Telecasters All The Rave

Playing guitar is a beautiful thing, and if you’re anything like me then the only thing better than playing any old guitar, is playing an American Fender Telecaster. Its just a whole new level of pleasure.

So what makes an American Fender Tele different from any other old piece of wood with 6 strings?

A lot of things.

To start with Tele’s have superbly thin necks, which, for someone coming over from a Les Paul type guitar is like a breath of fresh air, followed by a storm of a whole lot more fresh air. Much much more comfortable to play, and it makes chord transitions far smoother because you can more your fingers more quickly up, down, and around the neck.

Secondly, the Tele has a far flatter neck compared to Les Paul, which actually makes it a little more awkward to hold down a chord, but once you adapt to this, I have found that the sound is far more pure from chords held on a flat neck as opposed to chords held on a rounded neck. Naturally playing solo’s on a flat neck is also far quicker as you can have your action set much lower.

Third is weight. Weight weight weight. A Les Paul around your neck might as well be a bucket full of bricks, you’d like to thrash it around while you play but if you do there’s always the chance it’ll smack into you and seriously hurt! Tele’s are light, not too light, but a really nice weight, and easily light enough to allow you to ‘thrash’ more comfortably, if you know what I mean.

And finally, Fender electrical components are just far superior. With my Les Paul I used to experience (very minor) crackling when changing pickups and sometimes when turning the volume up and down, and this was AFTER being serviced! Tele’s have none of that, its all smooth, and wired correctly, and there’s not so much as a hum from the internal electrical components to put you off.

In conclusion, the American Fender Telecaster is possibly the greatest guitar of all time.

Stop Procrastinating and Start Playing

There is no quick or easy way to learn the guitar, that much is a fact, and while taking some lessons may increase the speed at which you learn, it still won’t be fast! The only way forward is to just start doing it.

I learnt guitar by sitting in my room for hours on end (while I was supposed to be in lessons at school) just playing, often the same song over and over again until I finally got it right. Then I’d play it over and over again some more.

Fundamentally learning to play guitar is a lot about muscle memory, its getting your fingers and wrist to move in sync using the same type of motion, over and over again, until it becomes completely natural. For this reason it is often said that ‘teaching yourself guitar is a bad idea because it gives you bad habits you can’t shake off’ and to an extent this is true, if you learn to play a D chord with your forefinger and ring-finger on the wrong strings then your hand will naturally go to that position every time you want to play a D and it becomes extremely difficult to learn any other way of playing it without much frustration, and a bit of pain too.

When you’re starting out it really doesn’t matter too much what guitar you start out with, I’m afraid it’s a fact that if its your first guitar you wont be able to tell the difference between whether or not its good, or absolutely terrible, because you don’t have the skill to make a good guitar… sound good! – So, when buying your first guitar, DON’T opt for a Paul Reed Smith, or a Gibson, or an American Fender, its just not worth it.

Pick up a guitar starter pack, you can get them for some seriously good prices these days, (the Ibanez guitar pack is a good one to look out for) and play that guitar into the ground, play it until you have worn down the fret board so much there’s no rosewood left.

A lot of people procrastinate too much over “which guitar” when choosing their first one, and the simple answer is that it really doesn’t matter. A good guitar player can make literally any guitar sound good, so what does that tell you? Its in the player, not in the guitar.

The Ibanez guitar starter pack that I mentioned earlier really does have everything you need, and is (in my opinion) actually a little bit better than its Fender Squier equivalent because Ibanez are an ever so slightly smaller company they make better products for the same price and there is very little brand-name-mark-up on the price.

Hang That Guitar Up!

Anyone who plays guitar almost without exception loves their guitar to bits, it doesn’t matter how expensive it is, or how ‘good’ it is.. it just becomes an extension of your body and a way to express yourself musically.. and to show off to women, obviously.

Every guitar player’s greatest fear (or at least one of them) is that their guitar should be accidentally damaged, whether that be by someone else playing it, or simply from it not being secured properly and falling over.

Now I’m not trying to sell you insurance, I’m not saying ‘if your guitar breaks I will offer you suitable compensation in a court of law, no win no fee’ or anything even remotely like that! You see, I recently discovered a marvellous little guitar holder gadget called the ‘String Swing’ which, granted, is a slightly ambiguous name given that it’s a guitar holder, which, generally speaking, one would prefer to neither swing, nor be made of string. Thankfully though the String Swing does neither, in fact, it does quite the opposite.

You secure the string swing to the wall and it holds your guitar by the headstock, cushioned against its soft bars, which are fully adjustable and guaranteed not to scratch your neck in any way shape or form. It also rotates to accommodate any configuration of tuning pegs, naturally if you are a Les Paul player you will need it to be straight, but if you are a Tele or Strat player then you need the support to be at a pretty much 45 degree angle. This little guitar hanger device accommodates everyone, and very stylishly too.