Do fat guys get any respect as guitar players?

Short answer: Yes. But let's find out why.

Johnny Hiland is a monster guitar player, and I'm not talking about his size. The guy is an absolute wizard on the 6-string.

Listen to the album All Fired Up. Good album. I suggest getting it.

Now I admit, when you see Johnny play, the first thing you notice is that he's a big guy and dwarfs any guitar he straps on. He makes full adult-size guitars look like toys when set against his large frame. He'd probably even make an ES-335 look small. But after that, you quickly stop staring at the man and start staring at the guitar instead, because the guy is that good.

What I've noticed over the years concerning fat guys (or fat girls for that matter) is that those who play and play well do get respect as musicians. Why? Because at the end of the day it's about the music and not about the appearance. If the music is good, fatness doesn't matter.

Am I a fat guy? No. But there are plenty of guitar players out there who are big people. If you're a fat guy, don't let that stop you from playing guitar.

The advice I'd give to fat players is the same I'd give to skinny players. Don't suck. :) Keep playing, keep practicing, get good and enjoy the instrument.

How to save on the air conditioning bill in Florida

I've decided to get the jump on cutting down the electric bill for A/C use this year.

Right now the weather where I live in Tampa Bay Florida is pleasant, but summer is coming, and with it the heat. That means I'll have to turn on the A/C and my electric bill will go up for the next several months.

Note that I said turn on the A/C and not turn up. From about mid-November to late April, the A/C stays off. And I mean completely off. When I kick it back on, on first start-up I'm usually treated to a slight musty smell for the first few minutes since the unit has been sitting there unused for months, but it quickly goes away once the cold starts coming through.

Last year, I wished I had a twin window fan in my bedroom. This year I bought one. the Bionaire BW2300. I've not received it yet but it will arrive in the mail in about a week. However, that's not the only thing I bought. More on that in a moment.

Is the BW2300 cheapest window fan? No. But it is the lowest priced concerning what it's capable of doing.

What this particular fan does that's special is the following:

1. Blades spin in either direction, meaning it can act as an intake (brings air in from the outside) or exhaust (blows air to the outside.)
2. Exchange mode option. One blade is the intake, the other the exhaust. This is a big deal in Florida when the fan is running at night, because it brings the cool night air in and blows the hot air out.
3. Has 3 speeds instead of just 1 or 2.
4. Has a thermostat that can be set to come on at a specified temperature and shut off at another.
5. Has an LCD display with dimmer button.
6. Has a remote control.

The remote is actually not needed, but it's nice it comes with one. Other than that, the stuff this fan can do is exactly what's needed so I can turn down my A/C even lower than last year so it doesn't have to run as often. In fact, there's a good chance it will pay for itself in under 6 months.

But then there's that old saying, "It's not the heat; it's the humidity."

True? Yes. Florida is loaded with humidity. While it never reaches 100F here and tops out at around 96F, the humidity more than anything else is what makes hot weather miserable.

So I bought a dirt simple dehumidifier, a Eva-Dry E-333. It was a choice between this one and the E-500 model. The difference between the two is that one handles 333 cubic feet and the other 500 cubic feet. I went with the smaller one specifically because I don't want it to work too well.

The way the E-333 and E-500 work is you charge it up, then just let it sit. If the unit is dry, the crystals are blue in that little window thing you see in the photo. If they turn pink, it then needs a recharge.

I do not know how well or not well one of these works just yet, but I do know my bedroom is small, and if the room is too dry, that would be uncomfortable. All I need is a slight decrease in humidity. Nothing drastic.

The E-333 may or may not work for me. If it doesn't, Plan B will be to use it in my car instead where I absolutely know it will work, then get a bigger dehumidifier with a small water collector. That one handles up to 1,100 cubic feet and is as large as I would go for my small bedroom. It requires power to operate, but that's what is needed when you start using the larger stuff.

What savings do I expect?

For summer 2014 I actually did well with my electric bill, and was able to shave almost 20% of the bill. Yes, really. It's amazing how much you save just by adjusting the A/C a few degrees and running fans.

I'm going to try to shave off 30% this year, which means I'm aiming for another 10%. I think that's reasonable. While I don't expect a huge difference by use of a twin window fan and the use of a small dehumidifier, it may be enough to reach my 10% goal.

Also, bear in mind I'm doing this for just my small bedroom and not my entire place.

For daytime use, I should be able to turn down (but not off) the A/C a few degrees and still be comfortable.

For nighttime use, there's cooler air outside I can bring inside while sending hot air outside from use of the twin window fan in exchange mode. That means during the night I might be able to actually turn off the A/C completely and still sleep comfortably. Maybe. That's an unknown at this point.

