Confession: I have never played a guitar that felt or sounded perfect on the first try
I bought a Fender Stratocaster recently. Was the purchase of the guitar one of those magical moments in the guitar store where the instrument felt perfect when I played it and I just "had to have it"? Nope. In fact, the guitar played and sounded like absolute crap in the store. The strings were old, slightly rusted and scratchy, the cord I used to plug into the amp was almost broken beyond repair, and the amp I used was a crappy little Marshall that sounded plastic and terrible. So why did I buy it? I'll explain that in a moment.
I've played quite a few guitars over the years. Fender, Gibson, Squier, Epiphone, Jackson, Dean, B.C. Rich, etc. I've played new guitars, somewhat-used guitars, beat-up guitars, vintage guitars, guitars that were well worn-in, guitars that were old but not worn-in at all, pristine clean guitars, dirty full-of-gunk guitars and so on. While I haven't played them all (who could?), I've put my hands on a good number of them, and the result is always the same with me. No guitar I've ever played felt or sounded perfect on the first try.
With any guitar I acquire, I won't know if I actually like it until it's broken in. For example, my 2010 Squier Bullet Strat is now well-worn-in and has a neck to die for. It plays amazingly well and has single-coil pickups that are bright and even somewhat "screechy" to some ears, but I dig it. She's a great player. Yeah, there are dings in the neck now. Yeah, the pick guard is all scratched up. But she can sing because my hands have been on that guitar enough to break it in proper and make her sing.
The Fender I bought for features first because of the way its electronics were done. When I got it home, I first did a video on it, then right after that switched out the strings. After that I played it for a day, then adjusted the saddles. I haven't even opened up the back plate yet, and haven't intonated it yet either. First setup of any guitar I buy usually takes several weeks, because I have to play it a ton before I get to all the stuff I need to adjust.
Anyway, I'm fast learning that the Fender I bought wants to be played. She's a totally different animal compared to the Squier axes I have, but over time I'll be able to set her up to where it will be just right for the way I play. In my experience it takes time before a guitar truly feels like yours.
While testing the Fender I have now in the guitar store, it played and sounded like crap like I said, but I saw the potential that she could be something wonderful, and she is fast becoming just that.
Things I know in advance whenever I enter a guitar store
I'm not saying all guitar stores are like this, but I always experience the following whenever I'm in one:
- No new guitar will be set up correctly, even if there's a sticker on it claiming it was set up.
- The strings on any new guitar I pick up will be old or rusty (when you see black lines, that's rust). This is because most guitars regardless of price are shipped with strings that started to rust even before it arrived at the store.
- The back of the neck for any guitar will feel like plastic because it's been sitting on the wall or the floor collecting dust and hasn't been cleaned (possibly for weeks). When you pick it up, you're mashing all that dust right into the neck, hence the plastic feel.
- The fingerboard will also feel like plastic for the same reason the back of the neck does.
- Tuners on new guitars - even the expensive ones - won't feel right at all because they've hardly been used. For example, when you pick up an expensive axe, go to tune and the tuner actually clicks noticeably, that means it probably hasn't been adjusted for weeks.
Cheaper guitars in the store believe it or not always play and sound better than the expensive ones. Why? Because cheaper axes are picked up and played more because they're more affordable. Expensive axes just sit.. and sit.. and sit for weeks or even months on end. And of course they're always mounted high or put in glass cases so nobody can get to them unless they specifically request it.
I have never experienced a perfect-playing or perfect-sounding guitar in the guitar store; that's never happened to me. I know that whatever I get will require setup and many hours of play before it's broken in properly.
I'm not saying the 'magic moment' can't happen in a guitar store when you pick up certain guitars, but it's never happened to me in my years of playing. I know that whatever I buy needs to be played and played often for a while before it can truly sing for me.
Rich buys a 2012 Fender Modern Player Stratocaster HSS (with extra info)
For the second time in my life, I have bought a Fender guitar. Okay, well that's not entirely accurate. The first true Fender Stratocaster I ever owned was bought for me by my father in 1993 USA Standard for an 18th birthday present. I still own that guitar but it has a busted neck that needs replacement. However the new guitar I just purchased, the 2012 Fender Modern Player Stratocaster HSS, I bought myself today.
