“Set up” is kind of a generalized term, referring mainly to how the guitar is adjusted–string height, intonation, neck curvature, the cut of the nut slots, and so on. It can be a noun (“the set-up of the guitar”) or a verb (“to set up the guitar”). The routine maintenance of your guitar can also be called the set-up.
There’s also a possibility that the frets are popping up, meaning that they’re coming slightly loose from their placement in the neck. An easy way to check for this is to run your finger up and down the side of the fretboard and feel if any of the frets have more prominent edges than the others. You can also see if you can slip a piece of paper under the edges of the frets. Fret problems are a bit more serious than set-up problems–in other words, more complicated and costly to fix.
Another possibility is that your guitar has smaller frets, which are harder to play. This is purely down to the specific design of the instrument. I would guess this isn’t the case, since most solid body electric guitars–and especially novice guitars–tend to have good sized frets.
Going with a more expensive model would be one solution, but not one you’d want to go with until you’ve investigated your other options. In this day and age, budget guitars are much better made than they used to be, so you can expect them to be reasonably playable.
Another issue I’ve been having is that when I play a few of the high, high-pitched notes (like…when my left hand is way down near the body) the guitar gets a serious raspiness/buzzing that just sounds unpleasant. Sometimes it doesn’t alter the sound through the amp. Sometimes it does. And sometimes the note literally cannot be played (depending on which fret, precisely, is being depressed). Would this be because of the setup? In particular, the bow of the neck?
Sounds like fret buzz and can be fixed by a good setup. You can try adjusting your action as well but depending on what’s around a decent setup shouldn’t be too expensive or time-consuming.
In other news, the band I’m in started recording a rough demo. Shit is time consuming, but fun in it’s own right. Lots of beer == lots of retakes
Man has anybody played through a bass amp so terrible that it bothered you way after the fact?
How about I went to a jam session and played through another bassist’s rig (David Eden gear). Normally that stuff kills, but man, the atmosphere must have made it really bad for some reason.
The cabinet was a 4x10 powered by a 600 watt head. And the thing was so muddy I had to rely on vibration alone to tune my bass because the notes I was playing weren’t even distinguishable.
Huh, I always hear good shit about Eden. You sure you weren’t playing in quicksand or something?
Also, to the guy wondering if he should go outright and buy an expensive guitar: I’d say no. I still play on the Squier PJ I got 389453892 years ago. Just make sure that what you get, whatever it is, is
Set up to your likings. After all, it’s your guitar.
Thing was crisp as ever, with a ton of bottom. The Eden rig the other night was horrible for some reason. As far as I could tell it was the same set up. Maybe the EQing was off, which I tried to adjust, but man was it bad.
Korg DTR1000 Tuner
Furman M8LX Power Conditioner
??? Equalizer (Borrowing from a friend till I get my own)
Only thing I have left to pick up is an ISP Decimator for some noise reduction and I’m good to go.
I do have 2 extra spaces though. I was thinking about getting a 2-space drawer or BBE Sonic Maximizer + something else.
Any suggestions/tips? I don’t really use effects or anything like that, although a fairly cheap rack-mount with Chorus/Delay/Reverb wouldn’t be out of the question.
When I think of a Drowned sound, Chorus pedals come to mind.
I played a Little Martin today, it was quite the amazing little guitar. If I had $300 cash on me, I would have left the store with it. Going back next week for it.
I was lucky enough that the very first guitar I ever picked up (with the intent to play it) was a Martin CXAE electric acoustic. Now that I’ve played a few different guitars and know the very basics of what I’m doing, I can better appreciate how good a guitar it is.
Anyway, the distortion isn’t chorus. Just as an example of what it sounds like, it is in Chinese Democracy:
[media=youtube]wtwBUG6JMTQ[/media]
From 1:01 to 1:30 (if you can hear it past the clicky…and sorry I used a RB2 video…it’s just that UMG took down the actual song from Youtube).
At least…I think it’s distortion. I’m a bona fide newb at guitaring, so…I mean…yeah.
It’s just called a distortion pedal? There’s no specific like…specific name for that particular type of distortion (in the same way that there’s a “chorus” distortion or an “echo” or whatever?)?
