Personally I Find A Banjo A Far More Expressive Instrument For Improvisations
Guitar bores often annoy me. Of course, I should by law mention that some of my best friends are guitar bores, which they are of course. But they still annoy me, when they talk about guitars.
Guitar bores are marginally better than car bores, mainly because guitars are much better than cars. But they still talk a stream of words that make little sense to me: I can never remember which is a Stratocaster and which is a Telecaster for instance.
The kind of thing you can find them talking about can be sampled by looking at the Strat’s wikipedia page:
3 or 2 single coils, with the latter having a humbucker bridge pickup, with the exception of the Acoustasonic Strat, the only acoustic Stratocaster. There are also select models that come with HSH and HH pickup configurations.
That doesn’t mean anything to me. Anyone like to enlighten me?
Also guitar bores tend to have annoying rockist tendencies. Disco doesn’t suck, and just because music was made with the help of a computer it does not make it less “authentic”, whatever that means.
Still a guitar bore has saved the day in the comments from this YouTube video from Slash and Perla Ferrar protesting against Proposition 8.
YouTube videos tend to have the most moronic comments anywhere on the interwebs, and this one is no exception.
Read them! Yes read them and weep. Except for this one.
Slash still using his Chris Derrig copy here…
that’s his favourite guitar
Steamen, I salute you.
A telecaster is better looking than a strat.
Les Pauls suck in the looks department.
Les Paul, however, is a fox.
I wouldn’t know a humbucker if it bit me on the arse. It took two years for me to figure out what end to hold a guitar too………..
Youtube comments are absolute goon central. Every hate mongering creep and vacuous simpleton on the planet seems to have a Youtube account, despite never once uploading anything for anyones viewing pleasure.
Billster|:
It’s dead simple –
Stratocaster: 3 pick ups, curvalicious body/headstock, used by Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Dave Gilmour, Rory Gallagher – basically, your thinking man’s guitar crumpet; think Beyonce Knowles reading the Illiad in the original greek.
Telecaster: 2 pickups, screaching feedback whenever placed within 2 mile radius of amplifier/transistor radio, played by Steve Cropper, Wilko Johnson, Bruce Springsteen – basically a plank with strings and a couple of knobs on it; think Britney Spears covered in Castrol GTX.
On a lighter note – that bird’s knockers are something else, aren’t they??
;?
xxx
Bob
You knew this post was going to attract guitar bores, didn’t you?
HH means two humbuckers. HS means one Humbucker one Single coil. These are types of pickups. Fenders usually have single coils, whereas Gibsons have humbuckers. All other guitars are footnotes to these two major brands.
Strats and Telecasters traditionally use single coil pickups, which means they’re magnets with wire coiled around them – once. These give good twangy sounds that can cut through a mix. They’re very versatile, and you can control what comes out of the amp using the volume control on the guitar and by hitting the strings a bit harder you can get some lovely distortion. The range of sounds and tones you can get out of a Strat is huge. The downside is that they’re very noisy. You get a lot of hum as soon as its plugged in.
Humbuckers are double-wound with wire, with the one winding designed to cancel out the noise (hum) of the other. Hence “bucking” the “hum”. How quaint! The downside is that humbuckers, whilst having good jazzy warmth don’t twang very much.
Mr Clapton’s signature Stratocaster has special (expensive) pickups which provide the twang of a single coil without the hum. They do this by stacking the coils on top of each other. Genius! Mr Townshend of the Who liked it so much that he plays a Clapton Strat.
Geoff – You see, none of that made any sense to be. Except the bit about Les Paul himself.
Ill Man – I just can’t work out what those people did before YouTube was about.
Bob / RFM – I suppose I was asking for that. I’m glad you haven’t unleashed a torrent of YouTube-style abuse on me though.
“I just can’t work out what those people did before YouTube was about.”
They called Talk Radio shows to complain about immigrants and sent threatening letters to people they suspected of being Communists.
Cocktails does a good line in Youtube abuse………….
I’m afraid I’m in tthe same boat as you (and is it really so bad after all). I’m happy enough just to knock a tune out of it but I don’t know anything about the technical side.
As regards the banjo, John Butler does some nice stuff though he’s a guitarist (and some). He’s got that song on the banjo ‘Better Then’ that’s great for motivating yourself on the way into work.
RFM – Thanks for the info
Ok gotta go, I’ve some comments to leave on youtube….
I thought a pickup was a rugged sort of truck or something you did in a club or a pub or at a party. Aside from that I have a secret guilty pleasure of taking great enjoyment in leaving excessively rude comments for the most stupidest of youtube commentees when I come across them. Some people are SOOOO thick like the idiot from somewhere in the US who accused the very dead Ian Curtis of ripping off Sam Riley’s performance in Control – derrrrrr! Dooofus extraordinaire!
Ill Man – People still do thay though. Some of the YouTube commenters do sounds like the green-ink brigade though.
Craic – I know three chords and that’s it. I try and restrict myself to one or two though.
RoMo – If I thought they’d learn, I’d do the same.