Do any of you reflect back on how ignorant you once were about guitars?

[mistersully]

i've learned a bit a long the way... enough for me to know what i like, and what works for me... i'm still pretty ignorant when it comes to a lot of the technical side of gear though... i try to be pretty open about that and not give any misleading advice

[jpnyc]

I don't know how those pros like Joe Walsh and G.E. Smith figured out so much stuff about gear back then, there was so little info around.

 

 

Maybe they were making it up as they went along like everybody else.

[dmc69]

I used to look down on strats and teles. Bolt on necks can't be as good as set necks! The guys at the music store said so! Also, I liked the shapes of LPs and SGs better.

Nowadays, you can look at my sig and figure it all out (doesn't mean I'm looking down on other guitars, just I prefer my strats a lot more)

[timrocker]

Oh, my God it melts the mind. i grew up in a small town so far from any real music scene. We just didn't have any good info. to go on. It was all trial and error. Pre-internet by decades. Misinformation was much much more prevalent. You youngsters have it so easy. Just kidding. Had to say it though.

[Floyd Rosenbomb]

Live is an ongoing lesson in the extent of my own stupidity.

[GibsonGirl]

I remember knowing barely anything about guitars...

Then I lurked around here or there and got some bunk info from elitists...

Now I've come back full circle, I guess.

[Temple of Light]

I have often reflected how ignorant manufacturer's were in terms of their offerings and why they wouldn't engineer truly sophisticated instruments until the mid nineties or so, everything else was just the classic Strat, Tele, Paul,
and ES335/ES339 shapes. I've never looked back and never will. I have what I want now, except for artistically speaking there is a very special Strat I would like to have as a twin to, to one of my Tele's, but that's strictly an artistic collector thingy...I'm rather surprised by how much I've learned...if that's what you mean...

[BeanoBoy]

 

i've learned a bit a long the way... enough for me to know what i like, and what works for me... i'm still pretty ignorant when it comes to a lot of the technical side of gear though... i try to be pretty open about that and not give any misleading advice

 

 

I must have been incredibly lucky when I was younger. I KNEW nothing about the technical side of playing; pickups, fret heights, tubes,speakers etc.etc. etc. I worked on playing my instrument. I always bought either Fender or Gibson guitar- wise and Fender, Ampeg, Boogie or Marshall amp-wise. I jumped on the 'cheap is cool' bandwagon since I hung around here with varying results. Buying cheap gear kind of forces you to find out how to improve on the product.

[Elessar [Sly]]

I remember going from playing anything to ' I must play the heaviest metal there is' and buying guitars, pedals, and pickups to try and reach that goal. I have moved out of that phase.

 

I still play metal stuff now and again, but I'm not out there to try and be the heaviest or the fastest or the lowest tuned.

 

Also, going from single coils to hating them, and now I use them again. Full circle. There was just so much I didn't know about gear and playing, and I tried to compensate for that. Now I am in a place where I am happy to know a lot more about chords and scales and being able to know when less is more.

 

I love having a large range/perception and not allowing my self to hold my self back. Not that I know everything, but I am happying knowing that I don't, and I work around my weaknesses instead of covering them up.

[zzzxtreme]

i still am
i thought all guitars are designed to stay in tune
my first guitar (just few month old now) goes out of tune every time I did a bend

[soundcreation]

 

The MIJ from the 60s and 70s that I encountered back in the day (in the USA) were pretty much uniformly bottom end. Same with imported Korean and Italian guitars. Some of that same junk (minus the Italian stuff) was around in the 80s, too. But, good Japanese guitars -- like the Yamaha SG series -- started showing up in the late 70s. Then, there were good Ibanez guitars starting to show up in quantities a little later in the early 80s. By the late 80s,, there were a lot of different MIJ guitars for sale in the USA that were quite decent. I definitely used to see Tokai Love Rock and other Tokai models for sale. I bought a new back around 1986/87, which I still have to this day.

 

 

yeah..but none of the really good stuff...at least in terms of fender and gibson style. The glory years of Tokai and Greco were 79, 80, 81. All the direct fender and gibson copies that couldn't be sold in the US. Most players outside of japan still have no idea how great the quality was/is with high end MIJ.

[HanSolo]

I remember not knowing how to tune my first guitar. I looked at a picture of George Harrison and aligned my tuning keys to match his and thought I was now in tune.

