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“Sound” Advice on Guitars as Christmas Gifts

admin — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 00:58:55 +0000

Guitars are sold everywhere this holiday season. But be wary: Don't go and buy the cheapest thing you see or pick up the first instrument you find.

Local instrument experts say you should consider these things whether you're buying a guitar.

Whether your son or daughter is trying to shred like Metallica or play Bob Dylan covers, here's what to look for:

In general
For beginners, many guitars come in packages that include everything you need to start learning to play.
Electric guitar packages come with the guitar, an amplifier, a strap, extra strings, picks, a carrying bag and an instructional DVD or book or both.
Acoustic guitar packages come with the guitar, bag, strap, strings, picks and instructional material. Some stores also offer another acoustic package that comes with an amplifier for an additional $30.
Packages come from a multitude of manufacturers and cost at least $200 for an electric guitar and $149 and up for an acoustic.
Individual instruments can be had for less than the price of the packages. An acoustic guitar will cost at least $100. An electric guitar will cost around $110 and up.

Acoustic or electric?
What's better for a beginner: an acoustic guitar or an electric guitar?
It's one of the most commonly asked questions at guitar stores, but the answer isn't clear cut.
One isn't necessarily better to play or easier to learn than the other. It's a stylistic choice.
If the person playing the instrument wants to learn country, folk, worship or other music, an acoustic guitar is generally the better choice. For rock 'n' roll, an electric is generally better, said Dan Sullivan, pro shop manager at Dietze Music.
And for those parents worrying that the noise from an electric guitar will shake the walls, be not afraid. The amps in the starter packages mentioned above are usually only a meager 10 watts.
“They're not that loud. And they all come with headphone jacks,” Sullivan said.

Guitar stand
Those nifty packages come with everything. Everything but somewhere to put your guitar when you're not using it. You can pick up a simple guitar stand anywhere for under $20.

Size
Sometimes kids need small-sized guitars because they're not big enough to comfortably play a full-size guitar.
Children can benefit from playing a smaller guitar, but it depends on the child's height. Someone at a store can help you pick the right size, said Hoyle of Russo's.
At age 11 or 12, it might be a good idea to buy a full-size guitar even if the child isn't quite big enough to play it yet since they'll quickly outgrow a small-size guitar.

Strings and picks
Guitar strings come in all kinds of styles and from many manufacturers.
For a beginner, it's best to use a light to medium gauge string. The lighter strings are easier for a beginner to press down and play notes.
As for picks, they come in countless shapes, sizes and thicknesses. Again, it's better for a beginner to use a thinner, lighter gauge pick. They're easier to use and require less finesse than a thicker pick, Hoyle said.

Amplifiers and pedals
The Foo Fighters might have them, but a beginner doesn't need an enormous amplifier.
If you're not buying as part of a package, a 10- or 15-watt amp is perfect for a beginner. Many by Marshall and Fender have both clean and distorted channels in order to play a variety of different styles.
For a higher price, some amps have multiple effects that can make a guitar sound like practically any guitarist you admire.
“You want to be Eddie Van Halen on the spot? Just push a button,” Hoyle said.

Lessons
It used to be that you had two options: Take lessons or fumble around and try to teach yourself.
“I'm self-taught,” Hoyle said. “When I started, I watched people play or listened to the album and pulled the needle back and listened again to figure out a part.”

A few more options exist today on the Web. Many sites are dedicated to teaching guitar with videos, sheet music and tablature that can help you learn a plethora of songs.

Still, the experts say getting one-on-one time with an instructor and being able to ask questions is important.
“There's a lot of cool stuff on the Internet. There's a treasure trove of information,” Sullivan said. “(But) lessons are the optimum way to do it.”

Teachers can give students direction and guidance and teach them a guitar philosophy that you can't get from a computer, Hoyle said.
Instructors at local stores teach on acoustic and electric guitars in a variety of styles and offer lessons to almost any age. Children can start as young as 6 years old.

