Rocksmith 2014 is on special at takealot today for R499 with cable. There are currently 111 left, so there should be enough for everybody! ?

Neil Nitro wrote: Quite an interesting read. "The imperfections add the coloration to the tone". An interesting statement.

Guitar amps are all about being imperfect. The simplest example is distortion: All other amps try to minimise it, but guitar amps are defined by how they distort. Another example would be the lack of a flat frequency response. One of the reasons 12" speakers are liked in guitar amps is that they have a relatively low cutoff frequency which removes (or at least controls) the higher harmonics thereby making distortion sound better.

So the article makes perfect sense. I am sure that the best components do make things better, but perfection is just not what guitar amps are about.

peterleroux wrote: I use GIMP- open source, easy to use and pretty powerful

The GIMP is brilliant! And free!

My wife uses it extensively for her photo editing. You can check her work out at www.helenduplessus.com to get an idea of what can be achieved with The GIMP.

Sometimes people complain that The GIMP is not "intuitive," but that is usually from people who are used to Photoshop. Effectively, their complaint is that The GIMP is not identical to Photoshop. But don't be put off by those comments because it really is just a question of what you are used to. My GIMP-loving wife finds Photoshop non-intuitive...

The power supply requires 120 V, but we use 230 V, so having it break was unfortunately inevitable the moment you plugged it in here...

But as GuitatDoge said, 2 A is an unusually large supply. So hopefully, the supply is broken, but the pedal is fine.

Impala wrote: What I don't like about this is that guitar playing may soon become an unnecessary and replaceable, old fashioned skill from the days when people played analogue instruments!

I doubt that will ever become a problem!

I actually started wondering about this a while back because there are similar videos with drums being played on a keyboard, for example. So the question become: Why would you need to play anything other than a keyboard? Especially since many other instruments can only play one note at a time.

My answer is that one requires a more direct interaction with the sound-producing mechanism for true musical expression. This is why classical instruments tend to be so simple - simplicity allows the musician massive control over the sound being produced, leading to huge expressiveness. The nett result is that these instruments tend to be more difficult to play for amateurs (e.g. no frets!), but in the hands of a master, they are like a musical link to their soul.

I have heard people argue that the move back towards old-fashioned analogue synths is keyboardists' way of acknowledging this. All those knobs and buttons allow more direct control of the sound, thereby at least partially emulating the expressiveness of more traditional instruments.

A guitar is interesting because one has control over how and where the strings are struck and also over how the strings vibrate, so a huge range of expression is possible. Think of techniques such as hammer ons, pull offs, palm muting, pinch harmonics, tapping and all the other playing techniques a guitar offers. And yet, the barrier to entry for an amateur is surprisingly low (e.g. frets!).

So if anything, a guitar represents a remarkable balance between ease of use and expressiveness which other instruments struggle to match. Hence its remarkable popularity.

*Climbs off soap box* ?

I just set a couple of sounds that I liked up and then switched them between songs.

I like to use an amp model as the basis for the majority of my patches because they give a fuller feeling to the sound. Then I add other effects as required. I like adding a boost or overdrive pedal for dirty sounds and some chorus for clean sounds (I love the stereo chorus!). The noise gates are also really useful, the delays are great for a U2 feel, and I enjoy playing around with the parametric equaliser. That said, many of the presets are also rather good (though sadly, many are just there to demonstrate some weird effect), and there is a growing library of patches on the internet.

Zoom claims insanely fast patch switching on their web page, and I am inclined to believe them. The patch/bank shift process works well for me. I wear size 10 Cat shoes which are fairly wide, and the spacing of the switches has never bothered me. I have an external expression pedal for wah control because the pedal on the G3X looks tiny.

Should one need to switch sounds during a song a, the patch-switch speed should make that a breeze. Just be sure to stop playing because the super-fast patch change makes the sound jump from one patch to the next instantaneously and it sounds weird. Otherwise, one could just have an effect which is switched in or out during the song. The main example here would be additional drive for a lead or chorus. I have also used the external expression pedal as an input volume control to vary the drive.

