This week I would like to highlight a piece of equipment that serves an important role both functionally and aesthetically on a guitar: the pickguard! There have been a number of different pickguard designs over the years, some crazier than others, and I thought I'd show off some of my personal favorites. By the way, if you are into bluegrass music, check out the 1972 documentary "Bluegrass Country Soul"...You will not only see some enormous/ridiculous pickguards, but also some classic performances by the likes of Earl Scruggs, The Osborne Brothers, Ralph Stanley, The Country Gentlemen, Roy Acuff...well, you get the idea! Flatpick wizard Bryan Sutton is fast becoming one of my favorite modern acoustic guitarists. He holds multiple Grammys as a go-to studio musician in Nashville and plays some of the fastest and cleanest lead lines I've ever heard. Though his 1948 D-28 wasn't built to be left handed, Bryan says the guitar "spent some good playing time upside down!" Thus the twin pickguards. Perhaps the most outrageous of the bunch, the Porter Wagoner "Wagonmaster" D-41 features one of the most outlandish pickguards I've ever seen on an acoustic guitar. Sort of a Batman-meets-Spinal Tap thing going on here. Nothing conventional about this country singer's axe! Perhaps the most recognizable guitar in country music (also a great representation of the virtues of having a pickguard!), Willie Nelson's famed "Trigger". If that guitar could only talk, I believe it would have a quite a few stories to tell... Until next time! -McCoy McCoy Tyler is a salesman at Sylvan Music with an aptitude towards acoustic guitars, amps, and pickup systems. When he's not spouting musical knowledge on the sales floor, he can be found doing some hot picking and sweet singing with his group The McCoy Tyler Band.
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The capo is one of the most essential tools for a guitarist. I might even go so far as to say that a capo can be as important as a tuner! The ability to play songs in any key while utilizing open chord voicings is crucial as a songwriter, and ultimately, due to the way a guitar is tuned, there are certain licks and melodies that simply cannot be played correctly without a capo! The term “capo” is derived from the Italian words "capo tasto" which means head fret. This makes sense, as a capo's function is essentially to move the first fret anywhere you choose on the fingerboard. Early capo designs that were widely used throughout the 60's and 70's utilized an elastic band that stretched around the neck of the guitar securing a bar over the fretboard. Though these classic elastic band style capos are not widely used anymore, the basic functionality of any capo remains the same: to hold the strings down anywhere on the fretboard. These days, the most common capos used are built by companies like Shubb, Kyser, Paige, and G7th. Modern capos range from simple in design to more elaborate. The G7th Performance 2 capos for example, have a very sleek, space age appeal, while also being highly functional and easy to use. I recently started using this capo and have been very happy with it so far. One bit of advice I would offer to those of you who are thinking about getting a capo is to avoid the "economy" models, while these will typically save you a few bucks, they are generally not built well and require extra time to put on and take off -- not good if you are in the middle of songs and want to avoid that awkward stage silence! For $20 you can get a great capo that will last you years -- or as long as it takes you to lose it! -McCoy McCoy Tyler is a salesman at Sylvan Music with an aptitude towards acoustic guitars, amps, and pickup systems. When he's not spouting musical knowledge on the sales floor, he can be found doing some hot picking and sweet singing with his group The McCoy Tyler Band. There's been a lot of hubbub over balanced tension string sets lately. What the hell are they? Can you even tell the difference?? I'm going to attempt to give a simple explanation of balanced tension sets and offer a bit of insight into their growing popularity and what makes them such a hot topic in the string world. There are two basic components that make up a steel string: a core and a wrap. When you look at the two smallest strings on an acoustic guitar, you are basically looking at an unwound core string. Wild, huh? Those naked little B and high E strings look just like their four bigger brothers minus that shiny bronze wrapping. Now, when we talk about tension on a guitar we are pretty much talking about lateral tension -- that is, the force that the individual strings exert laterally across the neck and soundboard of the instrument. [Note: this differs from instruments with floating bridges (mandolins, banjos, arch top guitars, etc.) where downward, or vertical tension becomes more important -- for more on this check out Siminoff Strings]. Now given the two basic components of a steel string, what would you say determines lateral tension? Well, if you guessed the wrapping, I'm happy to say you are absolutely wrong...It's the core, of course! A string's core determines its lateral tension -- remember that! D'addario Balanced Tension sets are developed with this in mind: each core string is made to expend an equal amount of lateral tension, thus creating a more "balanced" feel and sound across the strings when they are strummed or plucked. In theory, this should make for a better playing experience. But who am I to say? Pick up a set and see for yourself! -McCoy McCoy Tyler is a salesman at Sylvan Music with an aptitude towards acoustic guitars, amps, and pickup systems. When he's not spouting musical knowledge on the sales floor, he can be found doing some hot picking and sweet singing with his group The McCoy Tyler Band. Musicians are notoriously "picky" about gear--what gauge strings they use, which effects pedals, capos, tuners, slides...right on down to how many thousandths of an inch they prefer their flat picks! Over the years I've grown to prefer thicker picks for acoustic guitar, anywhere from 1 to 1.5mm. For electric, anywhere from .88 to 1mm tends to work well. But that's just me. Every customer has a very specific pick preference, and I'd like to think that we stock something for everyone here at Sylvan. With all that demand for specialized thickness and feel, there are now companies making boutique and customized picks. Would you believe that?! Who knew that their would be a demand for $40, $50, $75 picks! Crazy, I know. Companies like Blue Chip and Red Bear picks are just a couple of the brands slangin' high dollar plastic. But luckily, you don't have to spend the big bucks to get great tone out of your instrument. Here at Sylvan, we stock a wide variety of picks by companies like Wegen, Dunlop, Clayton, Golden Gate, and many more. One line that I am currently a big fan of is the Primetone by Dunlop. I will forego an explanation of what makes these picks so great and direct you to a description from their website: Primetone Sculpted Plectra will glide off your strings and bring out the true voice and clarity of your instrument. With hand-burnished sculpted edges, these picks allow for fast, articulate runs and effortless strumming. Made from Ultex for maximum durability and superior tonal definition. Available in three different shapes with a low-profile grip or a smooth traditional surface. There you have it! These work for me. How picky are you going to be the next time you stock up on plastic?? McCoy Tyler is a salesman at Sylvan Music with an aptitude towards acoustic guitars, amps, and pickup systems. When he's not spouting musical knowledge on the sales floor, he can be found doing some hot picking and sweet singing with his group The McCoy Tyler Band. As a performing musician, I sometimes get asked a difficult question -- how did you become proficient on your instrument? The obvious answer would be: practice, lots of practice. And of course that is suitable advice to give to anybody who is looking to learn something that is as technically demanding as playing the guitar. I am aware that we each have a unique capacity for learning new things, however simply telling a prospective guitar player to practice scales, always use a metronome, and always play for at least an hour may not always be the best advise. My point is this: establishing rigid practice habits is fine, but if I had a nickel for every hour I spent just holding a guitar and "noodling" I would have at least a month's worth of rent (and that's saying something in Santa Cruz!!!). Allow yourself the time to become familiar with your instrument on a more subconscious level (open-tunings lend themselves well to this approach) and "practice" using your intuition and judgment as well as your metronome and chord charts. For me, music is something that exists in the head AND the heart, and I would urge anyone who is looking to pick up the guitar or ukulele or banjo or tuba to simply exercise the habit of being with or near your instrument...always. Have it around and accessible, and remember this cheesy adage: practice makes perfect, but playing makes you happy--just ask Allen Iverson! Until next time! -McCoy
