Stratocaster Setup: Including how to tune a guitar, how to tune a guitar by ear, how to change guita

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Turn your amp up as loud as you can stand it. Pick a note as hard as you can, then as softly as you can. Work on understanding the range in between the two and take time to consciously explore it in your playing. A common studio trick to create a much bigger recorded sound is to double-track the take. A quicker approach is to duplicate the track and add a super-short doubling delay less than 20ms , or the most minute amount of pitch shifting to simulate the natural differences in two takes.

New to recording guitars? Find out how to record great guitar sounds now. Too much bass — especially with lots of drive and when using neck pickups — can mean a muddy, indistinct bottom end that clashes with the bass guitar and the kick drum. Every string down a semitone — as long as the rest of the band joins you, you will sound bigger. Heavy distortion is a warm, comfortable place to be and you might think it makes your tone massive.

In fact, too much gain often equals too much compression and that means nobody can hear you properly. Back off the gain and your tone will sing out more clearly in the mix. Also true for recording.

Plenty of Les Paul users say the guitar is more resonant with the tailpiece screwed down to the body. However, that may result in a too-steep string break angle from tailpiece to the tune-o-matic bridge.

Simon Bamber, set-up tech, Waghorn Guitars: That definitely helps to give your tone a bit more clarity. Chris George has played through more high-end valve amps than most rock stars, and advising how to get the best fromamps is his daily bread and butter. We asked him for his tips on keeping your valve amp toned From there, fine-tune the settings. Try swapping the standard vibrato block for a non-leaded steel replacement — Callaham makes the best ones.

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Make sure you get the right size for your guitar, though. Likewise, k and k pots — both common fitments — sound quite different in a Les Paul or ES So if you reckon your guitar sounds too muddy and it is fitted with a 0. For reference, vintage Fenders had 0. Also, for reference, 0. You have been warned.

If you get it set up by a competant repair person, you'll find everything is so much easier to play. That will automatically make you more comfortable with the guitar and make it more possible for you to get a good sound out of it. This is utterly essential to making chords and notes ring out sonorously all over the neck. A badly intonated guitar will sound bad! Either get it done by a professional, or do it yourself In all seriousness, try it. The next time you go for a blues solo, instead of trying that fast run that you always fluff, try constructing a simple melody, one or two notes per bar.

Be disciplined and concentrate on the feel and emphasis of each note as you play through chord changes preferably choosing notes relevant to the chords, eh? Watch how the audience responds better to that than a barrage of 32nd notes. Because you sound better. If your guitar has springs to balance its vibrato system — the vast majority of Fender Strats, for example — those springs are making a sound of their own.

First, try dampening the springs with foam rubber fingers down the centre of them, and second, play the guitar with the back plate on and off. Eric Johnson says having it off gives more gain. The preamp section of your Fender-style valve amp will usually have a 12AX7 in the first and second positions the first and second preamp valves. If you find your amp sounds in any way harsh, edgy or breaks up too quickly, try a lower-gain instead, first in V1, then in V2.

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Stevie Ray Vaughan liked them, so the legend goes. Standard guitar volume controls cause a loss in treble when you turn down the wick. To get round this, you can do a treble-bleed mod. This is either a capacitor, or a resistor and a cap, wired, usually in parallel, to the pot. Popular combinations are a k resistor with a 0. The sentries report that there are wiring diagrams on the internet.

To get the best out of your guitar, it's important that the pickups are adjusted to the right height. The closer they are to the strings, the louder they will sound, but as always, it's not just a case of louder is better As a rule of thumb, humbuckers can sit as close as you want for the volume you want. To begin, fret the top and bottom E strings at the final fret. Strats should be adjusted to sit with the treble side slightly higher than the bass for a good tonal balance. Fret the two outer strings at the final fret, then adjust the pickups so the polepiece tops sit 2.

Step away from the strings, sir!

Strings vibrate more freely near the neck than they do at the bridge, meaning neck pickups sound louder for a given height — so a little experimentation with relative height settings may be necessary to establish a good balance in volume between pairs or trios of pickups. Tim Mills of Bare Knuckle Pickups explains: By the time you get to the neck pickup, the strings are able to move much more freely.

It means that when the effect is off, the signal from the guitar travels directly from the input to the output jack without passing through any other circuits. This can help to overcome treble-sapping capacitance see step 12 that can occur in long chains of true-bypass pedals linked together. Everybody else adjusts their other settings accordingly. The blend of metals used in different common string types influences tone greatly. Flat-wound strings produce a more blunt, jazzy tone. Give them all a try to find what works best for you. With a formidable reputation in top-flight, hand-wound pickups to suit nearly every imaginable playing style, who better to ask about pickups?

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How does that relate, tone-wise, to the common types of magnet used in pickups, such as Alnico and ceramic? With an Alnico II magnet, it would have a warm, soft bass response, a very sweet high end and a slightly pronounced mid- range. So, the highs tend to be more muted and rounded. Probably the best way to imagine the sound of Alnico III is to think of the early s when this form of magnet was very common.

Think of the sounds of the jazz and clean guitar tones from that time — that plummy roundness. The mid-range stays quite constant as well. And then you go to Alnico V, which has the highest power. The bass and treble get boosted significantly. Ceramic pickups tend to suit players who need a very fast and percussive pick attack. Also, compared to a machine-wound coil, the frequency response is slightly extended.

So the sound is bigger and you hear more not just in the high frequencies but also in the depths of the frequency response. Loads of humbucker-equipped electric guitars have coil-split switching options. It can result in a rather thin single-coil tone. It allows some of the other [slug] coil through.

Alternately, the late Brit luthier Sid Poole showed us a good one, using a 4. This is all about capacitance: Middle and bass frequencies are less obviously affected.

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Try easing back the guitar volume during a solo and switching from pick to fingers to offer an extra tonal dimension to your performance. Variation is the key to keeping the audience interested and engaged. Award winning audio technology: Advanced tools for all musicians: If it is your first time tuning the guitar or instrument, please be careful. We recommend watching a YouTube tutorial or asking a guitar player how it's done.

Set-up tips, gear advice, zero snake oil. Sound better now!

Beginners risk snapping strings with improper tuning techniques. Got ideas to make GuitarTuna even better? Send your ideas and suggestions to: If you experience any issues with GuitarTuna, please send an email to support guitartuna. Tuner - gStrings Free. Chromatic Guitar Tuner Free: Free tuner app for tuning electric and acoustic guitar, ukulele, bass and violin.

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