I'll be happy to receive the fan and dehumidifier to see how they work. Both of them have received really good reviews so they should work fine.

Every guitar player needs a cheap keyboard

Fun fact: I was a synth player before I was a guitar player.

Yes, really. I've literally spent thousands on synths over the years. Everything from the cheap stuff to the ritzy workstations. I was doing pattern sequencing back in the '90s before any guitar players had a clue what that is.

However, these days, I'm perfectly happy with a Casio SA-46 kid's keyboard. And no, I'm not kidding.

While I can get along with a little SA-46, most guitar players need something a little more substantial that has 61 keys on it and more sounds. For that, a Yamaha YPT series keyboard does the job in fine style. It's cheap, it works and it sounds good.

Why have a cheap keyboard?

While I know my way around the piano keys, even if you know next to nothing about synthesizers, there are several good reasons to own a cheap keyboard.

1. Bass sounds

Personally, I prefer the bass guitar (mine is a Yamaha RBX170EW) over synthesized bass on the keyboard. However, there are many, many guitar players who play the bass parts of songs on a synth when songwriting. Keyboard bass always sounds better compared to detuning your guitar or using an octave shifter.

2. String sounds

The string sound on a synth is orchestral strings and not guitar strings. This is a good sound to play along with guitar chords for a bigger, fuller sound.

3. Piano sounds

When a guitar player wants to write a more ballad-like song, having a piano in there is pretty much required, even if it's just simple soft-played chords. Take any piano sound, drench that in reverb and you've got "ballad sound."

To note, piano takes to reverb much better than guitar does. You can pile on the reverb and it sounds fine. Remember, people are used to hearing grand pianos in large rooms where a huge amount of natural reverberation is present by nature.

Remember that adding in effects makes any synth sound better

You can always route your synth through your guitar effects. So if you have delay and chorus pedals, don't be afraid to try those on the keyboard.

A great example of this is the Korg DW-6000. The DW-6000 is an old synth from 1985. But the add-in of a BOSS RV-5 reverb pedal makes this thing sound like a million bucks.

The DW-6000 sounds awful on its own, but reverb and delay do wonders for synth tones. And the RV-5 makes not only the DW-6000 but any other synth sound great.

Remember that you don't have to play using two hands at once

If you only play with one hand, that is OK. Play in whatever style is comfortable, and know that with a multitrack recorder, you can just add in other tracks for other keyboard parts, just like you would with other guitar parts.

If you suck at keyboards, so what? It's a great songwriting tool, it's fun to pluck around on, and it's cheap. Get one.

How long can you not play guitar before you forget how to play?

There are times when you have to put down the guitar to do other things, because life happens. How long would it take before you totally forget how to play? Let's find out.

Everyone's brain works differently, so these figures aren't exact. But generally speaking, what's listed below will be true for most guitar players regardless of how long you've been playing.

If you go without playing...

...for 1 week

After a week of not playing, you will be able to pick up the guitar again and play normally, but your fingers will feel "stiff" until you play for at least a good 15 minutes first.

...for 1 month

You'll probably have a lot of stiffness in the fingers and maybe forget a few chords, but they'll come back to you fairly quick and you'll be playing normally in about an hour.

...for 3 months

At this point both your fret hand and even your picking hand will be stiff to the point where strumming will feel weird. You'll still remember basic chords, but for solos and things of that kind, that will take a little while before you can do that again. You'll need to play for at least an hour a day for a few days before you start to feel truly comfortable with the instrument again.

...for 6 months

This is the point where you actually start forgetting how to play the guitar. It doesn't matter what your age is, because whether you're 15 or 55, anything you stop doing for 6 months will be largely forgotten when you go back to it later.

...for 1 year or more

If you haven't played so much as one note on a guitar for a year, you will more or less have to relearn the entire instrument again after putting the guitar down for this amount of time. A lot of what you learned will be forgotten and it will take at least a good solid week of play even to get basic strumming relearned again.

Is learning the guitar like "riding a bicycle?"

There's an old saying that learning to ride a bicycle is something you never forget once you learn it.

That's not true for guitar playing.

If you put down the guitar for an extended period of time, such as 1 year or more, then pick it up again, you will have forgotten pretty much everything about how to play it. In fact, the only thing you probably will remember is how to tune it, maybe a few chords and where notes are, but not much else.

Why does a guitar player forget so much after putting down a guitar for a while? Because there's a lot to remember. Many notes, many chords, many playing styles that require practice to keep the fingers nimble and the memory sharp.

However, one can always relearn the guitar. If you've not played in a while, yes your fingers will be very stiff and yes you will have forgotten much, but you can learn again. Once you start relearning, memories will trigger and things will come back to you.

