Two future collectible guitars, Squier and Fender
One for cheap, one mid-priced, both awesome.
There are two axes I believe will be future collectibles just based on their colors.
First up is the cheap guitar, the Squier Bullet Strat hardtail in Tropical Turquoise. This is the same Bullet HT guitar you already know, but in a color that will absolutely stand the test of time.
Squiers have hits and misses with colors. One of them that absolutely doesn't work is the Mustang HH in blue. It just doesn't work. All you need to do is look at the Classic Vibe '60s in Sonic Blue to understand why. The Mustang doesn't take very well to darker colors...
...hence the reason why Tropical Turquoise is such a good choice. It's basically a Daphne Blue with a little green in it. Just a little. Very easy on the eyes and works very nicely with the dark fretboard.
Next up is the Player Stratocaster in Capri Orange. This is a guitar I'm 100% certain will appreciate in value once it goes out of production because you simply don't see orange Fender Strats with 1-piece maple necks that often.
Now to note, Capri Orange is absolutely not the same as Squier's Competition Orange. Squier's orange is loud. Fender's Capri Orange is lighter and more tangerine-like. "Softer", if you will.
Why am I 100% certain this Strat will appreciate in value? It's because I guarantee there are many, many guitar players out there too afraid to pull the trigger and get a Strat in this color. In just a year or two from now they'll all say the same thing. "I should have bought that guitar back when it was available new." You can say the same thing about the Squier. The turquoise color is good and suits the Strat very well.
And even if you're not the guitar collector type, both of these Strat just look cool. Why get a boring sunburst when you could get one of these?
The secret that country guitar players use for clean tone
Country guitar players have known this secret forever, but most blues, rock and metal players don't.
A word that guitarists use to value a guitar's tonal worth is sustain. Gotta have that sustain. Sustain for days. Sustain forever.
The old school way of getting the sustain-for-days sound out of an electric guitar is using a tube type guitar amplifier head cranked up to 11 and a set of speakers in an enclosure that sound right when pushed. The amp when cranked up and its tubes hot creates a natural compression. The loudspeakers when pushed in a big box (usually a 4x12) vibrates in such a way that "carries" the audio "further". The end result is, you guessed it, longer sustained notes and chords - even when playing completely clean with no overdrive or distortion at all.
There's a problem, however. You can't just crank an amp to 11 and blast out a 4x12 cabinet whenever you want. This will annoy neighbors, or worse yet destroy your guitar amplifier head. This can get rather expensive very quickly. Can't have that.
Something country players have known for many years is that the secret of clean electric guitar tone is...
Compression.
When the old school way of getting that compression proves to be too impractical (and it usually is), that's when you run out and buy a BOSS CS-3 pedal or the newer BOSS CP-1X. Or if you want to go the cheap route, there are plenty of others available.
Compression makes any electric guitar sound better when played clean
Yes, I said any electric guitar.
Whether you have a $150 Squier or a $3,500 Gibson, run that guitar through a compressor and you'll finally get that clean tone you were looking for.
Where should you place the compressor in your effects chain? First. You want the sustained note to be as clean as possible before any other effects are applied, and that's why you put a compressor as the first effect in the chain.
Will a compressor increase noise? Yes, but when played clean you should barely notice it. If the noise does bother you for whatever reason, there is a solution. Use a noise gate as the last pedal in your chain and that will allow you to keep your guitar's volume to 10 while at the same time shutting it up when you stop playing.
In the end, sure, we'd all like to crank a tube-type to 11 through a 4x12. But again, impractical. Get a compressor instead and your clean electric guitar tones will sing the way you want them to. It'll even sound great when playing direct, using guitar modeling and listening through ear buds!
Whatever happened to the Washburn Nuno Bettencourt N4 guitar?
The Washburn Nuno Bettencourt N4 used to be a really big deal, but not-so much these days.
Or is it?
We have to go back about 30 years here to see just what made this guitar desirable to begin with.
In 1990, the song Get The Funk Out was released by a band called Extreme. I'm going to mention the year again, 1990. I'll tell you why this is important in a moment.
Extreme (or the marketing department for the label they were with) decided to do whatever they could to get noticed by going the almost-vulgar route. The album this song was on was called Extreme II, and of course the word "funk" in the song is supposed to be interpreted as cursing. Like I said, almost vulgar but not quite.
Where the band really made their money was with the smash ballad song More Than Words. Every single high school couple said that was "their song" in 1990.
The guitarist in Extreme is Nuno Bettencourt. Nuno played a signature Washburn guitar and it was called the N4. This guitar is in fact still made today, although the "true" version is N4 Authentic because it has aging done to it and whatnot.
All the guitar players back in the day thought the N4 was some amazing feat of engineering specifically because of the extended cutaway, known as Stephen's Cutaway. The extra top piece above the neck at the body is not just for decoration. It secures the neck so that more wood can be taken away at the body under the neck. On the back of the guitar is a curved plate securing the neck in place. And yes, this actually works. You get ridiculously easy fret access because of this design...
...but does anyone care?
Maybe.
Now I'll talk about that year again, 1990. This was the very last year of glam rock, which was Extreme's style. In 1991, Nevermind happened from Nirvana, and uh-oh, glam rock is dead as a doornail...
...but Extreme soldiered on through the '90s regardless up until '97 when the lead singer decided to try singing for Van Halen. We all know how that turned out.
