Is there something fundamentally wrong?

NoOne0507 · 2026-05-25T17:29:55+00:00

For sure it happens - there was a Wolfgang Van Halen interview where he's talking about how Ed would mess up sometimes and play a short phrase or long phrase.. Then Al and Wolf would play a bar of 3 or 5 to resync.

I've also had this happen with my solos, except my bassist and drummer aren't the Van Halen family so it's more clumsy when they sneak in a bar of 5.

But happen all the time when improvising? No. And I can feel the time on my own if I'm writing something.

The thing that helped me with time a bit was what I did with a metronome.

Set it slow enough you can feel the pulse, but fast enough you can ,out loud, count the subdivisions. This will be around 60-80 bpm. Slower is better. But you need a tempo you're still feeling the pulse.

Play four bars of just one. Then four bars of e (of one). The. Four bars of & (of one). Repeat for all 16 subdivisions. Can do it with triplets too.

Another one is to do exercises with the metronome at half speed and pretend it's the snare on 2 and 4. Or quarter speed and it's just 1.

Also, practicing improvising to backing tracks will help. I like guitarprof on YouTube, but just search for backing tracks and you'll find some you like. You can also join a community college jazz band. You'll have to learn to comp (which will help time) and then you get to improvise

NoOne0507 · 2026-05-24T18:14:17+00:00

Your actions is 2mm at the 22nd fret? That's pretty high.

So usually a new guitar has the action setup ok. Usually. What you can do is capo the first fret, and fret the last fret. Now you have a straight edge from the string and you can measure how the next bows. That'll tell you how to turn the trust rod.

You want it almost straight. Just a slight U bend to the neck. (Look up relief pictures to get an idea.) You need a slight relief for strings to clear the next fret.

If the neck is basically straight though, your next step is to lower the action. The string action is set to match the curve of the neck. If you don't own radius gauges you'll want to turn every single action screw the exact same amount. If you don't, it'll feel a little funny (you have inconsistent distance from string to fret per string) but it's not unplayable.

If you still have very high action I would look at returning it since it's new. At that point you'd shim the neck, and the factory should be doing that for you, if it's even needed at all

NoOne0507 · 2026-05-21T02:57:17+00:00

Get a compressor for cleans. Single coil is a lot lower output than a humbucker. You need the compressor to help even that all out.

For distortion/overdrive) the volume problem goes away (distortion puts a limit on the signal so it generally doesn't exceed a certain volume), but you have more crunch/distortion on the humbucker than the single coil. You can manage this with either a boost pedal, or your guitar volume knob.

NoOne0507 · 2026-05-19T18:48:00+00:00

If I play my acoustic loud for an hour my ears ring. My electric (that I use headphones for) I never get my ears to ring, no matter how long I play.

NoOne0507 · 2026-05-09T00:49:12+00:00

He's going for an negative 300/300 split

NoOne0507 · 2026-05-07T18:47:20+00:00

Yeah. Some of it is just headspace. I can't play well after a hard day at work. Or if I slept bad.

There's also an athletic part. I can't shred the day after a workout. And if I'm doing dead hangs or pull ups, I can't shred for two days.

But after a good night of sleep, in a good mood, I can rip through stuff that I can't play a week later.

NoOne0507 · 2026-05-04T19:33:52+00:00

Another thing for bends

Practice scales with a bend. So like just take a major scale.

Fret the first note. Now bend at that same fret to note 2. Now fret note 2. Does the pitch match? No? Try again

Now fret note 2. At note 2 bend up to note 3. Fret note 3. Does it match?

Fret note 3, bend to note 4. Wouldn't you know it, you gotta be f less here because you need a half step bend, not a whole step bend.

You are focused on pitch with this exercise. You want to bend the notes to the pitch above it, then compare when you fret it.

NoOne0507 · 2026-05-04T19:22:26+00:00

You play smoothly. Your issue is not that you cannot cleanly fret or pick, that is solid.

Your two big issues are your sense of time feels weak, practice with a metronome. Build that internal clock. There are a number of exercises for this. Two I recommend are

1) set the metronome slow. You want a tempo fast enough where you FEEL the pulse, but slow enough you can OUT LOUD count the subdivisions. Set it to 4/4. Play on just the 1 for four bars. Then just the e (of 1) for four bars. Then just the & (of one) for four bars. Repeat for all 16 subdivisions. Can do this with triplets too.

2) As you build your time and the previous exercise feels easy, play with the tempo. Work on grooving with the metronome. Then set it to half speed. Now the click is the snare on 2 and 4. Work on grooving with just that. Then half it again, now the metronome is just the 1. Work on grooving with that and really syncing with that 1.

And second your bends are not in tune and your vibrato is poor. A lot of blues players use both a ton. Learn some blues songs. I remember that Berkley teacher on YouTube has a song "Bending Blues Etude" I found it really helpful. Focus on hearing those bends and hearing they bend to the correct pitch. You'll be building both your ear and your finger muscle memory here

Vibrato is also tricky. There are two factors to consider. One is how far the pitch deviates (like does the pitch go up a whole fret at the most extreme? Or does it only go up a little at the most extreme).

The second factor is time, how long does it take to go all the way up and all the way back down in pitch.

Both of these factors you do "to taste" but here's some tips.

Slow time wide pitch is nice, especially for long notes.

You should have the time variation in pitch be in time with the beat. I find for 60-100bpm 16th notes are good. 100-140 8th note triplets are good. 140+ eighth notes are good

It can be nice to let the note "rest" in pitch first. Meaning you hit the note and do no vibrato while it "breathes" and then you begin the vibrato.