But bear in mind that guitar playing is not like riding a bike. It will take time to get the fingers working like they should on the instrument. And again, this will happen regardless of age whether young, old or anywhere in between.

In other words, if you're playing now and like the guitar, keep playing. :)

How long does it take to break in a guitar pickup?

"Pickups can be broken in?" Yes.

There are a lot of guitar players out there who don't realize that the sound of a guitar pickup changes over time. Sometimes the change is good while other times it's bad.

I'll cover the bad first.

Bad break-in: High-output humbuckers

This happens mostly with, you guessed it, "metal" guitars.

High-output humbuckers do not break in well and never have. There are "metal" guitars aplenty out there with humbucker pickups that are useless after about 12 to 24 months, depending on how much the guitar was played.

The break-in period of a high-output humbucker is quick, and usually takes less than 6 months. After that, the pickup sounds perfect, but then starts to sound awful in another 6 to 12 months.

Specifically, what happens is that any treble response the pickup had is pretty much gone. The output decreases significantly, and the string output balance is all messed up because the 4, 5 and 6-string pole pieces are weaker than the 1, 2 and 3-string pole pieces (mainly due to power-chord-5th playing).

However, there is a solution.

Take a cheap guitar like the ESP LTD M10, install a proper pickup upgrade set that isn't "metal" but with plenty of balls, purposely use a standard gauge string set in 9-42, 10-46 or 11-52 size, and you'll get at least 3 solid years of play. Given the fact most "metal" guitars only last for about 2 years before they sound like total crap, that's pretty darned good.

Yes, the guitar has a thin U-shape neck, which metal players like. Buy it, upgrade the pickups and then beat the crap out of it, because that's what it's built for.

All your friends who overspent on their guitars will end up with awful-sounding pieces of junk in less than 2 years and probably still owe money on it because they financed the stupid thing. You, on the other hand, will have a guitar that was paid in full years ago, still plays great and still sounds great. That's money well spent.

Good break-in: Stratocaster (or Telecaster, Jazzmaster or Jaguar)

Proper-voiced Strat vs. every other Strat

An example of a proper-voiced Strat pickup is a brand new Mexico-made Fender Standard Stratocaster. That guitar has pickups that are labeled by Fender as "Standard Single-Coil Strat".

For other Strats both for Made-in-USA and Mexico, you will see some pickups labeled by Fender as "Custom Shop" this/that/the-other-thing. Some will be labeled as being "50s" sounding, some state "Vintage", some state "Hot", and so on.

The pickup that is the easiest to break in on the Strat is the Standard Single-Coil. It is a pickup that is predictable without any wacky voicing going on. In other words, a plain, honest-to-goodness Strat sound.

Are the Squier Strats the same way? For the most part, yes. Unless specifically stated otherwise, a Squier Strat is either stocked with plain Strat pickups or the Duncan Design, both of which break in easily just like the ones in the Mexico Strat do.

The main complaint about plain Strat pickups is that they don't have enough output, and/or that they're too "bright".

Concerning the output, the Strat single-coil by nature is low-output. As I've said many, many times, I can guarantee that you don't want a "hot" Strat. What you want is a cheap compressor pedal. Seriously, go get one. If you want your Strat to continue sounding like a Strat but with your notes heard better along with more prominent string ring, get the damned compressor.

As for the over-bright thing, that happens because the pickup is new. Strats with plain single-coil pickups that haven't been played before will always have a ton of treble to them. The cure for this? Play the thing.

How long will it take until a Strat's pickups are broken in?

Strats use "hard" pickup magnets that take longer to break in. I can personally begin to break in a Strat's pickups - assuming they're stock single-coils - in about 3 months because I will play the crap out of that thing. Note that I said begin to break in, meaning not fully broken-in.

As far as when I can fully break in a set of Strat pickups, that takes me about 6 to 8 months.

For other players that don't play as often, it can take up to a year.

What happens when the pickups are broken in on a Strat?

Over time as you play the guitar, certain pole pieces will have more vibration put over them compared others. Which poles, specifically? That all depends on how you play and what type of strings you use. Maybe you pick near the bridge. Maybe you pick in the middle. Maybe towards the neck. Maybe you use nickel-plated steel strings. Maybe you use "pure nickel" strings. Heck, maybe you use flatwound strings. All those things and more contribute to how a pickup breaks in.

What you're doing each time you play is "conditioning" those pole pieces to react a specific way when you play.

Do you have to play a specific way to break in pickups? Nope. Just play as you normally do.

You will know your Strat's pickups are broken in when you pick up the guitar one day, plug in, tune up, strike a chord and whoa... there it is... "that sound". You will ring out a chord and the guitar just sounds beautiful. And it will continue to sound beautiful for a good long time because now that Strat is, in a word, yours.

