Learning electric guitar - your thoughts please...

Originally Posted by dizzyblonde

Are valve amps in vogue at the moment or something? As I said previously years ago I had a Vox valve amp. AC30 IIRC. Great big lumoxing heavy thing apparently very sought after (not sure on that one) but my god it blew the house down
Remember connecting it up some how, to use as speakers on the hifi one xmas (as I lived in a maaahhooooosive old victorian flat)
We'd got rather peed off with one of the neighbours taste in dance music on boxing day, so cranked it right up, not only did it scare our cat, but the guy upstairs said he was happily shaving and dancing away to the neighbours music, when he nearly cut his neck....lets just say dance music wasn't heard of again

o yes. the solid states dont seem to offer the same warm wich tones any more. which is a shame. i have my eye on a fender valve amp at the moment. im in turmoil tho to buy a larrivee guitar instead. Just finshed band prcatice...been playing since 8 o clock so thought i would give the neighbours rest!

[ophic]

Originally Posted by blueto

o yes. the solid states dont seem to offer the same warm wich tones any more. which is a shame. i have my eye on a fender valve amp at the moment. im in turmoil tho to buy a larrivee guitar instead. Just finshed band prcatice...been playing since 8 o clock so thought i would give the neighbours rest!

The modern Pod-boxes and such devices do a pretty good emulation. But until these came out, transistors always sounded like transistors - hard to get a nice overdrive tone as trannies just clip the waveform rather than smoothly rounding it off like valves.

In fact, thats what i'd recommend these days. Buy an emulator effects box like the Pod and just jack straight into a beefy hifi, if you have one. If you're geeky, you can plug your guitar straight into a pc and use software effects and amp simulators to make it sound good - however so far i've never found anything that quite cut the mustard here, with latency issues and its just a load of things to set up when you just wanna play. You can also download MIDI files of songs, knock out the guitar part and play along to it.

But most importantly, just play. Hendrix used to take his Strat into the bathroom, sit on the toilet and play, with no amp at all, cos the hard tiles in there gave a nice sound.

Woohoo! I've got myself a guitar teacher. I had a word with my friend over the weekend and he's going to fit me in for lessons.

I'm itching to get started, just need to go get a guitar now, but I'm busy the next couple of weekends so I can't go shopping

Oh well, back to Guitar Hero for now!

good luck dude..........

Maybe you should re[post in a few moinths let us know of the progress...You will playing smoke on the water in no time at all (if you practice for 8 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year that is)

Originally Posted by blueto

o yes. the solid states dont seem to offer the same warm wich tones any more. which is a shame. i have my eye on a fender valve amp at the moment. im in turmoil tho to buy a larrivee guitar instead. Just finshed band prcatice...been playing since 8 o clock so thought i would give the neighbours rest!

Which Fender amp?

Their valve amps do sound nice- the sound of a Les Paul through a Fender valve clean channel is sublime- really nice soft top end distortion.

http://www.dv247.com/guitars/fender-...p-combo--35443

this one is the one i have been looking at for a while

Post up the easiest 'tunes' for the keen learner to learn then, preferably with tabs and on Youtube, but not by 13 years old kids

Originally Posted by blueto

http://www.dv247.com/guitars/fender-...p-combo--35443

this one is the one i have been looking at for a while

Nice. In the band I used to be in, the lead guitarist had a Les Paul Studio and a Hot Rod Deluxe. Not sure what the difference is between the Deville and the Deluxe though.

The Clean tone was sweeeeeeet. The distortion is a bit messy sounding, but still nice- well worth a test drive at a local music stockist!

Woohoo again!

Today I went guitar shopping with my mate who is now also officially my guitar teacher, and after trying out quite a few in the store we settled on one of these:

EDIT the picture seems to only work intermittently, possibly because of photobucket? - anyway it's an Ibanez Jet King if you can't see it!



Also got a Vox practice amp to go with it, so now I can actually start playing!

By the way, I got it from P.M.T. in Manchester - they are superb! The guy who was helping us out today was great, really friendly but not at all pushy, he just let us try out as many guitar/amp combos as we wanted and left us to it. Also got a couple of freebies thrown in. I will definitely be going back there if/when I need any more stuff!

That is a SWEET looking guitar! It'll look even better when the fretboard's worn a bit!