[dabbler]

When i first started playing many years ago, i thought they made 2 types of electric Guitars "Rythmn Guitars" and "Lead Guitars"

Hahaha everybody knows that the 2 types are "Rhythm" and "Treble"! But Wait! didn't Gibson fix that when they came out with the Les Paul that had a switch that allowed you to get both guitar types (Rhythm/Lead) in one?!!

OK, I jest, but I was a tinkerer. If I saw a screw, I would screw it and play to see what the effect was. I learned pretty early on how helpful the HB screws opposite the slugs were for adjusting tone (and secondarily output). I even figured out how to set intonation before I even knew what it was... that was really just luck along with a lot of experimentation. But part of it was my approach, not having much money, of seeing how much I could get out of my single pup Teisco del Ray that I modded to death!

[Edward]

I remember having to get my Dad to put the bridge pup back in on my first electric. It was a Marlin - a Loner, I think. A brand owned by Hohner. Pretty good little guitar (it's still at my folks' - at the last count, little brother owns it), but not my style now. Jackson Soloist style, HSS, white body, maple neck and board, black faced pointy headstock. I'm glad I took a few years to afford to buy the "big" stuff, as my tastes changed radically. What I have learned over time and having owned stuff from both ends of the market is not to go as cheap as possible just because, nor to spend as much as possible assuming it will be best. I think over time you learn to trust your own instinct as to what will work for you, at least that's how it is for me. I can now see the worth n spending the extra on, say, a Squier CV over a 99 special. I can also see the upgrade in the US Fender over that CV.... but I also know that for me and my home-based hobby playing, the significant upcharge for that US Fender simply isn't worth it. The Squier will do my job.

 

The other big lesson I learned was to see through this "palette of sound" crap. Sure, a lot of folks want to have lots of different guitars, cool for them. But when someone's rationalisation - "but honey, they all sound really different!" - gets pushed onto young and impressionable players as "you need to have a range of different sounds available to you", it can lead to costly mistakes. I'm eternally grateful I couldn't afford an LP some years back. Nothing against them, they're just not for me. I'd rather have three identical Strats or Teles I would play than a dozen different guitars, half of which I had only collected for the "difference"... and which do nothing other than collect dust.

[Edward]

I remember having to get my Dad to put the bridge pup back in on my first electric. It was a Marlin - a Loner, I think. A brand owned by Hohner. Pretty good little guitar (it's still at my folks' - at the last count, little brother owns it), but not my style now. Jackson Soloist style, HSS, white body, maple neck and board, black faced pointy headstock. I'm glad I took a few years to afford to buy the "big" stuff, as my tastes changed radically. What I have learned over time and having owned stuff from both ends of the market is not to go as cheap as possible just because, nor to spend as much as possible assuming it will be best. I think over time you learn to trust your own instinct as to what will work for you, at least that's how it is for me. I can now see the worth n spending the extra on, say, a Squier CV over a 99 special. I can also see the upgrade in the US Fender over that CV.... but I also know that for me and my home-based hobby playing, the significant upcharge for that US Fender simply isn't worth it. The Squier will do my job.

The other big lesson I learned was to see through this "palette of sound" crap. Sure, a lot of folks want to have lots of different guitars, cool for them. But when someone's rationalisation - "but honey, they all sound really different!" - gets pushed onto young and impressionable players as "you need to have a range of different sounds available to you", it can lead to costly mistakes. I'm eternally grateful I couldn't afford an LP some years back. Nothing against them, they're just not for me. I'd rather have three identical Strats or Teles I would play than a dozen different guitars, half of which I had only collected for the "difference"... and which do nothing other than collect dust.

[Bad Robot]

I can remember when I didn't even know the difference between single-coil and humbucker pickups.

 

Didn't know that if a guitar played like {censored} in the store, that it could be set up. I'd try a guitar, if it played crap, I tried another until I came to one that was already properly set up.

 

I've learned a fair bit about guitars and recording since I went online in 1998.

 

Unsurprisingly, my recorded output has dropped due to too much time on teh interwebs, and too many tonal options.

[BydoEmpire]

Yeah, I do - it's inspiring and depressing at the same time. I wasted a lot of time when I was first learning to play, not really understanding what it took to get good. I certainly didn't know anything about gear. If my guitar heroes had it, it was cool. I'm grateful that I've learned a lot.

