Entertainment For Lively Minds
Guitars are great!!!!
Posted by blake on 25 March 2008 - 5:37pm.
So. i would guess lots of people who post here either play, or just down right love guitars, but which is best and why?
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I would suggest...
the photo is a little on the large side!
Crikey, yes
That was a touch excessive. Image deleted - sorry blake.
think you might be right
think you might be right sorry, fraser, did realise it was that big, ooppps
There is no such thing as a 'best guitar'...
but my personal favourites are...
Fender Telecasters - soulfull, crunchy and melodic, raw, cool.
Gibson ES-335 - just looking at one makes you weep (god, I'm turning into Nigel Tufnel)
Danelectro - as used by Jimmy Page onstage for performances of 'Kashmir'. Nuff said.
Spelling, Patrick!
soulful!
i think the 'coolest' for my money
has to be the oldskool Fender telecaster - the one Springsteen has on the cover of Born to Run.
as for the sound, well it's got loads of twang, hasn't it?
Twangless
Wasn't it determined here recently that what it's got is lots of "plink"?
(I'm a Strat man myself, by the way.)
you could well be right.
i know bog all about the guitar - why even at the age of 34, i still have difficulty managing a bog standard F chord, so i'm not one to talk about much to do with the tone of a guitar.
anyway, Strats are for girls, as any fule kno...body curves indeed. pfft, in my day, we were PROUD to have bruised rib cages from gigging...
It takes a proper man. . .
. . . to even lift a Strat. (And an even properer one to keep the bugger in tune.)
And a proper proper man
...to bugger it while it's BEING tuned.
I've got...
a double cutaway Gretsch White Falcon, a Gibson J-200 in natural finish, a candy apple red Fender Jazzmaster, a Gretsch Double Anniversary in two-tone green, an Epiphone Sheraton in sunburst, a fretless Fender Precision Bass ( black ) and loads of amps including a 1962 Vox AC-30 ( which I'm interested in selling if anyone's interested! )
The Holy Trinity
I have a Tele and its great and Bruce Springsteen and Joe Strummer both played one. And Wilco Johnson. And Bill Carter from the Screaming Blue Messiahs.
But the Strat was played by Jimi Hendrix. Which I think we can all agree he played wonderfully well, right? And Mark Knopfler use to play one, pretty well. It is true that Eric Clapton endlessly recycled his same old riff on one.....but some people like him.
And then there is the Gibson Les Paul. Which is for metal. And all good metal guitarist play Les Pauls - Jimmy Page, The Cult, Queens of the Stone Age, Slash. Crap metal guitarists play stupid shaped guitars and wear leggings - eg Eddie Van Halen.
So the Tele, the Strat and the Les Paul are the holy trinity of rock guitars. That is the law.
More proof
Tele: James Burton and Roy Buchanan
Strat: Rory Gallagher and Richard Thompson
Les Paul: Paul Kossoff and Jan Akkerman
The SG has had its moments too, though.
Escuse me Mark...
can I just protest rather loudly in the nicest possible way at Jimmy Page being described as a 'metal guitarist'! Led Zeppelin are not a heavy metal band in any way shape or form, and Page is a songwriter first, guitarist second.
Zeppelin's influences were rich and diverse, from r&b and soul to trad folk, from rockabilly to classical. And each member of the band brought something completely unique to the mix. This is why they sounded so utterly extraordinary, and why most bands that openly cite them as an influence sound one-dimensional and faintly ridiculous.
Escuse?
Excuse! Memo: must remind self to check spelling when posting at 6.31am.
Liking Metal is Ok
Patrick, its ok, its not embarrassing to like heavy metal. Some of my best friends are headbangers.
I agree that Led Zeps influences were rich and diverse but at the end of the day they were the heaviest band around with huge loud riffs, heartstopping drums and squawky vocals who basically invented the genre.
And they always remind me of Lord of the Rings.
What is the definition of heavy metal? Like any genre it has the good (Led Zep, AC DC) the bad (Iron Maiden) and the comedic (Europe).....
Don't misunderstand me...
I really like Heavy Metal! I used to work at Kerrang! for a while doing odd jobs! I like Slayer! Priest! Saxon! Manowar!
But I repeat... Led Zeppelin have very little to do with heavy metal! They cannot be held responsible for inventing that genre of music. Black Sabbath? - yes. Judas Priest? - yes. Zeppelin? Nope.
Hmmmmm
methinks Mark has not heard "Battle Of Evermore" or "Thankyou" or "What Is And What Should Never Be" or "Misty Mountain Hop" or "Going To California" or "Ramble On" or "Gallows Pole" or, er, hang on a minute...
