Guitar Twins: A Logical Impossibility

Some ideas in life are truly ridiculous. Time travel, teleportation, a universal language. And if I said to an alien 'we've strung 6 wires to a very high tension to some wood to make music' you may well get a funny look. Yet its an instrument that has shaped the world of music. More importantly though is something you may not have considered - for such a widely used instrument, is every single one different? Its a silly question, but the answer is undoubtedly yes. 

As I've probably said recently I bought a Fender Jaguar not that long ago. I went to the shop, tried it out and knew it was the guitar I wanted. Sadly, though I didn't have the money to pay for it there and then. What bothered me the most was that someone else might buy it because I knew that the one the shop got in to replace it wouldn't be the same. 

Guitars are a very personal instrument in that they really are all different. In some ways they're a lot like people. Without going into the depths of human biology, it is commonly known that no two children (even coming from the same parents) are entirely the same in personality. There is no difference in a guitar. You can put the same pickups, body wood, neck wood, strings, into two guitars and they won't sound the same - you needn't go to a shop to try that one out!

Lets look at this a little further. Start with the wood of the guitar. Even if two supposedly 'identical' guitars are made from the same wood type, perhaps even the same tree they will give out a different sound. The density of, for example, maple varies from 0.6 - 0.75 (103 kg/m3) so every tree will be rather different sounding! Take into account that when the wood is shaped this will have some alteration to the make up of the wood again modifying the sound. 

Pickups and other electrics will change the shape of your tone. The way in which a pickup is wound changes the tone. Because the pups are wound so minutely and how the tone is 'picked up' (as such) is through a slight change in the electromagnetic field around the pickup any even slight alteration to the coiling is going to make a difference. The electrics themselves are again pretty fragile and slight resistance caused in the tone and volume pots (and the wires it should be said) will alter the overall output of your tone. 

But lets move away from the science of it all. Truth be told each guitar feels a little bit different as well even if they came from the same factory and were made by the same worker. I'll reiterate - guitars are a personal instrument, there is some feeling about them and you certainly form a relationship with them. Why do you think people keep guitars from the 1960s? Sure its partially because they sound rockin' but moreover because people don't want to part from. They become an obsession and a part of you. 

You may not believe a word of what I've just thrown at you, but if you don't, just think about it for a minute or so. There's more to a guitar than meets the eye I'll tell you that one for sure. 

Peace, Linus  

Tonal Sapping

Evening good people welcome to another blog post! This week we're going to be talking about tonal sapping! Now quite simply this is the biggest pain in the neck for all guitarists - but let me explain what it is first before I go into why its about as annoying as Justin Beiber on live television.

Take a simple guitar signal chain. With no other gubbins in the way you've got Guitar --> Amp simple as you like. Put a pedal or two in the way and here we may well discover the issue of tonal sapping. The signal from your pickups is sent through all the electrics on your guitar, out the jack and down a cable. Now on many pedals we have what's called a bypass (in other words the pedal isn't on) - for the purpose of this exercise we don't even need to switch a pedal on to experience the problem. The signal comes out the cable and into your pedal and then through all the circuit board (PCB) in your pedal. A small amount of physics here so bare with me. Throughout all the components on your PCB you will experience resistance and without going into any more detail, that results in a loss of your sound! BAD TIMES!

So how serious can this be? Well all non-true bypass (we'll come back to this in a minute) will sap some of your tone, that's just the laws of physics I'm afraid. However so are certainly worse than others. Take wah  pedals, they appear to be a real issue pedal. CryBabys and in particular Vox base range wahs (V845) eat a whole lot of tone for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Worse than this though are multi FX units. The PCBs in these are quite simply enormous and you lose a tremendous amount of tone. I actually sold a BOSS ME-50 because of this issue. Note here, it is particularly bad with single coil pick ups from what I have found.

Can you get around this issue? Yes! There are two ways. First is extremely simple - buy only True Bypass products. True Bypass simply means that instead of going through the PCB when your signal hits the pedal, it goes in and straight out again without losing any tone! This isn't ideal though because the day is going to come when you want a pedal that isn't true bypass and there is nothing you can do about it. Or is there? Ah! Well the second way is a little more complicated. It is possible to make a pedal True Bypass. The aforementioned Vox wah series can be modded pretty easily see - here! And there are Youtube videos on how to mod other products - especially CryBabys - these are a popular mod.

