So, remember the SPAMP+? It was a ton of fun. I wrote to ask the SpampMAN if I could get a ¼” stere-to-mono adapter for the headphone jack to make the headphone jack essentially an “out” for a guitar amp so I could use the Spamp+ as an effect or pre-amp.
Dude is solid, and sent me one! He may include it as an option with future builds! The grilled, chilled, & fried all work as you would expect and sound gorgeous coming through my Blues Jr.
Here I used my New York Pro StarGazer (with GFS Lil’ Killer Rails) into the SPAMP, then my Fender Blues Jr. The tones are still awesome! the volume differences are there, but if you pick one & go that rally shouldn’t be a problem. This is totally cool as a pre-amp effect! There’s no on-off, but I do have an A/B/Y switch that I could maybe use to put it in & out of the loop. At any rate, this is still super fun, and that’s what it’s all about!
I dimed the SPICE and HEAT knobs, but left TASTE at 12:00. Why? I always dime all the knobs. I like gain and dirt and punk rock. I ran each guitar through the CHILLED, FRIED, and GRILLED settings.
I like FRIED and GRILLED, but there was a noticeable volume drop with Grilled with all the guitars/pickups. This is a super fun little amp. I may get the normal one to use as a distortion pedal… as I don’t think this headphone out is suitable to run to an amp.
I will eventually get to using a 9V & rocking the headphones. This was plugged into a 9v power supply for the video.
I did test a 9V in it, and it had the same volume drop to GRILLED. Of course I used the oil can guitar in the Spam can amp first.
You can see what kinds of pickups they have and if not just ask me in the comments. You get single coils, humbucker/single split, lipstick, humbuckers, hot rails, and P-90-ish ones. I think the SPAMP+ sounds absolutely killer with the P90’s.
I try not to ruin my guitar/gear videos with talking.
Should I explain things for the 3 of you that watch? Lemme know what you think. Do I need the one that acts as a pedal?
Send me a pedal and I will demo it with all the knobs or almost all the knobs dimed.
I’m in a lot of guitar-related Facebook groups. I’m probably in a lot more guitar -related (and general music-related) Facebook groups that ought to be allowed. I see a lot of talk about guitars, and a lot of opinions about guitars. People are very strong and vocal about their opinions. (Did you see the guitar bingo cards?)
One post I see quite often is someone who is buying a guitar for their kid, or even one for themselves. It usually contains no details or insight and boils down to “I am buying my kid a guitar, what should I get?” or “I want to try playing guitar, what is the best one to buy?”
The responses come in swiftly and are predictably all over the place. Guitarists who frequent guitar-related Facebook groups are a wild bunch. It’s hard to get a good feel when advice is all over the place.
I am certainly no guitar expert. Hell, I’m not even that great of a player. Ha ha. I have, however, played a very large variety of guitars over the years. I happen to own a wide variety of guitars and am a bottom-feeder of sorts… All of which I feel plays well into qualifying me to dole out advice on the matter of a starter guitar.
First, you need to ask yourself some questions. We need more to go one than “Which guitar should I buy?”
What’s your budget?
What kind of music do you listen to?
What guitarists (or musicians, bands, artists) do you enjoy?
What would you like to sound like?
If this is a GIFT guitar, this becomes tricky if you want it to remain a surprise. You’ve got to do some homework. If a kid is dreaming he wants and Explorer or a Jaguar and you get him a Stratocaster or an SG, there may be some disappointment or it sitting in the corner for a bit.
What do you see yourself or what does the recipient see themselves playing? What kind of noise is yearning to be made? Get an idea of a shape in mind, maybe even a color… or whatever is there sparking that interest.
Look at Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp, ShopGoodwill.com, ebay, Music Go Round, Reverb, Craigslist, etc. See what floats your boat or calls out. Something will catch your attention. Something will call you. Something will pull you. It might not be the exact guitar you want, but it gives you a place to start looking, at styles or brands.
Check local Facebook sale groups too. I help moderate one for my area and it is a FANTASTIC place to get great deals on gear, ask, & answer questions, etc. It’s also all invite-only so it’s relatively drama free.
