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I nominate any Dobro players, you know the guys in country bands who play a regular guitar flat with all the chords fron ontop (upside down basicly).

I'm also intrigued by a guitar John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin plays with 3 bass strings and 5 regular strings on it, must take skill.

I'm also in awe of Seasick Stevie, who gets a rockin sound out of a broken 335 which has only 3 random strings.

The simplest mod with valves amps is changing tubes, look on tube sites and you'll find all sorts of tone claims, just make sure you match the basic tube type. The torres site has kits that are more ambitious, usually involving soldering in superior components, don't attempt these unless you have some electronics experience such as decent soldering technique, although they do provide decent instructions and even courses.

Hi Phil not seeing too many fat strats but SSH is quite common. Fender make something for everyone but alot of it needs big bucks and a special order to get. Was in my local guitar shop last night and nearly all I saw was Squiers. The was a Baja Tele and an American.

What really threw me was a weird Jaguar/Mustang in a butterscotch brown with a bronze effect pickguard, no model name on the headstock just the Fender logo. None of the usual explanatory stickers and the jag switches were rotary dials. Any ideas what it was?

It sounds like you are a beginner at guitar Zax so you're first task is to master open chords, so find a nice clean middle-position voicing where you can play classic pop songs, folk, country etc. There are lots of songbooks here with good easy beginner songs that use just E A D chords or G C D chords. These will give you confidence and if you want to rock out just switch to bridge pickup, turn up the gain and those songs get heavy...

You mentioned jazz Phil, can get Jazz archtops which are purely acoustic, cutaways and f-holes but no pickups. For some jazzer's the sound they are after is very mellow. The next step is one humbucker at the bridge, often with the tone/volume mounted not _in_ the body but out on the pickguard. Not common but new ones are still made in tiny quantities. Next stage along is two pickups and controls in the body but no centre block or sound posts.

Most guitars can give a jazz voice. Simply roll the tone control right back till the thin strings sound muddy. Then roll just a bit forward, so those thin strings are just a bit trebley but nothing like full on.

Blues is a different kettle of fish. The sound of blues can be evoked from crude, nasty, primitive equipment - I did that this weekend with my £30 amp. Did the tone trick on the guitar set the amp tone to just off halfway, turned gain to nil but left circuit engaged turned volume right up (only 8W amp) and then eased the guitar volume in from nothing till it just bit. Pure blues. What this tells me is that if you want a blues guitar low output pickups are the thing.

I'd love a BB King Lucille, this has the resonant body and weak pickups but to eliminate feedback BB specified no f-holes, any you can see are fakes (early pictures of BB will be pre-signature guitar though).

Here's some reviews at Harmony Central;

http://reviews.harmony-central.com/revi … GRX40/10/1

Beware some of these guys who are clearly comparing with top-flight spec guitars. I've found alot to like in my Ibanez bass. The other thing is keep playing differing makes, maybe you'll find a Squier Bullet that has a good action. Quality can vary year to year, model to model. I even reckon that sometimes body blanks or necks just get lucky with wood and fit, resulting in a superior guitar amongst the dross. Good luck with your quest!

"huh??

I thought the whole point of soloing was to get clearly-defined notes to sound out in succession.
If I bar across the whole fret I'm going to get a bunch of notes sounding-off together like a chord."

Ok bit tricky to describe this bit. When you start off solo style you are looking to pluck just one string but hold that string by plonking your finger over the whole fret, not by putting the fingertip down on just the string. Problems may be encountered where the flabby part of your finger doesn't hold the string well but what I've found is that as you practise your fingers get better at going to the general location of the string without too much thought, so you end up generally on the first joint of your finger anyway.

The key though is not to be looking and thinking; by assigning a finger to each of the four frets you can work on making switching the right string and fret automatic.

Blues box is not an uncommon term but 'robot head' is just my pet name for the shape. I find this kind of naming helps me visualise the whole thing. These two scale shapes are the easiest to see and remember in your mind.

Phil, I envy your fills and licks between chords, that's something I'm working on still. Really great players like Pete Townsend manage to combine rhythmic chord work and great licks into a fluid whole. Much respect...

What we're coming up against here is what a blunt tool genre's really are. Also musicians tend to see which way the wind is blowing and change genre.

It's often forgotten how dull the 70 and 71 were, alot of bands turned up in jeans and a t-shirt and played very basic rock boogie stuff. Glam seemed like a breath of fresh air, it was fun. Punk wasn't really a reaction to glam since alot of it's main pioneers were glam fans (Captain Sensible and the Damned were huge fans of the Sweet). Punk was reacting to 1976 which was a very poor year for decent rock. Peter Frampton was the big thing in '76 but he was a bit too adult orientated. Alot of bands like Slade, Zeppelin and Floyd were on hiatus that year.

Disco didn't really kill anything (that line is pure Belushi). If you look at 60s Soul you can already see the basslines getting more dominant and intense. At the start of the 60s R'n'B still has a very primitive sound, by the end of the 60s things are slicker and funkier. Disco was just a tag to sell the music to all of America. What did change was the attitude. Soul was about getting civil rights, disco was about having fun once you'd got them.

Epiphone is Gibson's budget brand, Squier is Fender's budget brand. There's good value in both if you look upwards (away from the starter pack specials and novelties) on the range.

Just been off and peruse Squier at an online dealer. I notice they have a 'bullet' stratocaster, this lacks the tremelo but that is a big bonus. Great thing is that as a standard strat type you could upgrade the pickups if you felt brave. Looked for something special but alot of the intersting stuff is in Telecasters. You'd need to play their 'Master Series' to see if a Tele from it is worth the extra cash. Look out for reductions, like when Obey graphics or Avril Lavigne's names aren't selling... ;-)

One word I'm not hearing from you DPW, songs...

For me the urge to progress as a player comes from all the songs I can't play (or more precisely the ones I can almost play but need to be faster/slicker). It's all too easy to be caught in the trap of having impressive moves (shredtastic) but not actually rocking with a song. Even the wildest metal act has a beginning a middle and an end (usually when the flashbombs go off!).

AJ is right on the money about getting a band together. What's you're motivation for playing. To get girls? To have fun? Either style yourself as a haunted singer songwriter or, get in a band.

Hi Ranger, every guitar you own teaches you something. It's not guarranteed that an expensive instrument will sound good and there are some great sounding mid-range guitars out there.

First off let's discount any instrument that is expensive because of cosmetics. Inlays and veneers are nice but icing on the cake.

Now we get down to sound. As you buy guitars you may be reacting to your previous main player. So say your last guitar was a bit over bright the next purchase might be woody and boxy. It's not just overcompensation but your ear and musical taste evolving.

There's also a big difference between a guitar you might use for recording or playing in your home and the kind of instrument you could gig or even get out at the family barbecue. Expensive instruments can remain in the case because you don't dare scratch them!

Martin and Taylor are big names and you do pay a premium. Checkout Freshman, BlueRidge and Tanglewood's  mid to upper mid offerings for real tone value. Having said this a Martin or Taylor will always retain some resale/part exchage value when less well regarded names may not be accepted by stores, depends if you'll be trading in ever.

Beware guitar shop salesmen playing a guitar at you. Those guys are often way talented players and can make any instrument sound good straight out the box. My local store guy demonstrated a Yamaha jazz box to me, he could make it sing, I could hardly raise any volume from it. Make sure you play the guitar yourself and don't tell yourself 'it must be my ears I'll buy it anyway'. I played some astonishingly expensive Freshman guitars in a downtown store where the salesman read snippets from reviews that praised them to the sky, but to me they sounded overly trebley. Maybe my ears and fingers aren't ready for them yet...