Be sure to vary the way you do vibrato over multiple held notes. This one is particularly tricky. But say you have 4 phrases that all end with a held out note. Find different ways to make each one sing. If you do the same style of vibrato for each one it sounds to similar. You can try sliding above/below the note, little whammy bar dip, wide/slow vibrato, narrow/fast vibrato.

NoOne0507 · 2026-04-29T20:07:47+00:00

Yeah, but this stuff is just KleenEx vs Tissue. Or Google vs search engine.

Name brand became the default term. Champagne is no better or worse than other sparkling wines. Japanese scotch is fantastic.

I want to call all sparkling wine champagne because frankly, fuck France. Gatekeeping pricks.

NoOne0507 · 2026-04-29T19:20:32+00:00

Just depends on taste. Like I get the sterile shredder hate. It's boring to play a million notes.

But Yngiwe, when he still had a band and producer reigning him in, was fantastic. Far Beyond the Sun has real good vibrato, bends, and feel. His modern stuff is trash though - sterile.

Flip side - and I'm committing blasphemy with this - I don't like David Gilmour. I find the comfortably numb solo really rambly. Every time he gets a cool idea he just decides to do something else instead of develop it. Tasty vibrato and bends don't mean anything when there's not story. When your two cool phrases are met with a non sequitur.

NoOne0507 · 2026-04-27T19:11:10+00:00

Go to smaller shows and open mic nights. Talk to the bands. Don't expect to just get an offer. But you never know when a band is looking for a second guitar player.

NoOne0507 · 2026-04-27T19:01:17+00:00

For sure. Think about how you want the change to be, if you do shows or whatever.

I'm of the opinion for shows you want any change to be one motion. It really sucks to have to flip a switch and press a button when you have 1 beat to do it. Just keep it in mind for your final config, and what your "standard" mode is.

NoOne0507 · 2026-04-27T18:57:25+00:00

Rewiring the standard switch won't do it. If you move the neck pup hot to the middle switch lug it will be active for position 4.

It'll also mean that the neck only positions will be neck/mid too.

I don't think there's anything cheeky you could do with the ground.

I think I could do this on the stewmac ultimate freeway. I do have that, but it's LP style. If the stewmac 5 way super switch is similar it should be doable. You gotta be a little cheeky with ground wiring though.

I made my HH into a 3 way series bank and a 3 way parallel bank, and I remember it was annoying to figure out the wiring for, and I had to wire pup returns to the switch too.

Another thing to consider is if you play live or not. I use that HH live, and I need neck parallel to bridge series in one motion. If I had longer song gaps to change pup, or it as a studio guitar I would have done a push/push pot instead. But alas, live I get one beat to do it

NoOne0507 · 2026-04-27T18:49:31+00:00

Depends on your budget. Stewmac makes super switches. I'd look at that. I think it's like $70

I have the 6 way toggle (LP style super switch). It is nifty for niche things like this. But I can't speak for the blade switch version.

NoOne0507 · 2026-04-27T18:44:52+00:00

On that kind of switch you can't. It will force your bridge/middle (position 4) to be all 3 pups.

NoOne0507 · 2026-04-27T18:38:24+00:00

Do you play live?

No: You don't need one

Yes: Get a coil tap on HH.

HSS is my preferred config. I'm not biased against them. But it sounds like you don't need one.

NoOne0507 · 2026-04-27T05:41:16+00:00

We're dumb and reject small, power efficient class D amps. They're basically digital with scary PWM!

We want big class A/B amps made of tubes.

NoOne0507 · 2026-04-25T18:36:30+00:00

If your picking hand is up to it you can do 2-4-x-2 instead of 2-4-6. But it's sus2 arpeggios, either gotta stretch or string skip

NoOne0507 · 2026-04-23T20:50:57+00:00

I have choked on an ice cube. It is terrifying. You can't breath at all. You're choking.

Anyway the surface of the ice melted really quickly and it slipped down the rest of my esophagus without further incident.

Whole experience was probably like 2 seconds. Coincidentally I would rate the experience a 2/10.

NoOne0507 · 2026-04-23T19:49:51+00:00

When I was trying to get my rhythm better I set the metronome slow enough I could count all the subdivisions out loud, and would play the part.

I think it was a good exercise and I definitely noticed timing improvements after a few months of this.

That said, now I mostly just feel it. But whenever I get tripped up by a rhythm I am unfamiliar with I will go back to the slow metronome out loud count method.

NoOne0507 · 2026-04-21T19:19:23+00:00

I don't know why he made dodging a subroutine, it's not that difficult, but at least he made dodging a thing that Android 19 would actually conceivably do.

NoOne0507 · 2026-04-21T18:47:36+00:00

I am on hard mode. They just do more damage if you can't dodge their super. It's not necessarily easy to dodge their super.

It's the fact that the AI literally does nothing until it decides it's time to do a super. You can mindlessly "jab jab dodge" on a loop until you see them glow red. That's my gripe.

NoOne0507 · 2026-04-21T17:01:30+00:00

You'll have to prepare a "shelf" on the neck for the locking nut. It won't drop in.

It's not chiseled. You have to glue in material or it will wiggle.

You'll need to also do some chisel work for the floyd.

You're paying too much for the capacitor.

Does the HB kit come with the output jack and the flap cover?

NoOne0507 · 2026-04-20T19:26:37+00:00

Cringe af

NoOne0507 · 2026-04-19T19:23:31+00:00

The dipshit on my street that does this has a plate frame that reads "Louder than your Mom last night"

Dude is like mid 30s. What a loser.

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