Guitars in 2015 - the year in review
Price hikes and lesser desires for vintage can sum up this year.
2015 wasn't a groundbreaking year as far as guitars were concerned, but there were a few things I noticed.
The "Big F" and "Big G" further plod along into boutique-only territory
First, the Fender Mexico Standard Strat, including the HSS model jumped up in price by $100. Ridiculous.
Second, a new Gibson USA Les Paul Standard broke over $3,000. Ludicrous.
Fender and Gibson are basically turning into boutique brands - even for their lower-end models. This is weird because "mass-produced" and "boutique" don't go together, but both Fender and Gibson do it anyway because they can get away with it (for now.) This is all the more reason to just go Squier or go Epiphone instead.
Vintage guitar appeal is waning
The desire for owning a vintage electric is far less than it used to be, and it's primarily for four reasons.
- Too expensive
- No guarantee of ROI (Return On Investment)
- Both Fender and Gibson can easily replicate anything the old guitar had, and for less than the genuine article
- The genuine article is too old to be playable
It's reason #4 that's the biggie.
In 2016, a guitar made in 1969 will be 47 frickin' years old. That's dangerously close to the half-century mark. Electric guitars were never designed to last that long. While true there are many over a half-century in age that still exist, what is not being said is how many are now unplayable due to age.
For example, take a real-deal Gibson Les Paul of the 1950s. Can't be played. Why? One reason is the "tulip" tuner buttons. The ravages of old age make those things literally crumble apart right in your fingers even with the gentlest of care.
Age problems happen with electric guitars starting at around 25 years old, regardless of make, model or manufacturing origin of the instrument. Corrosion and even erosion happens where things just crumble apart.
I'll say it like this: It is a STUPID IDEA to buy a vintage electric. Don't do it.
Do you own a vintage electric now that's worth money?
If you do and the guitar holds no sentimental value, sell it. Get rid of the thing now while it's still playable. Take the money and run. The time is now to part with it. Get the money now while people are still stupid enough to pay more for a vintage electric. If you bought the dumb thing as an "investment piece," now is the time to cash in. If you don't, the guitar will literally start to crumble apart, if it hasn't started to already.
Boutique appeal is waning
The desire for a boutique instrument (which is the same as vintage appeal but with a new instrument) is also waning, and this is happening for just one reason:
Cost.
There are more players waking up to the fact that spending thousands of dollars on an electric guitar is just a dumb idea.
Or put another way, more players are waking up to the fact it's better to own 3 different cool cheaper guitars than one really expensive one.
An example of 3 cheap cool guitars, is a Squier Strat, an Epiphone Les Paul and a Squier Jazz Bass. You can get all three of those for as little as $700 USD total. Bear in mind that's three guitars. All the tones and sounds you want in guitars you already know. Easy, cheap and good.
When is a boutique instrument actually worth it?
Answer 1: When you meet a luthier personally in his workshop to discuss your build. That luthier will construct your guitar from nothing but wood blanks to your design specs, and you will spend about $3,000 minimum at the end of it all. But it will be a truly custom made guitar built for you, just as if a tailor fabricated a suit for you from scratch. That's as boutique as it gets, and nothing is more "yours" than that.
Answer 2: When you build the guitar yourself from scratch. It will take a while, you will buy a whole bunch of woodworking tools, and it certainly won't be cheap. But it is worth it just to build something yourself that actually works.
More players are realizing that a lot of "great tone" actually comes from great software
Amps are amps and blah blah blah frickin' blah. But what matters more these days is how to get your guitar recorded properly to sound good on Bandcamp or YouTube or SoundCloud or wherever you post your songs/riffs.
Solution? ZOOM R8. Or DigiTech RP360 (or XP model with pedal). Or maybe plug-in software.
You will never get that golden turned-up-to-11 tube sound recording with microphones at home. Not happening. You can try, but you'll fail...
...unless you wise up and emulate it with software. Then you'll get that great sound.
You'll realize something else by going the software route. Pickups aren't everything. With today's software solutions, you can even make a $89 guitar sound like a million bucks.
What's coming for 2016?
Price increases...
Fender and Gibson prices will continue to increase. No surprise there.
Limited-run models
A trend that started a few years back that will continue to happen are limited-run cheap electrics. Guitar makers are trying out different things just to see what sells and what doesn't with minimal investment on their part. Squier for example did this with the Cabronita Telecaster and a few Strat HH models. Epiphone did it with a few models as well.
In other words, if you see something you like in 2016 that's cheap and available, grab it because it will probably be gone in less than 3 months.