Mark, have you actually heard ANY Zeppelin?
If one had only heard 'Immigrant Song'...
then I concede one could start to think of Zeppelin as a prototype metal group. But if one hears 'Kashmir', 'In The Light', 'D'yer Maker', 'Dancing Days', 'All My Love', 'Ten Years Gone' and all the songs you mentioned, then they can only ever be thought of as Led Zeppelin, a unique and fabulous band.
Led Zep are they metal?
This is of course a crucial and world shattering question and I didn't realise Led Zep fans were so sensitive....
Yes I have heard all of those Zep songs, and they are fine and unique and great (I'm afraid Percys vocals get on my wick after extended listening so they are not my absolute favourite band) - so maybe you can't define truly great bands by genre. Personally I don't think there is anything embarrassing about being defined, by way of short hand, as a heavy metal band....
Were the Clash a punk band? Or only when they did 3 min shouty songs?
What about Deep Purple? Are they metal?
Patrick you worked at Kerrang you are obviously the oracle on these things. What was their policy?
We need answers!
Well...
I wasn't exactly working at the coalface of said music magazine, but I would say the powers that be back then would have said that the 'riffier' side of Zeppelin's music was a contributory factor in the birth of metal, but no more than that. The point is that none of the bands that followed in their wake and cited them as a key influence had anything like the musical breadth or subtlety they showed.
This misconception about Zeppelin has been doing the rounds for donkeys years now, and I get a little frustrated by it because it's just plain wrong.
And I would say Deep Purple were most definitely not a metal band either. Nor are AC/DC.
But you're right, ultimately it isn't really that important, is it?!
Working at Kerrang! doing "odd jobs" eh?
There's more to this than meets the eye, I'll venture.
Spill the beans Patrick; who's errands did you run? What were you sent to get? How many small sharks were involved? How long did the seances last?
Les Paul
Doesn't Neil Young play one too?
You're all right
A lot has to do with the player - Rory Gallagher would still sound like Rory on a Les Paul as would Les Paul on a Strat. But the question of which is best depends on what you want to do. Any of these great guitars will pretty much do anything. But here's my 2 penn'orth is
Les Paul - Best for bluesy rock
Strat - Also good for rock but many more sounds - can do country , folk rock etc
Tele - my favourite - can do anything. And be heard through the crappest live sound. Excellent for country/anything twangy
335 - blues, jazz etc
SG - rock the house!
Not to forget the Martin D28 for bluegrass and the Martin D18 for everything else.
The answer is to have lots of guitars!
(L-R) Back row - Faith 12 string, Sigma Martin HD-28, Lowden O10, Martin HD28v, L'Arrivé OM01, Paul Hathaway mandolin, Martin Backpacker
Middle row - Goldtone square neck dobro, Nickle body round neck resonator, Nashville Telecaster (with B bender), Gibson Les Paul Special, Noname Strat copy for slide, Squire P Special bass
Front row - Ibanez Artist, Washburn HB-50, Suzuki Mandolin, Fender Jerry Donahue Telecaster, Rickenbacker Lap Steel, Fender Roadhouse Strat (with LR Baggs piezo bridge)
Money
Lucky for some, innit.
Not really
None of them are collector desirable - not that expensive - and the Ibanez i worked 6 weeks of night shifts as a student to buy! All hard earned! But all different and used regularly!
I'm not begrudging you the guitars...
Just saying that I stress and strain for an income, and I never have money to spend on follies.
Ibanez
I still have and play the Ibanez acoustic I bought in 1974. A wonderful guitar.
How much was the Donahue Tele?
My brother's looking for a nice MIM Tele, but he wants a rosewood fretboard, the silly billy. I, on the other hand, like maple, and I think that one looks yummy.
And how come no one has mentioned the Rickenbacker semi-acoustics? I saw a gorgeous one once going for £1100, and how I wish I'd had the dosh at the time.
Here's my Telecaster...
...Deluxe Nashville model. Honey blonde with rosewood neck.
Made in Mexico....can be picked up for less than £400!!
http://www.fender.co.uk/products//search.php?partno=0135300367
Sorry for the link.....I don't know how to attach a photo.
JD tele
From memory it was about 400 quid - there's one in Guitar this month second hand for 425 - a sunburst. Let me know if you want the phone number (I don't know them...)
It is absolutely the bol, with the Strat neck pickup and 5 way switching. Neck like a baseball bat!
Rory Gallagher
I'm not so sure that RG would have sounded the same, mainly because in the dim and distant past I recall an interview where he said he was a Fender man and didn't get on with Gibsons. Can anyone verify this?