The MP HSS is the lowest-cost Fender-branded Stratocaster that currently exists. It is "Crafted in China", meaning it's a China-made guitar. Being it is part of the Modern Player series, it is distinctively different compared to a normal Strat concerning the way it operates.
Being this is the lowest-priced Fender Strat, it's inexpensive. In fact, it's even less expensive than some upper-end Squier guitars. I did not pay anywhere near full price for this because I traded in my acoustic guitar for it being that I never played it, and the fact the Modern Player Strat just dropped in price by 25 bucks on top of the steep discount most retailers are giving the guitar now.
My guess is that Fender is having a hard time selling China-made Fender-branded guitars. For some reason people think "China" means "junk". That's not the case here.
I've read in a few places that people think this guitar is nothing more than an upper-end Squier with a Fender label on it. I don't agree with this for several reasons:
- There is no Strat in Squier's lineup that comes anywhere close to the features the Modern Player offers.
- The frets are perfect. No sharp edges, no surprises.
- Proper Strat profile and not the "slim" version.
- Proper Fender details everywhere from truss rod hole to neck bolt plate.
- Premium dot inlays.
- A far superior cut of maple for the neck compared to Squier brand (you can see this the moment you look at it).
- Proper tight neck fitting with no obvious gaps in the neck pocket.
The Modern Player Strat is definitely all Fender all around and significantly upgraded compared to Squier brand. Most people would give this guitar a miss just because of its country of origin - and that's just fine because it means I got a better deal on it.
The Modern Player gives you 7 different tones, and does it in an interesting way. Tone 2 is a push-pull that splits the humbucker to a single-coil, so that means you have the following pickup selections:
- Bridge - Humbucker
- Bridge - Single-Coil
- Bridge + Middle - Humbucker + Single-Coil
- Bridge + Middle - Single-Coil + Single-Coil
- Middle
- Middle + Neck
- Neck
Tone 1 (middle knob) controls the tone for the middle and neck pickup. Tone 2 (bottom knob) controls the bridge alone. This is very different from a Standard in the respect that the bridge is usually "always on 10" (not affected by tone control whatsoever), the middle is controlled by Tone 2 and the neck is controlled by Tone 1.
The bridge humbucker does have adjustable screws on the outer coil near the bridge, which means you can adjust it manually to have staggered-style poles if you want - and that's a very nice touch. Fender didn't have to do that, but did anyway offering the player even more control over the sound.
The dot inlays are off-white, which looks like vintage clay color, and they're perfect. When you run your finger over them, you absolutely cannot feel the edge of any dot. This is something normally reserved for premium Fender guitars, but it's standard on the Modern Player.
Pickups are definitely better than Squier. There's more top and bottom end, and fortunately this is controlled easily with the tone knobs.
All the knobs have a nice curve to them, meaning no "jumpy" nature when adjusting volume or tone.
I honestly didn't think the guitar was going to be as good as it is. The Modern Player HSS is a total "sleeper" Strat. For all intents and purposes you could call this a "Basic SuperStrat" and that would be accurate.
The Modern Player may be a Chinese Fender, but there's no way this could be called a Squier with a Fender label on it. It's total Fender all the way around, the quality is there, and is definitely deserved of the Fender brand label.
a wish for more decent clockradios
I remember a time when there used to be some really good clockradios out there, and I'm talking about clockradios that had great features.
These days, there are very few actually good clockradios left. such as the Sony ICF-C218, its bigger brother the Sony ICF-C318, and the biggest brother the Sony ICF-C414. Yes, Sony pretty much holds the market for The Last Truly Good Clockradios.
If you don't like Sony style, you're basically screwed if you want a decent clockradio, because almost everything else has an iPod dock on it, making the clockradio insanely bulky. And I don't even own an iPod besides which.
Fortunately, all three offerings from Sony are relatively cheap. The one pictured above is just 10 bucks, so.. at least it's not that expensive.
