Anyone else getting sick of GAS?

[mercifulfuzziness]

How do we feel about Stratocasters and telecasters but from different vendors than Fender?

It seems there are really good brands competing with Fender, at least with American made and some touch the custom shops.

 

[duzie]

Honestly I've stopped watching many of the gear videos and reading a lot of threads on it. I've been spending a lot of time working on Truefire lessons the last couple weeks too.

I revisit different lessons which by itself can be its own form of gas lol.
Whether it’s ADHD or not I seem to not stick with it long enough to make any great strides in my playing or technique.
Although it could be like looking in the mirror and not noticing you are aging.
It’s funny how old people I went to school with look

 

[Jarick]

I revisit different lessons which by itself can be its own form of gas lol.
Whether it’s ADHD or not I seem to not stick with it long enough to make any great strides in my playing or technique.
Although it could be like looking in the mirror and not noticing you are aging.
It’s funny how old people I went to school with look

I learned a lot when I did Truefire lessons several years back. I was self taught so I went from true beginner courses up. Granted a lot of it was super basic and easy (here's a D chord!). But there were things I didn't know that were really important for me to develop as an adult. Things like playing a standard position G chord but muting the A string instead of playing the 2nd fret, so it makes it more like a power chord and it sounds way cleaner. Or connecting scale positions up/down the fretboard by sliding notes (thanks Angus Clark!).

Now I'm in the "late intermediate" lessons and some things are really easy, like I can sight read the tab and nail the basic rock riff on the first playthrough. But other things are still gaps for me, like learning triads up and down the neck and then using that in a musical context.

But yeah I'm totally ADHD where I get a few lessons in and then bail and look for something else lol. I really like the "learning paths" where you go through videos and mark them complete, so I can actually track my progress.

Barely related, but that's one reason I don't like Peloton. You have thousands of random classes that you pick from and there's no real reason to take them other than just riding the bike. If they had any kind of structure and better gamification I'd probably be 50 pounds lighter lol

 

[mercifulfuzziness]

Honestly I've stopped watching many of the gear videos and reading a lot of threads on it. I've been spending a lot of time working on Truefire lessons the last couple weeks too.

That Pedal Show is my go to just to gain some knowledge about stuff and I enjoy it.

I sometimes feel like it’s two different paths and I need to pick one. Path 1: learn a shit lot about gear 2. Obsess over playing.

 

[Jarick]

That Pedal Show is my go to just to gain some knowledge about stuff and I enjoy it.

I sometimes feel like it’s two different paths and I need to pick one. Path 1: learn a shit lot about gear 2. Obsess over playing.

Here's I think a really healthy way to think of it:

1. Learning to play songs
2. Learning to make sounds
3. Learning to write music

I think most people who want to learn an instrument do it because they want to play songs they like. For me that was the first thing I did when I got a guitar. How do I play a Nirvana song?

Then second is making sounds. If you have a practice amp you can get an okay clean sound, but then you want a distortion sound for rock, and then maybe you want a chorus pedal because you like a lot of songs that have chorus, etc.

Lastly you get inspired by all the music you've heard and what you're learning to play, and you want to be creative and write something of your own.

The gear obsession is a major distraction from these, even if it could be helpful in limited doses. Like you want to learn "Come As You Are" by Nirvana. Well it's completely drenched in chorus, so having a chorus pedal is really good to play along with it. But if you then need to look at 20 different chorus pedals to pick the right one, or watch an hour long comparison video, that can be interesting but doesn't actually help with 1, 2, or 3.

There's a double edged sword with modelers like the HX Stomp. On one hand, it's awesome you have all these effects built in. I never had a delay pedal for the first 10 years I played guitar for instance, and didn't know how cool they could be. Now with the Stomp, you have all kinds of delays that you can use. But you can also easily get sucked into all those options! And then spend months tinkering with the options and not doing anything productive.

 

[mercifulfuzziness]

Here's I think a really healthy way to think of it:

1. Learning to play songs
2. Learning to make sounds
3. Learning to write music

I think most people who want to learn an instrument do it because they want to play songs they like. For me that was the first thing I did when I got a guitar. How do I play a Nirvana song?

Then second is making sounds. If you have a practice amp you can get an okay clean sound, but then you want a distortion sound for rock, and then maybe you want a chorus pedal because you like a lot of songs that have chorus, etc.

Lastly you get inspired by all the music you've heard and what you're learning to play, and you want to be creative and write something of your own.

The gear obsession is a major distraction from these, even if it could be helpful in limited doses. Like you want to learn "Come As You Are" by Nirvana. Well it's completely drenched in chorus, so having a chorus pedal is really good to play along with it. But if you then need to look at 20 different chorus pedals to pick the right one, or watch an hour long comparison video, that can be interesting but doesn't actually help with 1, 2, or 3.