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Taylor Guitars and Country Pop Star Taylor Swift Announce New Signature Model

admin — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:56:45 +0000

Once a talented, aspiring preteen with a Taylor guitar and big musical dreams, country pop superstar Taylor Swift has made her mark on the music industry. After spending much of 2009 on her first headlining tour and celebrating the milestone success of 10 million total albums sold and over 20 million paid downloads, Swift is now adding to
her repertoire as a singer, songwriter and actress with her very own signature guitar. In collaboration, Taylor Guitars and Taylor Swift announce the arrival of the Taylor Swift Baby Taylor guitar (TSBT), a model that is sure to inspire players of all skill levels with its compact size, full-voiced tone and a top that features Swift's design touches.

Based on the best-selling Baby Taylor guitar, the TSBT is ideal for both promising players and accomplished pickers. At three-quarters the size of a standard dreadnought, with a slim 1 11/16-inch neck and a comfortably compact shape, the guitar is just right for both the littlest player's hands and anyone who likes to pick up and play on the go. With the new model, Swift
hopes to inspire others to express themselves through music. "I wanted to share my passion for playing guitar with my fans," she says. "For a beginner, finding the right guitar can be intimidating, but this guitar, it's the
perfect size. Even if you've been playing for years, it's a great size to travel with."

The TSBT is crafted from a resilient sapele laminate body with a solid Sitka spruce top. Swift's design, which encircles the guitar's soundhole, features her well-known expression "Love, Love, Love" among delicate vines. The design also commemorates the songwriting spirit and success of her latest album, Fearless, whose title is inscribed above the bridge along with her signature.

Swift, who shares a close relationship with Taylor Guitars and regularly uses a variety of Taylor guitars when both performing and recording, fondly remembers her own Baby Taylor as a go-to guitar during her early days of touring. "I used to sit in the back seat of the rental car while I was on my radio tour at 16, writing songs on my Baby Taylor guitar," she reflects. "I love the sound, and I love those memories."

It's not just Swift who is excited about this guitar. Taylor dealers everywhere are also eagerly anticipating its arrival, like Bryan Rankins from Fazio's Frets and Friends in St. Louis, Missouri. "It's not often that I get
excited about another 'signature' guitar, but when I heard about the Taylor Swift Baby Taylor, my reaction was much different," Rankins says. "Here you have an incredibly gifted young woman who is inspiring young people through her words and music. When I first saw a picture of the guitar, I knew right away that it would help spawn a whole new breed of young musicians and give them something positive that will stay with them for the rest of their lives."

In addition to Taylor's global network of dealers, the Taylor Swift Baby Taylor is available now for pre-orders at Amazon.com. "We're thrilled to work with Taylor Guitars to make the new Taylor Swift Baby Taylor available to our customers," said Noah Herschman, director of Home Electronics and Musical Instruments for Amazon.com. "Taylor Swift is one of the hottest stars in
country and pop music, and her collaboration with Taylor Guitars has resulted in a product that we think our customers will love. Now they can pre-order it and ensure they'll get it in time for the holidays."

Introduced in 1996, the Baby Taylor was designed to be the ultimate musical travel companion and set the standard for how good a small guitar could sound.
Delivering impressive volume and tone for its compact dimensions, the Baby Taylor quickly became the favorite "road guitar" for many professional musicians, including rock legends Bono (U2) and Joe Elliott (Def Leppard), pop artist Katy Perry, and country music hit makers Clint Black and Tim McGraw.

The TSBT will be offered at a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $398 and comes ready to rock in a cushioned Taylor Guitars gig bag. The Taylor Swift Baby Taylor guitar is available for purchase at authorized Taylor Guitars dealers, Amazon.com and soon, at TaylorSwift.com.

A beginner’s guide to the acoustic guitar

admin — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 20:46:42 +0000

An acoustic guitar is a stringed musical instrument that is played by picking the strings with fingers or a plectrum. The vibration of the strings creates the sound, which is then made louder acoustically inside the guitar's hollow body or sound box. Further amplification is sometimes needed for performances and this is usually achieved by playing the instrument into a microphone, although some acoustic guitars do feature pickups, allowing them to be plugged in to an amp in a similar way to an electric guitar.

There are several different types of acoustic guitar available, catering for different styles of music. Classical guitars - sometimes referred to as concert or Spanish - typically feature six nylon strings and are generally used to play classical music. They are often plucked as opposed to strummed and have a flat fretboard profile. They produce a more mellow sound than acoustics with steel strings, which are both louder and brighter.