It must also be said I suppose that this problem isn't always THAT bad. I run several pedals in my board that aren't true bypass (all BOSS's compact range are non-true bypass) and they function just fine. So don't simply discard buying non-true bypass and definitely don't aim your non-true bypass for the nearest 5th story window! The best way of testing how bad a simply bypass pedal is plug your guitar into the pedal and play a bit. Then plug straight into the amp and check for the difference. Sometimes the difference is unattainable - sometimes it sounds like epicmeal time guy has bitten a chunk out your signal!

A couple of note worthy pedals -

• MXR (tend to have true bypass) 
• BOSS (do not)

Final thing - even if you do have true bypass on a very long signal chain you may experience some tonal sapping - a preamp or a micro amp can sort this out 

Peace, Linus 

Warm Ups - 3 Of My Favourites

Morning morning.

 So then, I'd like to pose a short question to you, before you play guitar (or any instrument) do you ever warm up? Have a quick think. You see you wouldn't go into a football/tennis/rugby/whatever training session without doing at least a short warm up would you? The idea behind it is not only to get your muscles warmed up and prepared but also to get hand-to-eye co-ordination up to speed and generally get the brain into the mindset of playing the game. Well my friends music is no different.

If anything warming up in music is more crucial than in sport. Ok fair enough you're not going to tear or pull a muscle (or at least I hope you won't!) playing guitar. But the point is that until you've been playing for a short while your body isn't going to be used moving both hands quickly, in particular your left hand. I spoke to the drummer from Embrace - a British pop band if you don't know them (and yes this is a bit of a name drop) and he said that if he didn't warm up before playing he wouldn't play his best stuff until he was halfway through a set. Warming up then is key. This is generally what bands do backstage at gigs, aside from drink and ,potentially, smoke heavily. So then, here are my 3 favourite warm ups, 2 for the left hand and 1 for the right hand.

1. The Spider (left hand) - this is designed to get all 4 of your fingers on the left hand moving in tandem. Particularly if you're playing metal or hard rock or anything of that calibre, this is a great warm up.  Method - You're going to walk your fingers over the fretboard and up the strings. So start on the low E string, first finger at the first fret. Individually pick 1,2,3,4 moving up a fret with a different finger every time - you get a walking action moving across your 4 fingers. Then when you're at fret 4, move down a string and up a fret, 2,3,4,5, etc etc until you get to the high E string. When you're there start going down but carry on working up the fretboard. So once your on the high E string your pinky finger should be on the 9th fret. Then go down so on the B it would be 7,8,9,10 and so on finishing on the low E with your pink on the 14th fret. 
2. Jumping 3s (left hand) - you're probably only going to want to do this with your 1st and 3rd finger. This is a useful lick as well if you can get it nice and quick but start with doing it at a fairly slow speed. Method - pluck the low E string and then hammer on fret 3 and then fret 5. And that is pretty much it, its very simple but you can develop it tonnes. So you could work your way up the strings in that shape. I like to play the pattern and alternate between the E and the A string, getting it really quick. Its cool to play it backwards as well so pluck the open string then fret 5 then 3. Simple as that, but its about building up speed. 
3. Right Hand, Right Cramp (right hand - duh look at the name) - you definitely  need a metronome for this one. Its worth doing all exercises to a click. I actually do this as a drum exercise as well so if you're a drummer you can apply this too. Mute the strings with your right hand and put a click on at a tempo of about 100bpm, we're going to be playing semiquavers (16th notes for those across the pond) so choose a wise speed! Start by playing crotchets for 2 bars, then quavers, then triplets and then semiquavers. If you're feeling adventurous then you could go up to sextuplets or even demi-semi quavers (32nd notes). Tips - play it with alternate picking, otherwise you may die. And keep on going till you start to feel a bit of cramp coming on - hence the name! 

Warming up is crucial good people, and you'd be surprised how much better you play as a result. Only needs to be for 5 minutes max, and then get playing! Hope these tips help, post any questions below. 

Peace, Linus