The other thing is the problem of collectors. Not that I'm suggesting you are Twang. I'm talking about people who want to buy guitars and then stick them in display cases - and they especially want vintage guitars. My guitar teacher related a tale about a guy who was selling a vintage Strat. He got a caller who asked it it had been played. Of course it had been played, he was a guitarist and that's what the instrument was for. In that case, the caller said he wasn't interested, he only wanted a mint, unplayed guitar.
Taste
In Taste he sometimes played the bass player's 335 - I don't know how he got on with it but clearly he was a Fender man through and through - Strats and Teles, though I saw him play other electrics too, espacially later in his career - but my point was more that he'd still have sounded like Rory on a Les Paul, though he might have not liked it much! A good example being Jeff Beck - earlier stuff on a tele, mid period stuff on a Les Paul, but exclusively a Strat since the '80s - but always sounds like JB.
Yes people who stick nice old guitars in glass cases are something else - I can see why, cos they're so valuable. But that is why I've never been tempted to spring for a '63 Lake Pacid Blue Strat, gorgeous as they are, cos I would never dare take it out and if you don't play it there's not much point in having it!
For guitar lovers everywhere
Spent 6 weeks Amtrak-ing round America in autumn, and happened upon the Gibson guitar factory in Memphis, Tennessee (worth going to for that, Sun Studios, Stax and the Civil Rights Museum, but Bourbon Street is a travesty of its former self). Half hour tours take you right into the heart of guitar making. When I was there they were making the BB King Lucille model.
I'd post a few pics but can't seem to get the![]()
thing to work. Ho hum.
wow i'v never had such a
wow i'v never had such a resonce to a post before.
find it interesting no ones seems to have mensioned PRS.
would have to agree with eddie g about the epiphone sheriton, i love mine.
I was thinking that
I think the prob with the PRS is they are very pretty and sound great and are lovely to play, but don't have a signature sound of their own (all of the above, Teles are twangy, Strats rocky, Las Pauls blues rocky etc etc). What are PRSs? Well, urr, they look nice....
Now then, this has made me think I really need a Ricky 12 string and sadly there is one in Guitar mag classifieds today, a Roger McGuinn Signature model (sweat starts to bead on top lip)....
It reminds me of a great sign I saw in a guitar shop once - on a tasty looking Les Paul - it read "In trouble with the missus - buy this and REALLY piss her off". Arf arf.
No one should buy a Les Paul
unless they have a good chiropractor.
or a Tele with a B bender
weighs a ton :-)
Ricky 12 strings
Unless you have fingers like knitting needles, the Rickenbacker 12 string is a passport to frustration. And they take about 3 days to restring...
Can't play anything for toffee:
but the right guitar for the job has to include looking good as well. Thats why those enormous semi-accoustic jobbies favoured by trademark jangly practitioners look so good, the bigger the better. Thats what I would play and I would get mine to sound as good as did Billy C Farlow, original front man for Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen. Sadly never plugged in, as he couldn't play a note, but it looked as good as he sung.
Now that was a group and a half! Hot licks, Cold steel and Truckers Favourites must have been amongst the first records I bought, taking a little while to realise that tongues may have been a tad in cheeks for some of their real tear-jerker country weepies. Saw 'em live at Hammersmith Odeon in 76 or thereabouts. Still smiling now, as I recall the wholehearted wonderfulness of it all, as possibly recorded on the appallingly covered ""We've got a live one here".
Bill Kirchen
Didn't Bill Kirchen play with them at some stage?
Absolutely!
Good songs, good singer, good guitarist, good looks....
Well, anyway, 3 out of 4's not bad.
Seeds 'n' Stems Again
Seconding the Commander: Great band, great songs, great sound.
Smoke that cigarette
My band busked "Smoke smoke smoke that cigarette" on the last day of smoking being allowed in pubs!
I have a fantastic CD of Phil Harris stuff.
That's what I like about the South, Preacher an' the Bear, Smoke Smoke Smoke, Some Little Bug, it's all great stuff.
Hey Twang (or anyone who might know), a question
You seem to know your way round a guitar shop.
What's John Sebastian "playing" here?
It's a nice clip. It was when playing music was generally deemed a pretty fun thing to do. Nowadays of course all artists have the weight of the world on their shoulders and have to look appropriately pained and stern.
Is it...
an autoharp?
Yes it is
You're right by jove. Incidentally the first instrument I can remember playing - my Gran had one!
Who remembers Pinkertons Assorted Colours?
They had a zither, if memory serves.
Somewhere deep in the mists of time
I seem to recall a nice lady on Watch With Mother or something similar who zithed quite nicely at tea time on the telly.