Different types of acoustic guitar
The three main types of acoustic guitar shape are dreadnoughts, cutaways and round backs. The dreadnought, which has a bell-like body, was developed by famous manufacturer CF Martin & Company and has gone on to be considered the standard acoustic guitar shape. Cutaways have an indentation in the body next to the bottom of the guitar neck to make it easier for guitarists to play the lower part of the fingerboard. Round back models have a rounded as opposed to flat back, which is considered to create a clearer and brighter sound.
Acoustic guitars available on the market.

A starter instrument, such as the Concert Acoustic Guitar can be bought from £39.99. Designed for those on a budget, the instrument is particularly good for smaller players. It produces a mellow and balanced tone and features a compensated bridge to assist with intonation. It is considered to be ideal for finger-picking and playing acoustic blues music.

The Dreadnought Acoustic Guitar, which is also geared towards beginners, is available for the same price. The larger instrument has a full and balanced tone and boasts high levels of playability and response in addition to the compensated bridge.

Electro-acoustic guitars, which feature pickups, are marginally more expensive, with the Round Back Acoustic Guitar available for £65. The slimline instrument has a cutaway feature and produces warm and clear tones in addition to having a great feel. It is designed with live performance in mind, with the aim of minimising problems with feedback when the instrument is amplified.

Boasting similar features and the same price is the Single Cutaway Electro Acoustic Guitar, which has a well-balanced acoustic sound that is also designed to sound great through an amp.

Further up the price range and for those looking to advance is the Washburn D46S Acoustic Guitar. The dreadnought instrument costs £299 and is thought to be unrivalled in its price range for its richness of feel and the quality of wood used in its build.

At the top of the price range is the Yamaha LJX6C Solid Top Jumbo Acoustic for £675. With a solid spruce top, cutaway rosewood back and sides and a two-way pick-up with pre-amp system, the instrument is built with the modern guitarist in mind, producing a controlled and assertive tone and a strong mid-range.

Other things to consider when buying an acoustic guitar
Those looking to buy an acoustic guitar and start playing straight away may be interested in the Dreadnought Guitar + Accessory Pack, which comes with a spare set of strings and gig bag for £49.99. Other popular accessories include guitar polish, picks and tuners, while those with electro-acoustics will probably find a practice amp to be useful. Full amplifiers will likely be needed for those looking to play live.

Taylor Big Baby Review

admin — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 03:18:44 +0000

Matthew Wig, Guitarist

The success of Taylor's smallest and by far its least expensive model, the three-quarter size Baby, introduced back in 1996, may have taken the company by surprise, but, unsurprisingly, Taylor responded with the introduction of another similar, but fuller-figured model.

Sticking generally to the same structural and visual template, a full 25.5 inch scale length now replaces the Baby's 22.75 inch scale. An increase in dimensions has created a 15/16ths size dreadnought body, although it is, proportionally, slightly shallower than a regular dreadnought.

New Neck
One of the original Baby's unique features was its neck joint. Its development helped pave the way for Taylor's 'new technology' necks. The Big Baby's neck is almost identical except for some internal modifications to the neck block.

A little bit like an electric bolt-on design except the cross-head screws are sunk in through the fingerboard – this virtually heel-less neck is mounted into a precisely machined socket, routed out of the soundboard and the underlying section of the extended L-shape neck-block. This might sound like a flimsy platform for an acoustic neck, but it's really an extremely rigid structure.

Apart from the advantages of being quickly and easily removable/re-settable, this also results in the mahogany neck extending all the way to the end of the ebony fingerboard, with no part of the latter joined to the soundboard. It is this basic principle – avoiding the distortion of the fingerboard due to soundboard movement – that is behind the NT neck, although that is a considerably more complex, intricately machined design.

The remaining construction details couldn't be simpler. Although the top gets a regular X-shape spread of scalloped braces, the Big Baby body doesn't used kerfed linings (apart from a couple of two-inch sections at either of the upper bout's main brace) and there's no bracing on the back.

Instead, the back is given a pronounced arch, for rigidity and improved projection that looks similar to that of an f-hole jazz guitar, but is pressed rather than carved into this shape. It isn't possible to mould solid wood in this way, showing that Taylor has made creative use of these laminate panels with this design.

With no linings, the internal join between back and sides is, understandably, a little more gluey than we're used to with Taylor. With no purfling, binding or scratch plate, the soundboard is a Spartan affair, but the laser-etched rosette is a subtle yet phenomenally precise work of hi-tech art.