There is rather useful computer software which makes it a breeze to set the patches up in an appropriate order. Otherwise, the onboard patch-swap function also does the trick.

I have also set the tuner up to mute the guitar, and this is really useful between songs. I can both be sure that I do not bother anybody and check my tuning at the same time. The relevant switch needs to be held for a second to enter tuner mode, but I feel that this is a good thing because there is no chance of accidentally muting myself (which might happen with a separate tuner switch, for example).

I use the balanced output to run to the sound system and usually use the other output to drive a small monitor amp I have. In this way, I have an independent monitor which does not affect anything else (I adjust the volume on the monitor amp to avoid meeting with the overall mix).

Again I bet that I sound like a Zoom marketer, but that is really not the case. I did my homework before buying my G3, and there did not seem to be anything comparable at that price. Having owned it for a while has only made me more enthusiastic about it. It obviously has limitations, but so far, they have not been things which have affected me.

I hope that this helps!

Add an aside, my take on why churches do not like miking amps:

Church halls are built so that the sound from the front (the pulpit) carries to all parts of the hall as well as possible to facilitate preaching. This means that even the monitor mix for a worship team can be loud enough to completely dominate the house mix leading to excessive house volume. So even a relatively small guitar amp can easily cause problems with the overall mix because it in not under the sound team's control.

This is one of the reasons electronic drum kits are so popular in churches - they reduce the overall volume of the worship team, thereby avoiding having to turn everything else up to deafening volume to compensate. Even when an acoustic kit is used, it is banished to a box, but this tends to isolate the drummer from the rest of the church. (I have been there and the drummer really is not part of the congregation - you cannot even hear what the rest of the worship team is saying unless they speak into a mic and nobody can hear what you say... But that it a whole other story!).

I have a Zoom G3 which has pretty much the same guts as the G5.

I bought it for church use because it had a balanced out with optional ground lift, so it it really easy to run through a PA (no DI box required!). You can also simultaneously run it into an amp for monitoring, if required.

It is extremely versatile and gives awesome sounds for any style of music- a big plus in a church situation where one needs to quickly switch from loud praise to quiet worship and back. The knobs on the front make it easy to dial sounds in (though the use of multiple pages each with only three settings can occasionally get a little annoying, but this is only a small issue).

And best of all, they are being advertised for R2000 by some suppliers (though the recent Rand nose dive will probably affect that )

I realise that this might sound more like an advert than someone trying to offer helpful advice, but I bought my G3 for the same application you are looking at, and it has really worked out well for me.

(High) Time for an update.

I put strings on the guitar and tuned it up with the truss rod as loose as it would go, and to my surprise found that the back bow was not nearly as bad as it was before. ? So I put a weight on the neck and left in it our wendy house which gets hot and humid to see what would happen.

And it almost worked! Almost, but not quite. The back bow is significantly better, but it still gives loads of fret buzz with the bridge at its very highest setting. So near and yet, so far... :'( Well, it was worth a shot...

So now I have to decide what to do next. Attacking the fretboard is definitely an option, but I am tempted by the "unfinished guitars" available on eBay. As far as I can see, they are kits without the hardware - perfect given that I already have a set of rather nice hardware. Examples below:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Excellent-Unfinished-electric-guitar-body-with-neck-/400527276145?pt=Guitar&hash=item5d41493871
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Excellent-Unfinished-electric-guitar-body-with-neck-22-Frets-/190963977713?pt=Guitar&hash=item2c76570df1
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Excellent-Unfinished-electric-guitar-body-with-neck-24-Frets-/191519296983?pt=Guitar&hash=item2c97708dd7

Has anybody tried one of these? Any advice? Perhaps general advice about guitar kits? :-\ Thanks!

True...