Shirley Abicair!
Phwoah!
That's the girl!
Pity she's not on YouTube. Cheers Archie, you've made my day!
Lambchop
Was she the same woman who had the sock puppet called Lambchop (so many years before Kurt Wagner used the name)?
That
was the delightful Shari Lewis.
Most famous stringed instrument solo ever?
Spiffing club,
the Empire.
My guitars and C F Martin
I've got about 16 guitars at home - all the classics, Tele, Strat, but mainly rely on my SG G400 Custom (cream with the 3 pickups)as it can do everything - but have just picked up a Danelecto Pro. What a great guitar, the two lipstick pick ups totally out twang my Tele.
Has anyone tried the Martin DX1s? You should I picked one up via Ebay for $360 and was shipped to me for $60 so almost a third of the high street price. And it is incredible, with that rich resonant Martin sound that rumbles your rib cage.
Possibly though, the favourite in my collection is my Burns Flyte bass which looks like this...
Sounds like my kind of collection
I like the sound of that SG - who was the guy out of Alice Cooper who played one - Glen Buxton?
Yep
A tone master, that lad was.
G400 Custom
It's a wonderful model - you can go from a warm cocktail tone, to the classic SG 'honk', and all points from Punk, Funk to Indie by rolling around the tone controls
Check out some G400 players
Les Paul
Mike Nesmith
Keef - not just a Tele' twanger
Hendrix - not just a strat cat
Buddy Guy
want one want one
I now need two more guitars due to this thread.
You're...
joking aren't you! You'd have to nail them to the ceiling!
The Epi model
has had a massive price drop - it used to be around £500 3 years
ago - you can pick it up for just over £200 now. (£208 - here)
http://www.imuso.co.uk/directory/reviews/electric-guitar-reviews/epiphon...
Go on there's always room for one more
Space is certainly a problem
Space is certainly a problem - also I don't keep 'em if I don't use 'em - good idea about the ceiling though- hadn't thought of that. The walls are all full!
Gibson ES 295
Golden hollow-bodied Gibson ES-295 as played by Scotty Moore and Geordie out of Killing Joke
Blimey what a horrible racket.
Who is this joker? Can he actually play a guitar?
guitar porn
guitar porn
Uh Uh Uh
Yessssssss
Hahahahah
very funny
What got me started ...
The first guitar I ever drooled over, as a 15 year old, was a gorgeous wine red Yamaha SG2000 on the cover of a very glossy Yamaha brochure. I can still smell it now. The brochure, that is. I've never owned an SG2000. My current squeeze is an American series Telecaster with EMG pickups.
More porn for you then: http://www.harmony-central.com/ProductImages/Large/000009135.jpg
Hmmm, where's my credit card? Time to fulfill a teenage fantasy, I think.
PRS
My ex had one. I wasn't allowed to touch it.
Thankfully my present boyfriend is more generous & lets me drool over his Gibson Thunderbird (yeah, I know its a bass).He has 7 guitars (bass/electric accoustic/accoustic & an SG)but the Thunderbird is so beautiful. Sigh.
Myself, I don't play, I just admire.
As for the Gibson factory in Memphis, my fella made me 'keep hold of' his credit card, he almost had it off me! Worth a visit for anyone.
tap moment!
did it still have the old tagger on it, don't touch, don't even look at it...
Taylor
Having just taken delivery of the new Taylor Solid Body Classic I am seriously in love.
Spare a thought for the Telecaster Thinline that will now gather dust.
http://www.taylorelectricguitars.com/Models/ModelDetails.aspx?modelid=1
nudge nudge, wink wink, so no more
That is one...
hell of a good looking guitar.
No takers
on that 1962 Vox then?? It's got the original blue-backed speakers...and the copper top...
I'd love an AC30
but they always used to command silly prices, having got famous through ubiquity.
My little Laney Linebacker does everything I want from an amp. I sold a Fender Vibrochamp to buy it; the Fender was great, especially after it'd been powered up for about a week, but didn't really have enough oomph, and I've only really got room for one amp in the room where I make a din.
Go on then, how much is the Vox?
Pignose
Go for it Vulpes. And along the way order a Pignose from Thomann - about 35 quid - at the same time (a) a little design classic, (b) a great sounding little amp and (c) really useful.
Tempting,
to have a tiddler too. The Laney weighs a bloody ton!
At last........The Rickenbacker makes an appearance.....
Not a personal favourite to play (for the aforementioned reasons and I, like Lisa Simpson, am afflicted by "stubbiness") but the sound! Roger McGuinn on Turn Turn Turn....
Nothing cracks a Tele though...!