There's a double edged sword with modelers like the HX Stomp. On one hand, it's awesome you have all these effects built in. I never had a delay pedal for the first 10 years I played guitar for instance, and didn't know how cool they could be. Now with the Stomp, you have all kinds of delays that you can use. But you can also easily get sucked into all those options! And then spend months tinkering with the options and not doing anything productive.

So true man. I actually grew up loving hip hop. I started rapping with some friends and while we got better and better we started recording, making our own beats and of course doing many shows. With the highlights of being true supporting act of some bigger artists out there.

Guitar was always an ambition of mine but only took it as a hobby when the hip hop gig started to slow down and I needed to get a bit more serious than being happy with free beer as payment ;-)

So with rap as a background I also know it’s a long long road ahead. Perhaps I will gig at some point again but I also need to be humble. So yeah. I know picked one amp and a cab and just practice practice practice. I must say I never expected to be able to play “wind cries marry” a couple of years ago and now I am doing it :)

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

Obsess over playing.

What does this mean for you? Is your goal to learn songs? Learn improvisation? Record covers? Record original compositions? Pull off cool looper things?

Until you have some direction there, the gear lane is always going to be the easier one to hop on board because there are already set targets: "I want to better understand this Vox chime thing". The gear thing always feels like it's happening faster because there's always a new thing to try. As you've seen with figuring out even the simple Fender-into-a-Fender thing, though, getting to real discovery does take time.

Playing never feels fast to me. It always feels like it's going so slowly. But it's not THAT much slower. It doesn't matter how many times I reboot the "focus on playing" thing, I always forget how small the chunks should be and how small the goals should be, and just how much I can actually milk out of those small goals.

Months ago I set out to work out quite a bit of Ariel Posen's solo Mile End stuff. As usual, I was hype to learn most of it over the course of X months, blah blah blah. On the one hand, I've made little progress on that front; on the other I've improved a lot over the last fix months. I got stuck in on the tune linked below first. I'm STILL working my way through it six months later. "Oh, this is a simple little blues. I got this. Wait...that's not 12 bars. Huh." I got the notes to the first cycle under my fingers in a day or so but took literally a couple weeks for me to figure out "Oh, I see, its an 8-bar blues that's basically going through a I / I / IV / V // I / IV / I / V-I / cycle". Several more weeks to get to where I was anywhere close to articulating the notes of those first 8 bars anywhere near what he was doing. Another week to get to where I could go from that 8-bars to the same thing played up an octave and back down to this, while still having all the articulation complexity. Was starting to sound like me a little. Played it for a week. Went back and listened and realized it was really sounding like me. Played along with him for a day or two, went back to my playing, was able to expand my voice of this simple 8-bar melody. Now that I had my own voice on it started working on improvising a bit. Months later I play it like me and can improvise like me for several cycles of the form. Still need to go back and tackle...you know, more than just the first 8-bars of what Ariel is doing so I can expand what my improvisational voice is. So instead of knocking out most of the album over 6 months, I've...learned and internalized 8 bars... And I couldn't be happier. Because I still sound like me, but I've expanded the ways I can sound like me through different articulations, some different note choices/movements than what I would have sought out before, and by having a different form than standard 12-bar blues to reach for when I want to just pick up a guitar and improvise a tune.

 

[Jarick]

So true man. I actually grew up loving hip hop. I started rapping with some friends and while we got better and better we started recording, making our own beats and of course doing many shows. With the highlights of being true supporting act of some bigger artists out there.

Guitar was always an ambition of mine but only took it as a hobby when the hip hop gig started to slow down and I needed to get a bit more serious than being happy with free beer as payment ;-)

So with rap as a background I also know it’s a long long road ahead. Perhaps I will gig at some point again but I also need to be humble. So yeah. I know picked one amp and a cab and just practice practice practice. I must say I never expected to be able to play “wind cries marry” a couple of years ago and now I am doing it :)

That is truly awesome to pivot like that! How old are you if you don't mind me asking?

I never liked hip hop growing up and have never been able to get into it. Always felt really out of place listening to Tupac in the back of my friend's car as a bunch of white kids from the suburbs. And then everything from the late 90's on felt so much like club music and even more out of touch with that.

Although I did listen to some Tribe back in the day, and Mos Def for a little bit. Always saw that stuff more like true hip hop compared with the mainstream stuff. And now it's all bass drones and mumble rap...

 

[mercifulfuzziness]

What does this mean for you? Is your goal to learn songs? Learn improvisation? Record covers? Record original compositions? Pull off cool looper things?