I’m largely ignoring acoustics, but that may be what you want. They are so versatile and a great place to start learning.
Go to a music store and pour over the stuff. (I know things are different right now with a global Covid-19 pandemic, but I hope they will eventually return to a much more normal state of existence. Please follow the guidelines in a store or if meeting someone to purchase via an online ad.) Play it all. See what feels good.
Soon you’ll have a Pinterest board for beautiful, weird, ugly, and random guitars you find on the internet.
All the references I can think of for name-dropping for guitar players are ancient. But if you want to play like Slash and you get a John Mayer guitar, it’s not going to be as exciting, right?
Get your budget set. I personally stick to cheap guitars and I love them. You can get some really nice guitars for $300. One group I frequent calls anything $500 & under cheap. I can dig that. You can also get some great guitars for $100 if you’re looking in all the right places.
Used gear is a great place to start. Stuff depreciates rapidly. Stores pay pennies on the dollar for value so they’re able to make a profit, so the best bang-for-your-buck may be some sort of local online sale. Although, Music Go Round seems to have reasonable used prices in person.
Avoid any listings online that say “great for beginners” or “great for a first guitar” or “great for kids.” Loosely translated this means “this guitar is a steaming pile of poop.” Usually it has terrible action, won’t hold a tune or even intonate properly, or has some other hidden issues.
If anyone lists something online for free and says “Make an offer” they are the worst kind of person, so just keep scrolling.
Don’t pay over $50 for a used First Act unless it was one that came with a Volkswagen. They were $50 new at Walmart. Some brands with great budget axes can include Squier, Lotus, Hondo, Dean, Hamer, Schecter, Ibanez, New York Pro, Galveston, G&L, Peavy, Epiphone, Kramer, and so many more outside of the ones everyone seems to know like Fender and Gibson. Don’t pay too much attention to the headstock logo though.
I would also probably be wary of new “starter packs” that come with a tiny amp. Do your research & read reviews on that kind of stuff.
Stick to your budget & play everything that you can that resembles what you’re looking at online. You might like a heavy guitar or a light guitar. You might like a wide neck or a skinny neck. You might like a thin neck or a heavy one.
If you want a cheap new guitar and are not concerned with the logo on the headstock, I cannot recommend Agile or SX and Xaviere enough. I hear nothing but good things and they’re just great axes. I have heard mixed reviews on Hard Luck Kings.
Whatever you buy, I suggest, and a I cannot stress this enough, get a pro setup. Find local music shop… preferably from work of mouth or asking locals online. Find someone that recommends a tech or luthier that does great work. This person will ask you questions. Give honest answers. I suggest getting a lighter gauge pack of strings at first. Tell them you want 9’s. I would say $75 for a pro setup and a few bucks for a new pack of strings will make even the rattiest of guitars into beautiful machines. Figure it into your budget if you need to.
If you’re close to Pittsburgh’s southern suburbs, I may even recommend the guy that has polished some of my proverbial turds and made them into rock n’ roll machines.
Amps? Well, amps are whole different animal. There are headphone amps, practice amps, and combo amps. It’s all in the budget/preference mix. Maybe that will need to be another blog post?
You (or the gift recipient) will fall in love with the guitar if you get the right one. Soon you’ll have GAS.
Don’t hesitate to ask me any specific advice here in the comments or with the contact form.
Feel free to add to my advice, or contradict it in the comments!
Since the world is a bit strange right now, I decided I wanted to see more guitars on social media. Maybe it’ll start a trend, maybe not.
I like classic guitars, I like modern guitars, I like classy guitars, I like ugly guitars. I like guitars. I like playing them. I like looking at them online. I like looking at them on my wall. I like looking at them in the store. I like hearing them. I like arguing about them on the internet. I also like other assorted stringed instruments.
Maybe this will make the world a little brighter. Maybe people will like these guitars. Maybe people will argue about these guitars. Maybe absolutely no one will notice. Who knows?