As an aside: Musician's Friend (http://musiciansfriend.com/) does not ship much stuff to RSA, but their prices are (very) good when they run specials and their shipping is insanely cheap on what they do ship here. I am guessing that they reduce the shipping by an amount equal to the "free USA shipping" that most shops offer. They also handle all full import-duties and customs labelling. The only problem is that they do not sell anything I want to RSA! ;( But for example, if you are looking for a G&L and are prepared to wait for a special, you could get a very good deal.

My experience had been that the local distributors' prices are usually better than the cost of importing equipment oneself. Obviously, there are notable exceptions, but my interest in importing equipment has almost vanished since I started doing the maths. For example, $477 = R5600 + R1400 duties + R3000 shipping = R10000, so getting a new PRS SE locally is cheaper than buying second-hand from the US.

And remember that most music ships will give you about 10% off the RSA list price.

So you are not necessarily going to take a knock on the price.

I have a cheap Yamaha acoustic that I have had for about 20 years now. I got another acoustic with a pickup, so I do not pay it any more. It is nothing special and I do not play it, but I do not see the point in selling it.

Last year, I had it professionally set up, so now it plays really nicely. I also bought a bag for it at the same time. The upshot is that I put about R750 into that guitar last year.

The problem is that it has a couple of dings which look bad, but do not affect it in any other way. But they will reduce the price I can sell it for. After looking at second hand prices, I believe that I would be lucky to get R1000 for it - actually really lucky.

So my feeling is that it is worth more to me as a guitar lying around my house than as the money in my bank account. Or stated differently, I would not be able to replace it for what I could sell it for.

Perhaps outer people are in the same boat.

I like to use shape 1 with Cadd9 because they are similar and sound good together. You can also try a Dsus4 with the A string played (the image below says it should be muted) and an Em7 or the Em7 shape below with the B string open for an interesting variation on Em which works well in this context.

http://www.strumpatterns.com/images/tutorials/Cadd9chord.gif
http://www.justinguitar.com/images/BC_images/173-Dsus4-chord.gif
http://www.beyondguitar.com/files/site/3149/Em72320.jpg

Or just do what I do and mess around until something sounds good! ?

All I'm hearing is
Laaaady Gaga.
Laaaady Gugu.

What?! No, wait... ?

Given a choice between a tuner and an app, I would tend to believe the tuner. And Cort is a good manufacturer - not the best, but definitely not low quality! While a phone's hardware is quite capable, the real magic lies in the software, and there are any number of ways to mess that up...

The frequencies you mention should always be set to 440 Hz. This is the frequency of the note A above middle C, and serves as the ground truth for tuning. So changing that value could lead to a guitar which is perfectly in tune with itself, but out of tune with everything else. Having everybody use 440 Hz removes the need to tune instruments relative to each other because they are already tuned to the same ground truth.

I would actually be very surprised if the intonation is not set correctly by someone who charges for their services. So I have been racking my brain about what else could it be... :-\ Here is what I have come up with:

The tuner looks like it is just a guitar tuner - which is to say that it is probably optimised for tuning open strings and not fretted notes. A chromatic tuner is actually required to tune any note (though the twelfth fret might work because it is the octave of the open note). So the question is: Does the tuner say that the twelfth-fret note is slightly out or does it say that it is completely wrong? If the answer is completely wrong, then you have probably just bumped up against the limitations of the tuner rather than a problem with the guitar. If it says that the note is only slightly out, then the question becomes: How much? A small error will make no difference to the playability of the guitar, but will take a ton of time to get any more accurate. So it is really not worth the trouble. If the error is large (a sizeable fraction of a semitone), then you probably have a problem with the intonation. Here it would be useful to check the twelfth-fret harmonic.

The goal of intonation is to get the twelfth-fret note to be identical to the twelfth-fret harmonic. The harmonic depends only on the string length and tension, so it is the natural harmonic (octave) of the open note. The twelfth-fret note depends on the string, but also on the fretboard. If the note and the harmonic are different, then every fretted note will be slightly out of tune, and it will get worse as one moves to higher frets.

