turn up your tone nob to give yourself a more live sound – make them sound more treble-like, this is also referred to as presence. This happens because over time, the strings will corrode and collect build-up of dirt and other wonderful things.

Flat wound bass strings are a completely different thing. They’re called “flat-wound” because when the string is made, instead of just a metal wire, they wind the strings with flat pieces of metal, very tightly together.

You’ll know when you’re playing them because they feel plastic-like almost, and they’re very easy on sore fingers. Flat wound strings are definitely a step above regular strings simply because their comfort of playing.

Unfortunately with comfort comes a cost, but if you keep your eye out you might get lucky. Acoustic guitar strings and Electric guitar strings are a bit different – not much, but enough.

Acoustic strings have a more bright and rich tone, because your primary sound is coming straight from the string (as well as resonating in the guitar body, of course).

Electric guitar strings are typically of a lighter gauge – thinner, and are malleable, because electric guitarists are more stylish with their playing; doing tricks like bending and vibrato. Try your best not to mix acoustic strings with electric; if you’re an in-tune freak like me, or a live performer for that matter, you’ll drive yourself and your audience crazy.

Of course you can always improvise when you break a string and don’t have an extra pack to change out with. Personally, I take breaking a string as a sign to change out all of my strings and give my guitar a nice cleaning. Take care of your guitar and your guitar will take care of you.

Jake

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Filed Under: Getting Started Tagged With: elixir, ernie ball, guitar strings

Product Features

How To Hold A Guitar Pick

The Technical Stuff

Give Your Hand A Rest

What Is The Best Kind Of Guitar Pick?

Video – How To Hold A Pick

The 3 Steps To Cleaning A Guitar

Here’s A Good Guitar Cleaning Video

What Appeals To You? Why Do You Want To Learn To Play?

Where Do You Want To Show Off Your Talent?

Commitment

Practice Until Your Fingers Are Numb

A Very Popular Learning Guitar Video For You

Good News

The Best Way To Learn

How To Wind Guitar Strings

Getting Started

Tuning A 12 String Guitar

Here’s An Excellent Video By Dave Doll On How To Restring And Tune Your 12 String

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