Bluetooth wireless connectivity for guitar that's actually usable?
You might see more options to connect a guitar wirelessly.
The most civilized tech-friendly guitar is the Epiphone Les Paul Ultra III; it has USB connectivity, stereo outputs and loads of goodies - but no wireless.
What I mean by "most civilized" is that the Epi LP III is the tech-style guitar that serves the most use to the player. There's not just a bunch of whiz-bang stuff just for the sake of stuffing it in there. Rather, every part of the guitar has its purpose, from the ProBucker pickups to "Shadow NanoMag" to the USB connectivity to the stereo output and so on.
But again, no wireless. That's the one thing missing from the guitar. If it had it, what should the wireless control? Maybe a pedal effect, maybe an amp, maybe a smartphone app, maybe all three?
Whatever wireless tech we see in guitars for the future, it has to serve some kind of benefit to the player and not be just for show.
For example, something like an assignable wireless effect on/off toggle (such as for distortion to clean) would be genuinely useful. Short-range Bluetooth could be used for this.
The problem with Bluetooth is of course latency, otherwise known as lag. But for simple effect switching, the pause is acceptable. I do believe players would genuinely like having an assignable on/off Bluetooth toggle on the guitar to enable/disable their effect of choice. The functionality of the guitar is extended without taking away any of its playability, and it's stupidly easy to operate since the effect assignment is done at the effect unit and not the guitar.
Makes sense to me. Someone should build it, starting with the toggle switch that goes on the guitar, the "smart switch" (which really isn't "smart" but just Bluetooth-enabled.)
Even if someone just built the switch and nothing else, that would be a good start.
A return to "workhorse" guitar designs (hopefully)
Fender has already started doing this somewhat, as has the Squier lineup. Gibson isn't because they're too busy releasing ultra-boutique garbage that nobody can afford, but Epiphone is at least answering the call here.
A "workhorse" guitar design simply means a no-nonsense simple guitar that's built well and offered in nice range of solid colors that are non-metallic (but shiny.)
Example workhorse designs for Strats are the Fender Standard Stratocaster in Arctic White or the Squier Stratocaster in Black. Plain, simple, elegant, no metallic anywhere, no pearloid anywhere.
It's not that workhorse guitars haven't been around because they're certainly available, but when I'm hoping happens is that we see more of them across the board from all electric guitar makers. We need more solid-color choices on the tried-and-true simple design electrics.
A move away from anything "Custom Shop"
This is not a going-to-happen thing, but rather something I'd like to see happen.
The guitar industry has ruined the phrase "custom shop" so much to the point where it doesn't mean anything anymore other than "this guitar costs more because it has useless frilly crap on it."
Any time I see any guitar (or pedal or pickup for that matter) with "custom shop" in its model name, I know it's overpriced junk. How do I know this? Because it has fancy bits and bobs on it that don't do anything to make the the guitar any better. Such examples are gold-colored hardware, "custom" finish options, anything that lights up that doesn't need to, any pickup that's claimed to be hand-wound (a lie because nobody winds a pickup without a machine,) and so on. I could name more, but you get the idea.
"Custom Shop" at this point has totally lost its luster and guitar companies need to stop using it for at least a few years.
In the end...
...2015 was an okay year for guitars. Like I said, not groundbreaking. A few price hikes here, a few limited-run models there, but nothing too spectacular.
The most exciting thing for me was seeing the maple-board Squier HSS Strats right as this year is closing out. That's a cool guitar, and I'm still considering picking one up.
Cheap guitar of the week #39 - ESP LTD TE-212
What you don't see is what makes this guitar amazing.
The ESP LTD TE-212 is one seriously badass Telecaster copy, although you wouldn't think that by looking at it, as it does look rather plain.
These are the things that really make this guitar worth getting:
- Alder body
- "Thin U" shape neck
- 22 extra-jumbo frets (most Telecasters have 21)
- 350mm fingerboard radius (about 13.8 inches, meaning super-flat)
Basically put, this is a "Fast Telecaster". It's a Tele with a really thin, really flat neck with really big frets on it... and it's cheap.
Don't like the black? There's a Candy Apple Red version of it too.
(Note: The red version has chrome hardware while the black guitar has black hardware.)
Who is this guitar best for?
If you want a Telecaster, but want one with a nice, slim neck on it with big frets, the TE-212 is what you want. Neither Fender nor Squier make anything with a flat neck like this.
Best Tele for the price with this kind of neck? That's an absolute yes. I don't think there's anything else out there in Telecaster flavor with a slim neck the way ESP LTD does it. Not for this price, anyway.