The two-piece neck features the new NT-style finger-jointed headstock, offering a neat, structurally reliable and resource saving alternative to the one-piece concept. Aside from the arguably unsightly crew heads (there for the sake of honesty, apparently) the fingerboard and frets are quite immaculate.

The headstock is veneered with Lexan (a trade name for a polycarbonate material) and houses a mechanically solid sextet of tuners. Though normally purveyors of Tusq nuts and saddles, Taylor has opted for a non-brand substitute here.

The choice is a commonly used, hard, durable phenolic plastic (Micarta is a well-known trade name for phenolic). As you'd expect, they are respectively seated and slotted with extreme accuracy, although they could both do with some smoothing of their sharp corners. It's reassuring to see that the solid ebony bridge is as finely buffed and bevel-edged as you'd expect on any Taylor.

There's a grainy, occasionally rough but natural look to this thin mat-satin finish, which adds to the puritanical, sparse look of the Big Baby, but there's nothing half-baked about the way this guitar has been assembled.

Sounds
Taylor is famous for its supremely playable acoustic necks and this model is no exception; in fact, due to its virtually heel-less design, there's better access to the upper frets with any regular full-body acoustic.
A typical hybrid profile, giving a C-shape with a soft V influence, this bolt-on neck is desirably unbulky and shallow throughout its entire length while retaining enough width and string spacing to guarantee free range finger gymnastics. The sides of the fingerboard are not contoured into the neck profile, so they seem a bit square but, considering that it is unbound, the fret ends are consummately trim and the top edge is nice and smoothly beveled for maximum comfort.

The playing surface has everything it needs: lustrously finished frets and a beautifully prepared stretch of flawless and even mottled ebony. Although this finish leaves a noticeably 'open grain' sensation, which some may find off-putting, it's actually butter-smooth to touch, and nowhere near as 'squeaky' as some matt finishes.

Needless to say, the setting of the neck is pot-on (and there's no excuse for it not to be), as are all other aspects of the set-up on this review model. But even if the set-up wasn't too you're taste, with the neck alignment correct, everything else can be much more accurately adjusted.

Long-life corrosion resistant light-gauge Elixir strings (the wound strings are coated with a very thing plastic film) come as standard, but they do have the habit of becoming furry as the coating wears off.
In short, however, this Baby plays like a dream, and when you feel this at home with a guitar you can play anything in any style. Obviously this guitar is not going to sound like a standard Taylor dreadnought; and in fact it's quite surprising to hear how unlike a dreadnought the Big Baby tone is.

Lighter, brighter and more articulate sounding, this model makes a surprisingly good medium for finger picking. Its minimalistic construction and finishing leads to a responsive instrument with excellent projection and clarity, requiring little effort to summon a fairly poky output.
While it might sound a bit thin on the highest top string notes and a tad lightweight in its bass registers, a satisfyingly growling mid-range combined with excitable top-end sparkle lends an almost Flamenco 'clunk' to the bottom strings, with notes shooting out in a highly kinetic fashion. Great fun.

Flat-picking predictably brings forth the edgier, harsher side of the Big Baby's tone, but if a brilliant sheen of sound is what you require then you're in luck. Get your fingernails on the job and you'll be rewarded with a sense that your mitts have been to elocution lessons.

Boys' Toys
With such incredibly mechanized, hi-tech production, it might seem surprising that the company hasn't already gone more budget-orientated, aiming to become the undisputed, world-dominating acoustic super-power. With the Baby already under its belt and now another excellent value, sure-fire seller on the production line, it must be tempting for Taylor to follow this lucrative path more aggressively.
It's obvious, however, that both the Big Baby and its predecessor are not merely relatively cheap guitars, but; more accurately, quality guitars designed and built with such cunning as to not cost so much. This approach is much more in keeping with Taylor's image and renowned high standards, and any other way would result in an unacceptable level of compromise; you just wouldn't get such a good guitar for your money. You could criticize this model for being plain, but, realistically, fancy trimmings are a luxury that a mid-price acoustic can ill afford.

Verdict
Constantly moving on, it's hard to keep up with Taylor's cauldron of steaming ideas, but someone's got to lead the way forward, and it seems we're in reliable hands.