But I seriously wonder how long it's going to take before good clockradios vanish completely. There's really not many of them left. I'm thinking about buying an ICF-C218. Heck, I might buy two, because there many not be any left around once the first one wears out.
Top 5 electric guitar maintenance myths
You've seen my top 5 electric guitar myths. Well, this one strictly concentrates on electric guitar maintenance. I've seen a lot of stupid stuff concerning how you should take care of an electric, and these are the top 5 stupid things I've seen over the years.
1. "You should put baby powder on the back of the neck to make it feel smoother"
I'll tell you exactly what happens when you do this. When you put baby powder (otherwise known as talcum powder) on the back of the neck, will the action feel smoother? At first, yes. But then it will wear in, cake up, dry out your hands, which will then get on your fingers and make your strings produce a screeching noise when you move from fret to fret on the higher strings.
Oh, and let's not forget it actually makes dirt that gets on the neck stick out even more. From playing you'll be pushing that powder into the neck, which will eventually end up producing ugly stains that usually show up as dark spots - and there's no way to get those out.
And of course, let's not forget that talcum powder by its very nature will dry your hands, making it more difficult to move up and down the neck because the powder dried up all your hand and finger oils.
Talcum powder anywhere on a guitar neck is a stupid, stupid idea.
2. "You should use car wax on your guitar's finish for the best shine"
This does nothing but make the tiny scratches on a guitar body show up even more than they normally do, and in addition creates new scratches - particularly on the plastics which car wax was never designed for.
The best way to shine up a guitar is with a proper microfiber cloth, used dry.
If the guitar is really dirty that has gunk that a dry microfiber cloth can't remove, then yes it is OK to use glass cleaner and paper towels - if you do it in a specific way.
Before I list this specific way to clean, here are two bitter truths when it comes to electric guitar finishes:
1. Any time you rub any cloth on a guitar finish, you will get tiny scratches, and there is absolutely no way to avoid this. It doesn't matter if you wipe it dry with microfiber or wet with paper towels, the scratches will happen.
2. Some guitar finishes scratch more easily than others. In the cleaning method below I'll mention what scratches up quicker.
The vast majority of electrics have one of two coats on them, that being polyurethane or nitrocellulose (commonly known as "nitro").
Nitro scratches really easily, even when using a microfiber cloth dry. If the guitar has a nitro finish, what ultimately happens is that by nature the clearcoat will break down quickly (especially on the newer "thin skin" Strats purposely designed to do so), and therefore scratch up really easily. Guys with nitro finishes on Strats purposely want it because it promotes what's known as guitar finish checking (as in the vintage look where the paint wears off naturally), but the tradeoff is that before the checking starts, the nitro coat will get really, really scratched up quick just from normal cleaning. In fact, it could be argued that the best way to keep a nitro-finish guitar clean is to not clean it and just make sure it's stored in a case whenever you're done playing it so dust particles don't accumulate from the instrument sitting on a stand in the open.
Polyurethane on the other hand can take a beating and takes a long, long time to break down to the point where it completely wears off and the paint starts to wear down or chip.
With nitro, all you use to clean with is water, microfiber cloth and nothing else.
With polyurethane, you use a microfiber cloth dry first, and if that doesn't clean it up, then you use an ammonia-free non-scented glass cleaner and plain white paper towels.
The only thing you can do to prevent creating scratches when cleaning is to give the guitar a blast of air first, however you have to do that in a specific way as well.
A can of compressed air comes with a small red straw-like tube you can attach to the nozzle. Don't use that straw because it's not necessary for guitar finish cleaning, and furthermore you need a wide burst of air.
When going to clean the guitar, take your can of compressed air, hold it about 6 inches away from the area where you're going to clean and give it a shot of air even if no dirt appears to be present. Any particles you can't see (which is what really causes scratches in the first place) should be mostly blown away, and then you can apply your cloth.
Using the compressed air when cleaning won't stop scratches from forming on your guitar's finish - but it will slow the process down significantly. In other words, instead of it taking 2 or 3 years before scratches really start showing up, it'll take 5 or 7 years.
3. "Spraying your strings makes you play faster"
No, it doesn't.