Last week I touched on the importance of EQ with regards to getting a natural sounding acoustic tone from your amp or DI box. I would like to delve a bit further into that topic this week and discuss how we can think about EQ relative to the instruments themselves. Tonewoods on an acoustic guitar dictate the overall responsiveness of certain frequencies that are produced when the instrument is strummed or picked. As an example, our 1958 Martin D-28 has Brazilian Rosewood back and sides, which generally have a "scooped midrange" type sound, meaning the lows and highs are more pronounced and the middle frequencies less so. This type of response can compliment a singer very well, as the guitar's natural "smiley face" EQ curve leaves room within the mix for the voice which, for most of us, happens to be naturally mid-rangy. Conversely, mahogany tends to be more mid-rangy, with the lows and highs falling off a bit--a "frowny face" if you will. Our 1937 D-18, for example, has a big robust sound that would do well in a bluegrass jam or acoustic ensemble because the abundant mids allow the guitar's voice to cut through in the mix. (Check out the video below of Tony Rice and Norman Blake--see if you can hear the difference between the 14-fret D-28 with Brazilian Rosewood that Tony is playing and the 12-fret D-18 with Mahogany that Norman is playing!) These days, there are a plethora of different tonewoods available--yet another factor to consider when making your next guitar purchase. Stop by the shop sometime and try a few out! -McCoy McCoy Tyler is a salesman at Sylvan Music with an aptitude towards acoustic guitars, amps, and pickup systems. When he's not spouting musical knowledge on the sales floor, he can be found doing some hot picking and sweet singing with his group The McCoy Tyler Band. Today I would like to talk about EQ and specifically how it relates to acoustic guitar amplification. I should note that these are solely opinions that I have gathered through my own personal experience and the various research I have done on this topic. Let's take a given range of frequencies produced by, say, an acoustic guitar--the way that our ears naturally interpret those frequencies offers us some clues as to how we might make EQ adjustments on our amp or preamp box. The frequencies that our ears are most attuned to exist in the midrange. Thus, when we plug our acoustic guitar into an amp or PA system (with the system's EQ set to flat), typically a cut (or decrease) somewhere in the range of 200hz-1500khz will yield a more natural and balanced response. Of course there are other factors to consider when tampering with your EQ--at what volume are you playing? Are you a singer songwriter, or are you playing in a group/ensemble? (More on this in my next post!)--however, I have found through personal experience that most acoustic guitars have what I might call a "naughty zone" in the middle frequency range (more often than not in the high-mids) that can be managed adequately with a bit of tone shaping. Try sitting down with your Fishman Loudbox amp or LR Baggs DI sometime and listening carefully to what those little EQ dials do. They were put there for a reason, so why not use them? -McCoy McCoy Tyler is a salesman at Sylvan Music with an aptitude towards acoustic guitars, amps, and pickup systems. When he's not spouting musical knowledge on the sales floor, he can be found doing some hot picking and sweet singing with his group The McCoy Tyler Band. The world of acoustic guitar pickups is vast and ever-expanding, with new technologies and designs popping up seemingly every week. The most recent pickup design from LR Baggs is The Lyric, which utilizes a microphone element that is attached to the bridge plate of your instrument. A microphone on the bridge plate you say!? That sounds like a load of malarkey. But it’s true! Unlike most internal microphone systems which utilize a highly sensitive mic capsule mounted on a gooseneck (and often pointed directly through the sound hole towards the strings--a highly feedback-prone system if you ask me…), the Lyric is substantially smaller in size and makes use of a “top secret” EQ curve developed by the engineering wizards at LR Baggs which reduces the awkward boxiness usually associated with internal microphones. This is a serious step in the right direction if you, like myself, are looking for the most accurate means of amplifying your high-end acoustic guitar without the hassles of conventional internally mounted microphone systems. Pair your LR Baggs Lyric with their award winning Venue DI for the ultimate dynamic and portable acoustic rig. That’s what I did, and I haven’t looked back. Check out all the great products that LR Baggs has to offer (as well as some killer demo videos) at their website, www.lrbaggs.com -McCoy McCoy Tyler is a salesman at Sylvan Music with an aptitude towards acoustic guitars, amps, and pickup systems. When he's not spouting musical knowledge on the sales floor, he can be found doing some hot picking and sweet singing with his group The McCoy Tyler Band. |