Electric guitar help?

petermoffat · 2012-01-12T12:06:10+00:00

I spent a fair amount of time over the holidays strumming away on the old guitar, my sisters nylon string when we were down in the Cape, and my steel string acoustic after we got back, and just had a really good time jamming with some mates at the local.. It's funny how suddenly you've learned a few things and can play a tune and can't remember when it all came together from struggling to finger a d chord or whatever, hey? I recently got an electric guitar as well, but the thing really stumps me, so I need some help please. I fiddle with the pickup selector and tone, leave the amp hi/mid/lo settings alone, and either add lots of gain or little gain, but the sound never sounds like anything I hear online? The distortion is either so much you can hardly pick out the sound of the chord or notes, or hardly distorted, in which case it almost always sounds like a tinny mess. I understand this may be related to (in part) cheap pickups, cheap amp, and (mostly) poor player (yours truly), but while I'm learning, are there any tips to get say cool bluesy tones, or a decent over-driven sound? I've had the guitar with a guy to do the setup, and he quite liked it (It's a cheap Washburn RX10), so in terms of hardware, it leaves the amp, which I'm considering replacing to get one of the fancier mini models with amp emulation. Any experience with these? Finally (and, most importantly!), I haven't played it too much, but the overriding thing I've learned is that it is NOT an acoustic guitar. I'm used to strumming out a tune, but I never see anyone do that on an electric, it's all fingers flying up and down the fretboard and bending strings and what not. How do I learn to do that?? ???

Bob-Dubery

singemonkey wrote Squonk, you urgently need to check out some of the Pentangle vids on youtube where Bert Jansch is playing his Martin and John Renbourn's playing a 335.

I think there's an overlap between acoustic and electric and I grew up listening to players who could play well on both instruments. Jimmy Page and Stephen Stills are good examples.

A more modern example maybe Martin Simpson who plays electric on his records but with a very similar technique to that that he uses on acoustic. Listen to "Little Liza Jane" on his new album.

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