So you could try comparing what the tuner says for the twelfth-fret note to what it says for the twelfth-fret note. If the tuner cannot handle anything other than open strings, neither will work. If it does work and the two notes are very close, there is no problem.

Or as you say, you could just ask the guitar teacher! ?

V8 wrote: Why would you adjust the truss rod while setting intonation? ???

http://www.ratcliffe.co.za/articles/truss.shtml

Oops! That is obviously not possible! Sorry about that! It's been a long day...

What I should have said was that learning to do a basic setup including setting the neck relief and intonation is useful. I got myself the cheapest Squier Bullet Strat I could find second hand and slowly adjusted everything I could. While it is still not perfect, it is a lot better than it was when I got it. And boy did I learn a lot!

It's a bit like tuning: I honestly believe that having that skill is valuable. But most of the time I would still rather use an electronic tuner. The only difference is that now that I understand what they do, I value them even more!

Well, there is always "Howzit tuner!" Sorry... ?

I bought myself an el-cheapo Caline tuner off eBay and it is not that good to say the least. The biggest problem is that it is not very accurate in the sense that it tells me that a string is in tune, but when I play the guitar it is clearly not in tune. The difference is not huge, but it bugs me no end!

Fortunately, I started playing guitars before electronic tuners were widely available, so I learnt how to tune the hard way. 8) (Back then you were lucky if you knew someone who had a tuner! And it was not even that long ago... ) So what I do is to get the rough tuning done with the tuner and then manually do the fine-tuning. It is obviously not ideal, but it gets the job done. And I think that there is still merit in learning to tune your guitar - at least I hope so! ? I would suggest learning to tune using harmonics because one can get super-accurate tuning without too much skill (just listen for the beats).

The tuner app on a cellular phone should be pretty good depending on the app you use. The sampling rate on the mic should be pretty high, and even low-accuracy clocks are incredibly accurate at the low sampling rates used for audio. So a good app should work really well.

And I agree with V8: It sounds like the intonation on the guitar is not great. Again, learning how to set (or at least check) the intonation of a guitar is a good skill to have. Unfortunately, one either needs a very good ear or a good tuner... And don't break your truss rod! (Experience talking... :'( )

Just be sure to check that the neck on a Vintage band guitar is straight and not twisted. While neck relief can be adjusted using the truss rod, a twist is kinda terminal without expensive repairs. Relief is when there is a consistent curve towards or away from the strings on both sides of the neck, while a twist implies a different curve on each side of the neck. (A slight twist might be intentional, but I get the impression that this is rare.)

I got burnt on this, and while trying to get more info, I found that this is fairly common with Vintage-branded guitars. Our local music shop has about three of them in their window because their necks are twisted, so they cannot sell them without destroying their reputation. Unfortunately, the cost of the repair is about the same as the guitar is worth...

That said, Vintage-branded guitars are pretty awesome for what you pay (I really like mine apart from the neck), so if you get one with a straight neck, you will have an awesome guitar! Just be sure to check...

el guapo wrote: Also, we should remember on behalf of all guitar manufacturers that there are real limits on how much you can do on a design front.

This is an excellent point! Which applies equally to everybody...

The problem here is that the big guys are trying to claim that the way that they build guitars may not be copied by anybody. But as you point out, there are only so many ways to build a guitar, so any competitor must have some similarity to existing designs. PRS was sued for their "Singlecut" guitar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRS_Guitars#Legal_issues). This is despite the fact that PRS uses their own PRS headstock design, their unique PRS moon or bird fret inlays, the PRS lower cutaway, PRS tuners, etc., making this a uniquely PRS take on one of the very limited number of possible guitar shapes. So apparently, even making significant changes to a classic design is unacceptable to the big guys.

Like I said previously, this feels a lot like a car manufacturer claiming that nobody else may manufacture hatchbacks...