The Guitar (and Other Musical Instruments) Thread | Page 18 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Tony Japanese said
Another thing.

I’m beginning to think that if I wanted to get better, I should to go back to basics and learn all over again.

You may already do this but pick a genre you like and play along to songs you like in that genre, practising your chords. That’s basically how I got restarted after many years away from guitar.  Also get a metronome app and practice to that, although that helps more when you’re trying to learn something specific. I am no soloist by any measure, but I try to practice simple ones like you find in reggae and punk genres. Eventually, you’ll want to learn scales if you’re serious about that (I’m not so serious!). Practising chord progressions teaches you a lot more than you might think, you’ll get better at the changes and subconsciously you will associate chords together which can be useful when you want to solo. 

I thought this might interest you guys, here’s Fender’s electric guitar gauges from the 1960’s (row 1 is the gauges and row 2 is the tension):

The one that says medium is the one that was factory shipped onto all full sized Fenders and was likely the gauge The Beatles used until around 1968.

It’s funny because nowadays, we’re taught to think that you’re supposed to use light gauges like 10s with anything higher than an 11 being for acoustic, jazz, or downtuning but the truth is, most guitars are designed with 12s and 13s in mind and many classic artists like The Beatles and The Beach Boys were using these strings we consider thick today (Hell, Dick Dale used a 16 on his high E string).

The reason this comes up is because i recently fell in love with Ernie Ball’s 12-56 Not Even Slinkys on my Blue FrankenStrat, which i have tuned to E standard. I actually had to file the nut down to get this thing to work and i’m not technically playing the full set since i swapped out the plain 24 for a wound one but once you accept you can only do half step bends, it sounds and plays like a charm.

Beatlebug said
For a while I had the same 11s on both my guitars so they’d be the same, but eventually I switched to the more standard 10s on my Strat and 12s on my acoustic because the former wasn’t bendy enough and the latter was too jangly.

As a Gilmour wannabe I love my huge, over-the-top bends too much to use heavier strings, but it does sound good. 

Were you using the same strings or were you using a different set for your acoustic and electric?

ThatWeirdBeatlesGirl said
I just bought a new bass!! It’s an Ibanez (GSR200).

My family has a tradition of naming an instrument once we buy it, usually based on the brand or model, but this one was named Paul after our Macca (). 

Excellent choice, GSR’s are great sounding and well-made. I like the position of the pickups on that, the fashion since the 70’s (and Jaco) has been to put the bridge pickup a lot closer to the bridge and that’s more of a ’60’s position, it’ll sound a bit warmer. And it’s red!

Beatlebug said
I’ve been giving my Sadie a bit of a superficial makeover:

Most of the stickers I cut out by hand. A few were from CD packaging or other sources.

Reveal Spoiler

I painstakingly made the Page sigil, which I’m very proud of, and the Muse logo, which I overlaid on that ‘Featuring […] And [….] plus […]!’ sticker from the package of their last album Simulation Theory. (The A Saucerful of Secrets sticker was also from the CD packaging.) I printed the Dark Horse Records and Wish You Were Here but my printer was low on certain inks so I had to touch them up by hand. I made the astrological symbols out of contact paper, the lightning bolt out of paper very thickly laid with waxy coloured pencil, and I also re-wrote her name on the horn. The Japanese stickers are from my friend, who gave me fabric that had those stickers on them.

This is an evolving project, so I might make additions and post updates later. I made an effort to include homages to the guitarists who have most influenced me — Harrison, Gilmour, Page, Bellamy. The Bowie bolt is a more general homage to a man who wasn’t a particularly talented guitarist but is a great inspiration to me nonetheless (and also had great taste in guitarists ). 

I’ve yet to get around to putting stickers on my guitar and protecting them with some polyurethane, do you have any ideas about protecting your stickers?