[Snappy Hat]

I remember not knowing how to tune my first guitar. I looked at a picture of George Harrison and aligned my tuning keys to match his and thought I was now in tune.

 

[The REAL Rocker]

Being in my mid fifties I spent years in the pre-internet era buying and selling stuff that I new very little about. I'm embarrassed to talk about how ignorant I was back then. Most of the knowledge about gear was just a little word of mouth stuff. I bought tube amps not even knowing what kind of tubes it used nor how to maintain them. When I was young I had a record deal and worked in major studios like Electric Lady and Criteria in Miami, it seems I just had to stumble through whatever I was doing. I don't know how those pros like Joe Walsh and G.E. Smith figured out so much stuff about gear back then, there was so little info around.

----------------------As another guy who dealt guitars before the Internet came, the way you gained knowledge in the old days was to become a member of the many "informal" clubs that existed then:thu:. Guys like G.E. Smith were down with every guitar shop and dealer in their locals, and got to see rare and not-so-rare guitars everyday of the week because of those friendships. If you were serious about becoming knowledgable and made friends, you would get the phone call about something"rare" coming into your local vintage dealer, and they would allow you to be there to play these guitars:thu:, and to be there when guitars were opened for investigatigation(and G.E. was down with EVERY big vintage dealer in New York City, and I would see him on 48 ST's Music Row multiple times weekly, playing old Teles and Strats and Les Pauls, and inspecting the insides and electronics:cool:. This continued even AFTER he was doing Saturday Night Live!). Nowadays, the Internet allows you to see photos, but It doesn't allow you have the real experience that builds real knowledge, and that is playing the guitar(which allows you to gain REAL tonal knowledge of the brand and model:thu:), as well as having serious INSPECTION of the electronics, hardware and the finish(and If most had the chance to experience these three factors, the businesses making FAKE guitars would be severely crippled!!). Things are better for the guys who lives outside major hubs and cities, but the main problems with gaining knowledge still exist...............The REAL Rocker.

[genesis3]

One thing I find endlessly interesting about electric guitars...even knowing the technical reasons that appear to be consensus for the hows and whys the wood/pickups/etc sound the way they do, there will always be the wildcard of the particulars of the exact piece of wood your playing, the exact windings on the pickups on your guitar, the exact mixture (if any) of metals on your guitar's hardware not to mention the overwhelming wildcard of how allllllll these things interact together on YOUR guitar and it's setup. And that's only 50% of the equation, the other being the amp/preamp particulars. This is why I don't doubt anyone saying anything that counters even massive consensus....every guitar is so unique , you really can't pinpoint or predict how it should perform or sound and thus, what makes them so fascinating.

[Emory]

I am an old fart, started in 65 (thank you Beatles). Too shy to go hang and actually learn anything about mechanical and electrical side of gits. Had a 59 Gretsch with the floating bridge. Intonate? Heck, was bridge even in line with both ends? Got it in part because of all the cool screws on pickups (dual filtertrons) compared to soap bars on Melody Maker I had first.

Internet sure makes it harder for a young kid to make excuses for poor setup or whatever. Who knows, had it been around back then I might actually be able to play something decently. But I doubt it....

[DaveAronow]

I remember thinking that wood species affected tone. Lol.

[JTEES4]

Me??? Nah. Of course I did cut up (literally) my 66 Non reverse Firebird in the 70's because I wanted to have a really cool one of a kind guitar. Of course this was after I tried to re-finish it myself and totally screwed that up. Anyway, after cutting it into a weird shape it didn't play well at all....then i threw it out, pickups, switches, pots, everything. The pickups alone are worth serious money today. What an A-hole I was back then. OK I was also a dumb ass teenager, but no excuses...I was a A-hole.

[smorgdonkey]

I remember not knowing how to tune my first guitar. I looked at a picture of George Harrison and aligned my tuning keys to match his and thought I was now in tune.

 

 

I looked at pictures in magazines to set the bridge saddles (circa 1983). HA!

[Presc]

I was pretty hopeless originally - I remember having to take my guitar to a tech to restring the first few times I broke one, which was about every other week! The forums are a great place for getting exposed to new products and understanding how things work from others, but ultimately my taste in tone has been informed by one thing: lots of playing and listening in person. Not only do you learn the technical side, but your tastes will change and preferences become more specific as your style evolves.