What do you do as a musician when album sales continue to dive?
Album sales aren't what they used to be, but that needn't concern you.
Over the course of my lifetime, I've seen the birth and death of not one but several audio formats concerning music sales.
I saw the death of the vinyl record. I saw the death of the compact cassette (otherwise known as the audio cassette or just "tape"). I saw the birth and death of the compact disc. I saw the birth of the the MP3 and online music streaming, which is where things stand at the moment.
What's a musician to do?
It's an interesting time concerning music sales because nobody really knows what the heck to do anymore. Ever since 2000, music sales haven't just plummeted, they've tanked and tanked hard...
...which doesn't really leave the musician with much of anywhere to go except one direction. Solo, but in a very unique way.
What I suggest these days for a guitar player to do is this:
Only release your music on YouTube and BandCamp, and only from a YouTube partner account if you have one. If you don't have one, get one.
What this allows you to do is release your music for free and have it be advertiser-supported. Also, if anyone wants to actually buy a copy of your song(s), they can do it via BandCamp.
The total cost to do all this? Zero, as in free. And once you get your traffic built up, it pays real money.
The trick however is getting people to your YouTube channel so you can get those views coming in.
Hiding-in-plain-sight fact about most (if not all) famous YouTube guitar players you know
None of them got famous for their talent, riffs, or songs.
All of them got famous for mentioning known brands for guitars (ex: any model from Ibanez), amps (ex: anything from Line 6), pedals (ex: anything from BOSS) and so on in the title and description of the video.
The entire reason you found those now-famous guys to begin with is for one of two reasons. You were either searching for more information on a specific guitar, pedal or amp, or the guy was listed as a "suggested video" either after the video or as a little clicky thing near whatever video you were watching at the time.
What this means for you is that if you want attention, you already know what to do. Start talking about known brand stuff.
Do you need to actually own the stuff to record a YouTube vlog about it? No, of course not. All that's required is just sharing your opinion on a thing and making sure to mention that thing in the title, description and keywords. After that, record many vlogs talking about different things, as in different guitars, different amps, different pedals and so on. The traffic will come.
Then, when the time is right (and only you will know what that is), start releasing songs.
Vlogs matter more than actual music
The word vlog is the shortened version of "video log". While your goal is to get out there, make music and sell it, you will find that more often than not that it's a guitar player's vlogs that usually command the most traffic.
Why is this? Because it's more interesting. It's conversational. It's a life, and you're watching that life. Yes, it's just a talking head, but it's certainly more entertaining than "just another guy playing a guitar on the internet".
A vlog is one of the easiest videos to make. Grab a webcam or a smartphone, record a 3 minute video, send to YouTube, title it, enter a description, enter some keywords, set the category, done.
Remember, you can do all this without your real name. You could invent a character or use a band name even if there is no band. Do whatever you want.
Will I personally do this?
Technically, I did do it before. Some of you might remember the "dick vlog". All those videos are still out there with most of them set to private. There are people who still follow me to this day who found me originally via those videos.
I purposely made vlog videos in a very quick-and-dirty style, most of which were under 3 minutes long. I just sat there, complained about something musician related, then brought the video into Windows Movie Maker, cut it up jump-cut style, saved, and published.
Were the vlogs successful? Yes. My existing subscriber base initially took a loss, but then bounced back big time with a whole new crop of subscribers after that, and the comment section for several of the vlogs was doing quite well. I made it a point not to read any of the video comments because I knew it would be nothing but vitriol, which it was.
The videos were popular, to be sure, but I just lost the nerve to continue doing it because I'm more of a writer than a vlogger. Sure, I can vlog, but I prefer to write. You, however, would probably find it much easier to vlog than write.
My whole point to mentioning all this is that you should vlog, but in your own way. Grab something that can record video and start posting to YouTube. Don't worry about quality or details or whatever. Just start posting. Drop famous instrument/amp/pedal brand names, talk about them, say whey they're great, why they suck or whatever. Just get the videos out there.
Tips
If your YouTube account is brand new or has a low amount of subscribers or videos, you don't have the option to be a partner user yet. Start posting videos now. Get the views up, get the subscribers up and soon enough you'll get the option to be a partner user.
Never use background music. Just talk and only talk. That's it.
Never use images in videos either. All that needs to be seen is your face.
Don't "fancy up" your videos. Make them quick, post them quick. Keep your video creation process as stupidly easy as possible.
You will receive vitriol from the YouTube crowd in the comment section. Expect it.
