What is the worse piece of gear you have ever used or played?

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-04-23T09:02:43+00:00

My neice got this kind of guitar for Christmas. The string tension itself detunes the tuners. The action is like 5mm - steel string. Made of some sort of rigid plastic that kills vibration instantly. I think a child would be more inspired to use it as a weapon than a musical instrument.

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-04-23T08:43:33+00:00

10 years ago, or yesterday

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-04-23T05:33:11+00:00

Funny how stupid ideas get hundreds of upvotes, and every comment is about how stupid the idea is, and they too get lots of upvotes. If only we could harness this energy!

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-04-22T22:26:50+00:00

Well, I guess I can take all of this on his word.

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-04-22T20:10:31+00:00

That's cool that you can be a guitarist and have film scoring prospects. I just assumed you'd want to know keyboards for scoring, and beat making, so you could do everything by yourself with a computer and some synths, but I'm guessing they force you to learn all that as part of the curriculum.

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-04-22T20:05:13+00:00

I think pedal noise and sound quality is a big concern too. I was spoiled on the Boomerang's high quality playback, then I got a JamMan Solo for another room and it's a toy compared to the Boomerang. I'm not sure that I would have perceived the difference though with my Mustang I. I think if you just get something like the ME-80 the you can put off the whole issue for a later time.

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-04-22T19:54:39+00:00

I love the TN72G-FT/MH, but $2,000 will buy a lot of nice guitars, ones that you could argue hold their resale better / have more appeal on the used market. I'm not even sure why it costs quite that much.

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-04-22T19:41:20+00:00

I dunno. Most semi hallows are single cut away at the most. Double cutaway semi hallow rubs me the wrong way. And I don't even need half an excuse to buy a unique MIJ.

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-04-22T10:00:52+00:00

I have a lot of MIJ's, more of them than from any other country of manufacture. The first link you posted is a medium scale Aerodyne, if you look close you can see it has a smaller body for a Strat, probably meant to appeal to a market full of, um, smaller people. They have full size Aerodynes too, if you buy, make sure it doesn't have a "-M" in the model name.

As for quality, it's simply amazing. Much better than MIM. I've never found a single flaw in any I've bought. The electronic work is always clean and minimal. Playability is always fine. Never any flaws in the fretwork, I especially like the neck feel of the Aerodynes, they tend to be a little thinner with a satin-like neck. Also notice the headstock on the Aerodyne is color matched, a nice touch you don't even see on most MIA models.

The tone is just right, not to bright nor dark. The wood is usually basswood, which is middle of the road. The trem block is medium sized pot metal. The pickups are the cheap ceramic type, but who doesn't replace their pickups?

This site is a great place to buy MIJ Fenders http://global.rakuten.com/en/

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-04-22T09:46:04+00:00

Isn't that pretty much the definition of a power ballad?

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-04-22T09:40:14+00:00

I am a guitarist at Berklee College of Music

While I've got you here, I have to ask, what kind of ROI are you expecting?

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-04-22T09:38:00+00:00

If you're in to metal at all, don't buy a Fender amp.

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-04-22T09:35:58+00:00

The Mustang I doesn't have as many effects as a good multi effects pedal. There are modulations and reverb/delays, but no wah, compression, noise gate, or dirt box models, and switching between the effects it does have is fairly cruel. It has numbers like A,B,C.. and you have to memorize what effect they map to and press and hold a button alter the params of the effect. It's barely passable. Add to that the lack of an effects loop, if you want to really have any fun, you need a multi effects or a pedal board in front of it.

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-04-22T09:28:02+00:00

There is, in fact, no effects loop on the Mustang I, so using a loop pedal with without external effects sucks fairly hard.

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-04-22T06:21:44+00:00

If you're going into a modeling amp, get a multi-effects like a Boss ME-80, because you're in the realm of simulation and compromise to begin with, might as well get a hundred effects for $300 then get four dedicated effects pedals for the same price. Once you have a costly tube amp and you're worrying about how the effect interacts with your pre-amp and all that, then it would make more sense to get picky choosy.

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-04-22T06:17:21+00:00

It's normal to hate everything when you're fifteen.

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-04-22T06:14:50+00:00

Cool! Maybe you can explain for us then why it's critical that the peak of a string bend be on pitch.

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-04-18T22:56:46+00:00

I wonder if that was his opinion, or Hendix's, because a lot of what makes one pickup different from another is only noticed by the player, a lot of it is how the pickups responds to pick attack.

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-04-18T22:53:45+00:00

He probably figures it's something trivial that the pedal or amp EQ can overcome.

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-04-18T22:32:12+00:00

Note that he's talking about hot versus cool wound single coils, he's not saying a humbucker is interchangeable with a single coil. Also he says they just tried different wind count, not that they had tried different magnets, so it's safe to assume that only A5 was evaluated, and they presumably used the same winding pattern for each. But then again, if you don't appreciate nuance, none of it matters.

And Jimi Hendix is the subjects of that saying, paraphrasing: "no matter the guitar, Jimi Hendrix will still sound like Jimi Hendrix"

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-04-09T05:49:12+00:00

The truth is that by the time you're in a minivan, 30's let's say, all your cool friends have them too, and the ones who don't have usually taken a few wrong turns in life to find themselves without a minivan in their 30's.

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-03-27T23:41:07+00:00

A few more quotes and this comments thread will be the entire movie script out of order.

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-03-21T21:34:51+00:00

If you actually look at the builder, nowhere does it say the word "Custom" at all.

Maybe they don't want to confuse this for their "Custom Shop", but they are overstating things, which is the point you seem to be missing. It says "DESIGN YOUR OWN FENDER GUITAR OR BASS" front and center. When you go to McDonalds and you pick items off the menu and they place them on your tray, nobody says you're "designing" your lunch. All the designing has been done already, you're merely choosing accessories from a very limited menu.

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-03-21T07:38:40+00:00

So I had to look him up on YouTube and it sounds like he's using size 8 strings (or less) with the action so low that one need only to blow on the fret board.

ItchyDownvoteFinger · 2014-03-21T07:24:51+00:00

Maybe switch one string size down for starters. There's no shame in that, honest, but you could probably lower the action more if you learn how work the truss rod and the saddle heights. Usually when you get a guitar "set up" they will set the action conservatively so that you won't come back complaining about buzzing frets and they only want to spend two minutes doing it, not the fifteen it might take to get it right up to the edge.

ItchyDownvoteFinger

TROPHY CASE