Until you have some direction there, the gear lane is always going to be the easier one to hop on board because there are already set targets: "I want to better understand this Vox chime thing". The gear thing always feels like it's happening faster because there's always a new thing to try. As you've seen with figuring out even the simple Fender-into-a-Fender thing, though, getting to real discovery does take time.

Playing never feels fast to me. It always feels like it's going so slowly. But it's not THAT much slower. It doesn't matter how many times I reboot the "focus on playing" thing, I always forget how small the chunks should be and how small the goals should be, and just how much I can actually milk out of those small goals.

Months ago I set out to work out quite a bit of Ariel Posen's solo Mile End stuff. As usual, I was hype to learn most of it over the course of X months, blah blah blah. On the one hand, I've made little progress on that front; on the other I've improved a lot over the last fix months. I got stuck in on the tune linked below first. I'm STILL working my way through it six months later. "Oh, this is a simple little blues. I got this. Wait...that's not 12 bars. Huh." I got the notes to the first cycle under my fingers in a day or so but took literally a couple weeks for me to figure out "Oh, I see, its an 8-bar blues that's basically going through a I / I / IV / V // I / IV / I / V-I / cycle". Several more weeks to get to where I was anywhere close to articulating the notes of those first 8 bars anywhere near what he was doing. Another week to get to where I could go from that 8-bars to the same thing played up an octave and back down to this, while still having all the articulation complexity. Was starting to sound like me a little. Played it for a week. Went back and listened and realized it was really sounding like me. Played along with him for a day or two, went back to my playing, was able to expand my voice of this simple 8-bar melody. Now that I had my own voice on it started working on improvising a bit. Months later I play it like me and can improvise like me for several cycles of the form. Still need to go back and tackle...you know, more than just the first 8-bars of what Ariel is doing so I can expand what my improvisational voice is. So instead of knocking out most of the album over 6 months, I've...learned and internalized 8 bars... And I couldn't be happier. Because I still sound like me, but I've expanded the ways I can sound like me through different articulations, some different note choices/movements than what I would have sought out before, and by having a different form than standard 12-bar blues to reach for when I want to just pick up a guitar and improvise a tune.

What this means to me is like with being a rapper. I would literally write and record day in and day out. Now, that was a bit much and I would not be able to do that with my current lifestyle but for me I would love to get it to be all about the playing. Being happy with the gear I have dvsb if it’s sub optimal (which it isn’t) and just play lmay play :)

 

[deadpool_25]

How do we feel about Stratocasters and telecasters but from different vendors than Fender?

It seems there are really good brands competing with Fender, at least with American made and some touch the custom shops.

Love me some Warmoth

 

[mercifulfuzziness]

That is truly awesome to pivot like that! How old are you if you don't mind me asking?

I never liked hip hop growing up and have never been able to get into it. Always felt really out of place listening to Tupac in the back of my friend's car as a bunch of white kids from the suburbs. And then everything from the late 90's on felt so much like club music and even more out of touch with that.

Although I did listen to some Tribe back in the day, and Mos Def for a little bit. Always saw that stuff more like true hip hop compared with the mainstream stuff. And now it's all bass drones and mumble rap...

I am old enough to have grown up with grand master flash :)

Hip hop was my biggest passion. Doing live shows, blasting those beats we developed weeks before and to feel that bass on stage… man o man :) what a time.

Guitar is for me to get back into music like that a bit, and if I ever get back to doing gongs I can let the singer do the show man stuff because I was always more the laid back back stage enjoying recording more than performing type of guy :)

 

[mercifulfuzziness]

Love me some Warmoth

I am looking at Del-tone

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

I would literally write and record day in and day out. Now, that was a bit much and I would not be able to do that with my current lifestyle but for me I would love to get it to be all about the playing. Being happy with the gear I have dvsb if it’s sub optimal (which it isn’t) and just play lmay play :)

That's not REALLY a direction. Play what? Record what? I'm sure with hip-hop you pretty quickly narrowed in on a particular style/direction, not just "Oh, wait, it's Tuesday not Wednesday. Put the 808 away and get out the turntable. Today is the day we sample vinyl and go boom-bap. TOMORROW we go gangsta with drum machines and analog mono synths."

 

[mercifulfuzziness]

That's not REALLY a direction. Play what? Record what? I'm sure with hip-hop you pretty quickly narrowed in on a particular style/direction, not just "Oh, wait, it's Tuesday not Wednesday. Put the 808 away and get out the turntable. Today is the day we sample vinyl and go boom-bap. TOMORROW we go gangsta with drum machines and analog mono synths."

Haha true , yeah for me it would be cool to just be a decent enough blues / blues rock player. If I could perhaps branch out a bit to funk and r&b, that would be cool but for me it’s more a extension of the mostly black music I’ve always been listening too.