Remember, you will know when the time is right to release a song or two. Build up the following, get people talking, then release a song on YouTube with a link to buy it on BandCamp.
How fast can you do this?
That depends on you. I'm not saying this as an evasive answer because it literally does depend on you.
YouTubers typically like people that release videos often. How often? Some like to see new videos every day from their favorite YouTube personalities.
If you keep your video creation process stupidly easy, yes, you could post a video every day, but I wouldn't recommend it. I'd suggest no more than 2 to 3 videos per week.
"There's no way I can produce content that fast!"
Oh, yeah? Can you talk for 3 minutes about something? Could you do that 3 times in one day? Of course you could. There's your 3 videos for the week.
How do I know this can be done? That's how I did the dick vlog. Seriously, anyone can do it.
Now as for speed of popularity, if you purposely talk about hot-button topics with musicians in your vlogs, you could grab a lot of attention in a very short period of time. All it takes is recording those videos, post them and see what happens.
Cheap guitar of the week #38 - Squier Bullet Strat HSS with MAPLE fretboard
Three things about this guitar make it special and worth getting.
The Strat HSS from Squier is a guitar you already know. But what's new is that Squier has just released not one but three of these with alternative color options.
The three things that make it special?
- "Blackout" hardware.
- Black pick guard.
- Maple fretboard.
And the colors are:
- Squier Bullet Strat HSS w/maple fretboard - Sunburst
- Squier Bullet Strat HSS w/maple fretboard - Black
- Squier Bullet Strat HSS w/maple fretboard - Surf Pearl
All three guitars are the same price: Dirt cheap.
Of the three, if you want one that's the most collectible, that would be the Surf Pearl model, because I seriously doubt you'll see that one in guitar stores.
No matter which you get however, the big thing here is the maple fretboard. Up to this point, the only time you saw small-headstock treatment with an all-maple neck was on the Classic Vibe '50s Stratocaster series - and that series never had an HSS model.
Now you can finally get a truly cheap Squier Strat with an all-maple neck that has the small headstock, and in three body color choices.
This is a winner of a guitar all around, and I'm very glad to see Squier do this. It's about time.
I like this guitar so much that I actually might buy one myself!
How often should you clean a guitar?
Probably not as often as you think you should.
There are actually a fair amount of guitar (and bass) players out there who, quite literally, almost never clean their guitars. They just let all sorts of gunk build up on the instrument and maybe only truly clean it once every few years.
Well, I clean my guitars a little more often than that, but not by much.
My Squier Jazzmaster, the guitar I play most, doesn't go in a case and instead stays on a stand since it gets played often.
Does this mean the Jazzmaster gets a layer of dust on it sometimes? Yes. Do I care? No, because it just gets wiped off later.
How often do I perform a "total cleaning" of my Jazzmaster? Rarely. The guitar is meant to be played, and when a guitar is played, it gets dirty and that's the way it is.
What is a "total cleaning"?
A total cleaning, at least to me, requires a partial disassembly of the guitar just to make sure every single part of it gets cleaned properly.
Fortunately with the Jazzmaster, a total cleaning is fairly easy since every part of the guitar is loaded on top. With other guitars that have everything loaded on top (like a Les Paul), those are also fairly easily to give total cleanings to. With a Strat however, you're dealing with both front and rear areas to clean up.
Since I don't have any guitars that have a nitrocellulose finish, otherwise known as "nitro finish", my total cleaning process is as follows:
- Take off the strings.
- Remove string tree(s), if any. Clean up with microfiber cleaning cloth, then set aside.
- Remove all tuning keys, clean up the same way as the string tree(s), set aside.
- Wipe down headstock and dry with polish cloth, front and back.
- If there's gunk on the headstock, wash off with water and non-abrasive microfiber cleaning cloth.
- Clean nut slots using dental floss. For stubborn gunk, drip a drop of water in the slot and run the floss through it.
- Inspect fretboard. If there's no gunk, wipe down with water, dry, skip to step 9. If there is gunk, go to step 8. (Note: If you're the type that likes to "rejuvenate" rosewood, the best kit for that is the Dunlop System 65 kit).
- Wipe away the gunk off the fretboard using water and microfiber cloth. This may take a while depending on how much finger gunk is present. A few passes may need to be made.
- Inspect the back of the neck by running your hand along it. If it feels smooth and there is nothing sticky from dried sweat, leave it alone. Otherwise, clean with water and microfiber cloth.