4. "You should never take off all the guitar strings during a string change"
Those who subscribe to this mode of thinking believe that once an electric is stringed up, it should always stay stringed up to promote string pressure consistency so the bow of the neck always stays the same.
The way someone who believes this stuff changes strings is that instead of taking off all the strings at once and then installing new ones, he will instead take off one old string, replace with a new one, then go to the next string and do the same, then repeat until all the strings are changed out.
I'll tell you where people who change strings like this are right and where they're wrong.
They are correct that yes, keeping strings on the neck during a change does keep the string pressure mostly constant (you'll always lose pressure whenever a string is removed, obviously).
They are incorrect that taking off all the strings will ruin a guitar neck and warp it early in its life, or by keeping strings always on it during string changes makes a guitar neck last any longer than it should.
The only thing I could say to those who subscribe to the "strings must always be on the neck" thing is simply this: Trust your wood, and trust your truss rod. If the neck did not have a truss rod in it, then yes, I can totally understand why you'd never want to remove all the strings. But there is a steel rod in there, it works with the wood well, does do its job and you can trust it. Yes, it is a leap of faith and I don't deny that, but believe me, the neck will bow back to its proper shape when you install new strings on it and said strings are stretched out properly.
5. "Always clean the back of the guitar neck"
I rarely clean the back of my guitar neck because the natural oils of my hands naturally smooth out the neck's feel, and when I clean it, yeah it's clean but feels "squeaky" for lack of a better word and it will take at least a good 20 minutes before the oils from my hands lube up the neck again.
The only time you ever have to do more than wipe down the back of a guitar neck with a dry cloth is if you always have dirty hands. And by dirty I mean really dirty, like if you had just finished doing some yard work before playing the guitar and didn't bother to wash your hands first.
This is, by the way, where the whole talcum-powder-on-neck nonsense comes from in the first place. You clean the back of the neck with a solvent, and of course after that you get that squeaky feel, which feels terrible. So then some moron came up with the idea of using talcum powder to smooth out the neck feel when all he had to do was just play the guitar for 20 minutes so his natural finger oils would smooth the neck feel properly.
I'm not saying not to clean the back of the neck, because after a while you should do it. However right after you do that, you have to play it for a bit (about 20 minutes like I said above) before the squeaky feel goes away and it starts feeling normal again.
sandy
A few months ago, I had scheduled a flight to go visit New England, and I was supposed to arrive yesterday on October 29. The flight was canceled by the airline, and I opted to take a ticket refund and stay in Florida. It's a good thing I did, because it's nothing short of incredible that I just happened to pick an arrival date of one of the worst weather disasters in history, Hurricane Sandy.
Since yesterday I've been watching The Weather Channel's live stream, and just.. wow. Many weather records were easily broken. Highest water levels recorded in many parts, and an extremely rare instance of the National Weather Service posting a blizzard warning right after a hurricane (that basically never happens) for areas like West Virginia. To call this weather system "crazy" doesn't even begin to describe how crazy it really is.
I do find it amazing how fast life can change because of big weather systems, because when a big system is coming, there's no a damned thing you can do about it but prepare as best you can, sit and wait it out. And then once the whole thing passes, things are much different after that.
Recovery from any weather disaster is slow. Very slow. It takes months just to get started with the rebuilding process. And for certain areas you can't even think about rebuilding until certain preventative things are put in place. An example of this is that in Point Pleasant, NJ, a dune had been built in the early 1990s specifically to block ocean waters from getting on shore, and was built to what they thought would hold for the the long term. That dune is destroyed, so this time around they're going to have to build up that dune much, much larger before doing anything else.
I'm certain that several insurance companies are going to go out of business... again. When Katrina basically flushed New Orleans almost out of existence, the part that everyone forgets is that several insurance companies just couldn't pay the bill and many were left with no way to fiscally recover from lost properties. The result? Lawsuits, lawsuits, lawsuits aplenty. And as far as I know they're still happening. Will the same happen from Sandy? Yes, I'm sure of it.
The northeast will be rebuilt. There will be a lot of legal nonsense along the way, but it will get rebuilt one way or another.