"I've never had that moment with my Strat."

If you've had your Strat over a year and have been playing it regularly but "that moment" hasn't happened, the reason why is probably because you've never been totally comfortable with the guitar. If you're not comfortable with it, you will never have that "that moment", and it's time to try a different guitar that's not a Strat.

Remember, Strats aren't for everyone.

Good break-in: Les Paul (or SG, Explorer, Flying V)

Like with the Strat, the best pickups for easy break-in that Les Pauls use are the plain kind without any special voicing. The Epiphone Les Paul Standard for example uses what are called AlNiCo Classic Humbuckers, and those are a-okay.

The break-in time for a plain humbucker is quicker compared to the plain Strat single-coil as it typically uses "soft" magnets. Complete break-in can happen in under 6 months with regular play.

However, there are a few things about the dual coil Les Paul pickup that are distinctively different compared to a Strat single-coil that affects break-in time.

1. Adjustable outer-coil pole pieces

Many Les Paul models by both Gibson and Epiphone allow individual pole piece height adjustment on the outer coils. Most players keep these screwed down flat, but you have the option of raising or lowering them depending on your string volume preference, and this does affect how the pickup breaks in over time.

If for example you raise the poles on strings 1, 2, 3 and 4 on the front (neck) pickup and leave it that way because you like more output on the unwound strings when soloing, you would probably hear a significant difference in sound if you lowered them after playing the guitar for a year.

If you want to play it safe, so to speak, leave the poles screwed down for a while until you've played the guitar for a few months. Let the magnets "get used" to the way you play and for what strings you use, then adjust later.

Also know that this is not the same as adjusting overall pickup height. When you raise/lower pole pieces, you're doing that to specifically adjust individual string volume and not the whole pickup itself. It is normal to raise/lower the entire pickup to your preference, but for individual poles, I would personally wait until playing the guitar for a few months before adjusting those.

2. Wound strings (usually) always ring louder on the dual coil

On Strats, the non-adjustable pole pieces are either set up to follow the curve of the fretboard, or use a vintage staggered pattern where the G string pole is the highest. In either pattern, the unwound strings are almost always the loudest when playing.

On the Gibson/Epiphone humbucker, the the exact opposite is true and the wound strings are the loudest because the poles are set flat (as in thicker string = louder vibration = wound strings heard loudest because poles are flat).

All you need to know here is that on a brand new set of plain humbuckers, the wound strings will by nature ring out louder. Give it time, play the guitar regularly, and the sound will even out as you break in the pickups.

3. Too much "honk" when both pickups used

Brand new plain humbuckers in a Les Paul usually result in a very "honky" sound when both pickups are used at the same time. This is because the pickups are brand new and have some trebly "bite" to them.

Again, give it time, play the thing, break in the pickups and the sound will even out.

There is however a quicker right-now solution even on new Les Pauls. Because the volume controls are 500K linear taper potentiometers, you can roll the rear (bridge) volume control from 10 to 9 or 8 and that will cut out just enough treble so the both-pickup setting sounds better until the pickups are broken in later on.

And no, this doesn't work on Strats because it uses an audio taper potentiometer for a master volume control. Linear taper gives you quick-access treble cutoff with a slight turn of the knob, but audio taper does not. On the Strat, use the tone controls instead.

"The tone control doesn't work for the bridge pickup on my Strat."

The traditional Stratocaster wiring setup has no tone control wired to the bridge-only pickup selector setting. Take it to a guitar tech to wire it in. Or wire it in yourself. It takes about 10 minutes to do and all you need is a 2-inch piece of wire.

Does breaking in pickups make a bad-sounding guitar sound good?

No, it doesn't.

If a new guitar you try out sounds bad to your ears from the start, then it sounds bad, and no amount of break-in time will fix that.

If on the other hand a new guitar "sounds generic", meaning a sound that's neither bad nor good, that's a guitar where break-in can make it sound better over time.

Every new Strat and Les Paul with regular, non-vintage-voiced, non-wacky-output-voiced pickups will sound generic. They will sound like every other generic Strat and Paul you've ever heard. Is this normal? Yes.

It is also normal that break-in time is required before the guitar really starts to sound good. And no matter what anyone says, there is no way to break in a guitar quickly.

Break-in requires you actually playing the guitar for a while, and the amount of break-in time depends how much you play the guitar. Since I play often, I can fully break in pickups in about 8 months. For others it takes a year or maybe slightly longer.

On a final note, the absolute fastest way to break in a guitar is to gig with it. If you gig regularly, any new guitar you take on stage should have fully-broken-in pickups in less than 6 months.