Below the collage, here are the ones I have posted so far via Instagram with the #AllMyAxes hashtag, minus today’s. The rest will be in the next post. This is the bulk of my guitar collection. The rest of the stuff in the house are my ukuleles and mandolin, the wife’s ukuleles, and the kids’ guitars and ukuleles.
There is a little bit written about each guitar if you click through to Instagram or follow me on Facebook. I hope to blog more in-depth about each of them, or more than I have in the past anyway… reaching out to some manufacturers and designers, especially for the most interesting ones.
So, AxVault.com has featured my guitar collection. How cool is that? I’m honored & proud to have been selected to be a featured collection! Of course, I dig anything that encourages me to buy more goofy guitars.
So, I’ve been really bad at blogging lately. It’s not that I don’t have anything to blog about, it’s mostly that I’m not finding much time to do it. I did have someone recently contact me with a complaint thinking I’m some entity… not sure who they thought. I wrote back to no avail. I think it was a dud. I may try again to get a response, maybe I’ll even post something.
Mainly, it’s because of a new job. I’m not tied to a desk with a few spare minutes or even with lunch time at the desk. Now, I’m on the road & in the field all day. When I get home, I don’t seem to gravitate right to blogging or my news feed.
I never did finish my New York Pro guitar… well, I did route out the pickguard with a Dremel set that my mom gave me, and eventually got the neck plate off, but I had my guitar guy put it all back together. If you need work done in the Pittsburgh area, let me know and I’ll send you to the right cat for repairs, setups, and even guitar insanity which is generally all I ever have for him (e.g. the Batman logo guitar went from goofy to absolutely playable in his hands). It looks ridiculous, plays like a dream, and screams through the amplifier like you wouldn’t believe. GFS pickups rule.
I haven’t forgotten about blogging. There’s just been a bunch going on lately. The band had a few gigs back-to-back, & we’ve been trying to come up with new stuff. The real job has been rather taxing of late, the workload and hours have increased. The wife & I seem to have some sort of scheduled social or family function every weekend lately. Our week at Living Waters is coming up & I’ve been preparing for that. I started to work on my New York Pro guitar & chronicle that, but got to a stopping point & haven’t had time to get back to it. I’ve been trying to pull together some mazes, new old, some unfinished… I want to get a bunch ready to go, then look at my best publishing options. I’ve also been battling a nasty stuffy nose coupled with a summer cold & fatigue.
I’m certainly not complaining, there’s just a bunch of stuff going on. I felt the need to explain the lack of posts. I even have some drafts written on what I feel to be some entertaining subjects… I just need the time to sit, make the graphics & write the posts that go along with them.
So, this past weekend, I finally got a chance to work on customizing my New York Pro, I thought I’d get a bunch of it done all at one time. Well, I hit a roadblock or two as I was taking it all apart. (Of course.)
Once I got my work bench set up on the basement, taking everything apart was quite easy. I just took out all the hardware, and when I went to line up the new pickguard, it didn’t fit. It’s really close, but it doesn’t fit. I’m going to have to file or cut or sand or Dremel or some combination of all of the above.
It’s not the same…
The holes in the pickguard aren’t going to lineup with the screws, either. I’m going to have to maybe 2-sided tape it in place to mark all the holes once I get it cut right. I have no experience taking apart guitars, but it’s odd that the neck doesn’t fit “perfectly” into the body. There’s a weird gap there. It’s also easy to tell (now) that the old pickguard has been cut. There are some other spots where it doesn’t quite line up. I hope I don’t have to route anything out where the pickups go. I got them all from the same place, so I hope not.
Also, I thought I was taking the neck plate off… but it wasn’t having it:
That’s supposed to come off when you take the screws out…
Help?
It’s stuck. I feel like it’s glued on or was put on before the stain dried? I bought all black hardware, including a neck plate. Should I try to get this one off, or just let it go? I even tried to pop it off using a screwdriver through the 5th larger hole… all to no avail.
Any advice on that one?
If you’re interested in checking out my progress, take a look at the Photobucket album that’s my attempt to chronicle the whole thing. (Or, sit through this slideshow…)
World (and Lunar) Domination 