What You Should Never Forget to Bring With You When Guitar Shopping.  I recently stopped by a local Guitar Center to check out a Gibson I’d been eyeing.  I made the ultimate mistake: walking into the store without my pedal board.  Why is this a problem?  First, nearly every guitar in the store will be out of tune.  You’re gonna want your tuner pedal.  Plus, it’s likely the store’s guitars will have old, crappy strings on it.  This makes it likely it’ll go out of tune even faster.  There’s no way to determine how good a guitar will sound if the strings are always flat or sharp.  Second, if you’re buying a new guitar you need to know how it will sound through your gear, not the store’s gear.  So bring your pedals.  Heck, bring your amp too.  I’ve done this before and it makes a huge difference.  I’ve trained my ears to the sound of my gear.  But if I play a new guitar through a completely different amp how will I know if it’s the guitar or the amp (or both) that sounds different?  Finally, avoid the despair of coming home from the store with your shiny new instrument (and a sense of excitement) only to realize that it sounds completely dreadful through your gear.  Please, if you go guitar shopping bring your  own gear!

(Photo: Flickr - jjackson414)

Picks Make A Difference to Guitar Tone.  I honestly didn’t believe this until I noticed that over the years I steadily gone from using .88 mm picks all the way down to .50 mm.  This change has occurred over the course of four years.  Green, yellow, orange and now red.  I’ve used nearly all of these Dunlop picks.  Do my ears notice the difference?  Yep.  The heavier the pick, the darker the tone and vice-versa for the thinner picks.  By the way, I normally play rhythm guitar.  Those .50 mm picks might get a little flimsy for lead players.

Ben Nichols guitar pedal chain.  As a follow-up to my earlier post regarding the guitar tone of Ben Nichols of the band Lucero, here is the photo I took immediately after their show at The Vogue in Indianapolis.  You can hear his tone in this video I took of him performing “Bruised Ribs”, a cover of a Joey Kneiser song. Video: “Bruised Ribs” - Lucero.  On a side note, I have no idea why he likes using those coiled guitar cords.  He and Brian actually got their cords twisted at one point during the show.  Looks annoying.

ikmultimedia:

I hate it when this happens

Guaranteed to happen to me one out of three times I change my guitar strings.

A Lesson About Guitar Tone from Lucero.  Are you obsessed with guitar tone?  What guitarist with any sense of pride isn’t?  But you don’t need to pay a small fortune to get the tone you desire.  This week I went to see one of my all time favorite bands, Lucero.  Ben Nichols is able to produce a growl from his setup that has an overdriven aggression to it but also comes across warm and clear.  Pure heaven as far as I’m concerned.  For Lucero’s punk/country style, Ben’s tone is perfect.  So, as soon as the show was over I stepped up near the stage to see his gear.  I expected to see an array of boutique pedals that helped him achieve tone nirvana through his Epiphone Sheraton II.  I was surprised to see a tuner, a Holy Grail reverb pedal, and a Fulltone Fat-Boost.  That was it.  Outside of his amp (a small tube amp that I can’t recognize) all of his gear, including the guitar, can be bought at a local music store for less than $1,000.  The lesson: less is more.  Use gear that helps you produce one signature, golden tone.  And limit the toys you use to get there.  Let the guitar and amp be the basis of your sound and only add pedals that add a hint of flavor to your tone.