I could go on for what Extreme has done after their reformation 2004, but do you care? More importantly, do you actually care who the hell Nuno Bettencourt is at all?
Washburn hopes that you do.
But even if you don't, the N4 is in fact a very good guitar.
Although the N4 is not my style of axe, it is built how most soloists prefer their guitars. Volume only, no tone control, no fancy wood crapola, no wacky graphics. It's all-machine, so to speak.
How to intonate a guitar with a floating bridge
This stems from a conversation I had in email recently, and it does make for a good article since not too many guitar players know about this.
My definition of a floating bridge is one that is not fixed into place. This means the only thing holding the bridge down is the strings and absolutely nothing else.
I think a guitar that still uses a floating bridge is the Gretsch G6120T Limited Edition '59 Nashville. Since it has '59 in the title, I'm assuming it's built to vintage spec and has the floating bridge on it.
Most guitar players freak out when they see the floating bridge because they're so scared to move it for fear of completely wrecking the guitar's intonation. This is why there are so many articles out there that say, usually very loudly, ONLY CHANGE ONE STRING AT A TIME SO YOU DON'T MOVE THAT BRIDGE.
Any hollow body guitar that has a floating bridge does in fact have a guide built in to tell you exactly where to place it. It's right in front of your face. The F-holes.
In the middle of both F-holes are two points. One inner, one outer. The inner one literally points to exactly where you place the bridge. That's where it's supposed to go to achieve proper intonation.
However, it's not always universally true that you set the bridge exactly straight.
How you position the bridge depends on the type of string set used.
If using an acoustic style string set with a wound G (4 wound strings, 2 plain), then yes you can usually set the bridge straight and the intonation of the guitar will be fine.
If on the other hand you use a string set with 3 wound strings and 3 plain, then you'll probably need to lean the treble side of the bridge slightly towards the neck to accommodate for that plain G string.
"I've seen other electric guitars where the F-hole middle point doesn't line up with the bridge at all. Why?"
Whenever you see a guitar with the F-hole in the totally wrong position where the middle point is nowhere near the bridge, that simply means the F-hole is decorative and serves no other purpose.
An example of a guitar with the F-hole in the wrong position is the Fender Telecaster Thinline. The middle point of the F-hole is over the pickup and not the bridge where it's supposed to be.
Why does Fender make the Thinline that way? Because it looks cool. No other reason. Some may argue that the F-hole allows the guitar body to have more acoustic resonance, but that's a bit of a stretch to say that when compared to a full hollow body with properly positioned F-holes.
This isn't to say Thinline Telecasters are bad, because they're not. I owned two of them previously and liked them both. But I know the F-hole is in the completely wrong position on that guitar.
How to fix the intonation problem on the Squier Bullet Mustang HH
This is a cool little guitar, but it has an intonation problem. This is how to fix it.
Since the Squier Bullet Mustang HH's launch, a ton of people have bought one and continue to do so. Why? Because it's one of the best cheap guitars there is.
This Mustang is a simple hardtail (meaning no whammy bar) with a 24.0" short scale. Kids as well as adults can handle this guitar with no problem at all. It's a very easy playing instrument...
...except it has one problem. Setting proper intonation. Out of the box, it can't do it.
I'll explain what the problem is and the simple ways you can fix it.
What happens on the Bullet Mustang is that you're going to have one or two strings that can't be intonated correctly. Specifically, what occurs is that you will tighten the screws, things will be okay, but then uh-oh, problem. The intonation screw is now poking through the string saddle and actually touching the string, ruining the sound of it.
Naturally, you back off the screw so it doesn't touch the string. But that doesn't solve anything. Now you can't intonate the string.
Fix #1: Shorten the screw by filing it
The screw needs to be shortened so it's not touching the string. The first way to fix this is to physically take the screw out (after taking off the strings, of course) and file down the screw. This can be done with a metal file.
Fix #2: Use washers on the back of the bridge
The Bullet Mustang HH is a top-loader guitar where the strings are installed through the back of the bridge. If filing down an intonation screw is something you're not comfortable doing, the alternative is to simply add washers that the screw goes through before tightening it to the bridge.
Take one of the intonation screws to your local hardware store (e.g. Home Depot, Lowe's, etc.), go to where the washers are sold and find the right size that fits the screw. Buy a dozen washers as it's always good to have extras and they're cheap.
When you get back home, add washers to the intonation screw. You'll have to guess how many you'll need to use. Maybe you'll need just one, maybe three, maybe more.
Once you have them installed, this will back off the intonation screw when you go to adjust it, allowing you to tighten it to the point where you get the correct pitch on an intonation test without that screw touching the string.
Appearance considerations
Do the washers look ugly? I guarantee you that nobody will ever notice it. However, if you're a stickler for a proper uniform look, just add the same amount of washers to every intonation screw. If for example you add 3 washers to one screw, add 3 to all of them. Doing this will make the washers look like they were part of the guitar originally.
Alternatively, you could just go with Fix #1 above and file down the screw instead once you figure out how much you need to shorten the screw based on how many washers you use.
However you go about it, doing either fix will finally allow you to intonate the Bullet Mustang HH properly.
Why does this intonation issue happen with the Bullet Mustang?
It's mainly because of the 24.0" short scale. Were it a 25.5" scale, that extra scale length would eliminate the problem. This is why the Squier Affinity Telecaster (also a top-loader) with its 25.5" scale never has this issue and the Bullet Mustang with its 24.0" scale does.