- Lightly polish each fret using 0000 grade steel wool. This is a steel wool so soft that it almost feels like cloth. You use this on frets so you can polish them while at the same time barely taking off any fret wire material. Be sure to wipe down the fretboard dry with microfiber cloth when finished. It is suggested to use this steel wool while wearing kitchen gloves, for the reason that some of you out there may have hands that don't "like" touching steel wool.
- Reattach tuning keys and string tree(s). At this point you're done with the neck.
- Examine strap buttons. If you see gunk on the screw head, clean off gunk with microfiber cloth and water.
- Take out all pick guard screws. Inspect each screw. If there is any gunk on any screw, lightly clean the head and only the head with a microfiber cloth and water, and do not polish screws with the 0000 steel wool. Set screws aside when done.
- Clean pick guard plastic using microfiber cloth (and water, if necessary). Set guard aside afterward.
- Remove bridge and any other component that is exposed. Clean using microfiber cloth.
- Remove knobs and other switchgear, and once again, clean using microfiber cloth and water if necessary for stubborn gunk.
- Wipe down the FRONT of the body dry with microfiber cloth. Use water for areas with stubborn gunk.
- Reattach everything, but don't string up yet.
- Wipe down the BACK of the body with microfiber cloth, and again, use water for stubborn gunk areas.
- String up, tune up, done.
Tips
- Pick guard screws are only meant to be hand-tight. DO NOT use a power tool for pick guard screws, especially if your guitar is made of basswood (very soft stuff and really easy to strip a screw hole).
- Keep water and other liquid away from the pickups. Or if you have to use liquid around pickups to clean up stubborn gunk, do so carefully. You don't want water getting in there.
- If there's a part on your guitar you don't feel comfortable taking off to clean it, don't take it off. Only remove parts to clean that you're comfortable with, and only if it's necessary.
Things you can't do a damned thing about
Metal corrosion
Remember that part I said about not polishing screw heads? It's to specifically keep those nice, shiny screw heads from turning a reddish-black - as in rusted. Sure, the screw still works fine, but it looks awful. If you want to avoid rusted screw heads, don't polish them. Clean them, yes, but don't polish.
Screws can and will corrode and you can't stop it. But you can slow it by not accelerating the process with unnecessary polishing.
Gold turning into steel color
Gold hardware just sucks, because when it wears off it looks so bad. Whether it's a tuning key, pickup casing, bridge, knob, screw or whatever it is, that gold will turn into a steel color if you play your guitar even semi-regularly.
Can anything be done about this? Other than not playing the guitar, nope.
Plastic scratches
For any electric you play normally, there is absolutely no way you will ever keep any plastic on it scratch-free. You will get scratches on pieces of plastic you thought un-scratch-able.
That plastic truss rod cover on your Les Paul? Scratched. Don't think it is? Look again. How did it get scratched? You used a paper towel to "clean" it and not a microfiber cloth like you were supposed to. Oopsie...
...but don't feel bad about it. Seriously, don't, and I'll tell you why. Plastic is just a material type that when used on a guitar cannot be kept scratch-less. Plastic sucks like that. Get used to it.
The unclean-able volume knob(s)
A master volume knob is the most-used control on an electric guitar. As such, it will get dirty before the other knobs.
White volume knobs, such as on Strats, all eventually get to a point where they become permanently stained. Can you do anything about it? In fact, yes. You could use certain solutions to break away the grime and whiten it up again. The problem however is that any silver/bronze/gold/black lettering also gets removed in the process, resulting in an all-white knob. Yes, that's bad because now the knob looks like a piece of Styrofoam. Not good at all.
In other words, expect the white volume knob on your Fender or Squier Strat to get perma-stained at some point, if it isn't already. It just happens.
Black volume knobs, such as on Les Pauls, aren't necessarily unclean-able, but do typically suffer from being dulled. All the handling of them over the years takes away all the shine where no amount of cleaning brings the shine back, and nothing can be done about that.
So... how often should you clean your electric?
I have a bit of a weird-yet-not-weird answer to this.
Some people want an absolute time frame, such as "every month" or "twice a year" or something like that. That's not the answer you'll get out of me for this question.
The way I answer it like this:
If your electric even after a fresh string change feels stiff with "scratchy" frets, a sticky neck and there's gunk on the instrument that prevents you from playing it well, then it's time to clean it up.
If on the other hand your guitar, even if dirty, does feels correct, don't clean it. Or do clean it, but just lightly with a microfiber or polish cloth.
For your main guitar that you play regularly, don't obsess over keeping it clean because that's just a waste of time. Clean the guitar only when it's truly necessary, and spend the rest of the time playing it, because that's what it's there for.