I don’t think I will enter the world of recording again but who knows.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

Haha true , yeah for me it would be cool to just be a decent enough blues / blues rock player. If I could perhaps branch out a bit to funk and r&b, that would be cool

Get happy with your Strat (player should be fine, but swap if you need). On your HX Stomp dial in one Tube-Screamer-into-Fender preset you like and one Fuzz-face-into-a-British-amp preset you like and play along to records for a few months. Put the tele in its case. Stop watching That Pedal Show.

 

[mercifulfuzziness]

Get happy with your Strat (player should be fine, but swap if you need). On your HX Stomp dial in one Tube-Screamer-into-Fender preset you like and one Fuzz-face-into-a-British-amp preset you like and play along to records for a few months. Put the tele in its case. Stop watching That Pedal Show.

The way you write is funny man. You should do something with that!!

 

[Jarick]

How do we feel about Stratocasters and telecasters but from different vendors than Fender?

It seems there are really good brands competing with Fender, at least with American made and some touch the custom shops.

Great question...

It depends on what type of guitar you're after. There's different versions of Fender guitars over the years. Some rough buckets:

Vintage - trying to recreate the original guitars from the 50's and 60's...some of these are trying to perfectly replicate old guitars that have been played for years, others trying to make what they would have been off the rack, and some that are a hybrid of vintage and modern designs. Old guitars typically had things like lower output pickups, fewer bells and whistles, more rounded fretboards, smaller fret wire, slotted tuners, etc.

Modern - classic shape guitars that have improvements or features that players tend to like today...things like 2 point tremolos instead of 6 screw, hotter or noiseless pickups, flatter fretboards, bigger fret wire, etc.

Hot Rod - guitars that stretch out past classic designs, often inspired by the type of modifications Eddie Van Halen did back in the day...things like high output humbuckers instead of single coils, floating tremolos, flat or compound radius fretboards, stainless steel fret wire, locking tuners, different body shapes.

I think if you're after a classic Fender guitar, I would start with a Fender. It will hold value better than other brands and you can often modify them pretty easily if you want. So you could do something like get a Fender Player model and then over time do things like add locking tuners, better quality pickups, upgrade the bridge, etc. Same thing if you like vintage style Fenders, may as well start with the vintage models they offer.

If you're after a hot rodded version that changes the formula, then you want to look outside Fender. Schecter is a good one with the Nick Johnston model, Charvel has tons of hot rodded Fender style guitars (Charvel has the same parent company so they share parts and designs), G&L has some interesting models (that was founded by Leo Fender after he sold Fender guitars).

And then if you have a big budget, like $2500+, you would want to look at boutique builders. Options like K-Line, Suhr, honestly too many to list out.

 

[burningyen]

New amps sound cool so I kinda want one.
Various modelers are cool so maybe I should try one or the other.

Fuck that. Man I used to be such a gearwhore, but I'm reaalllllly sick of all that these days. I'm so sick of debates about which modeler is best. I'm tired of debates about if amps are better than modelers. I'm tired of listening to the same riffs and licks from my favorite YouTube channels. I'm *insanely* tired of "please smash that subscribe and hit the bell icon".

Fuck. The current gear climate just seems soooo dammed annoying these days.

But I still get tempted to buy this or that amp (the current "what if" is hovering around the Mesa Marks). I also can't help but keep an eye on what is going on with top tier modeling (can I avoid buying a Gen IV Fractal unit?).

I'm so sick of GAS, but the good thing is I'm at least now recognizing it for what it is.

Sorry. This concludes the rant (whining?). Blame the wine (which may or may not have been combined with a painkiller or two).

P.S. love you fuckers. Merry Christmas!

Zero modeler or amp GAS since 2015. But I do get tempted by synth FX.

 

[deadpool_25]

Zero modeler or amp GAS since 2015. But I do get tempted by synth FX.

Synth FX? You mean for guitar? Or general synth stuff?

 

[laxu]

How do we feel about Stratocasters and telecasters but from different vendors than Fender?

It seems there are really good brands competing with Fender, at least with American made and some touch the custom shops.

The only problem with Fender is getting lucky with finding the guitar with the right specs and color you love. They replace them year on year where your "perfect" specs might be only available on a color you hate, or the color you love comes with the wrong neck profile for you.

My Strat is a gold color 1996 G&L Legacy, so still a Leo Fender design. It's had its bridge replaced and is well overdue for a fret leveling. No complaints about it really.

But there's so many Teles and Strats out there that I don't see a huge need to go for custom shop stuff. To me custom shop grade guitars are when you want something highly specific that is not easy to get. These are my Skervesen Shoggie 8-string and my Kiesel Aries AM7, both from a time when extended range multiscale guitars, especially headless ones, weren't that common so your options were limited.