Using a stock guitar

Fun fact: Most of the guitars I've owned are 100% stock, including the two SX Furrians I own now.

A question I've been asked on YouTube more times than I can remember is whether I use my guitars stock or not.

I'll explain what that means before continuing.

A stock guitar means one which has not been modified in any way. The only thing that is ever changed are the strings and nothing else.

If whatever guitar I'm using works and doesn't need anything, I don't mod it.

However, this doesn't stop people from thinking, "If the guitar sounds good, the guy must have modified it because there's no way that thing could sound like that in stock form."

Here's what I have to say about that.

If you take any electric guitar and plug it direct into a mixer, it will sound terrible. It doesn't matter what guitar it is. Even a 1959 Gibson Les Paul will sound awful plugged in direct.

Where I do my modding, so to speak, is not on a guitar hardware level but a tone level. Again, if the guitar works and isn't doing anything weird or wrong, I use it as-is. The tone shaping is where the mods happen.

For those not in the know, all I use is a Line 6 Spider V 60 amplifier. That's it. But I certainly don't use stock presets. All the ones I use are custom made where I sat down with the amp, customized certain presets to my liking and saved them. I have something like 10 or 15 presets saved but only use 2 or 3 regularly.

After the tone shaping, it's all about the chording, because that counts for a whole lot.

You've most likely heard the phrase "it's all in the fingers". True? Yes. But that doesn't refer to soloing. Rather, it's about getting more sonic goodness from playing more than just generic power chords, a.k.a. fifth chords.

Go on YouTube and search "6/9 guitar chord". Start there. Yes, most of the videos will be labeled as that being a jazz chord. Use it anyway. Also look up "maj9 guitar chord", "maj11 guitar chord" and so on.

Break out of that power chord crap and that's an easy way to make your guitar sound better for $0 dollars.