Daft assumptions you've had for years about guitars/bass/gear ?

bassbora

When I started playing bass in the early '90s I didn't know anyone else who was playing and information was not so readily available.  I knew how to tune up and started playing along to records and everything was going great.  Then the strangest thing would happen.  Some bands had an extra note the played and I could not for the life of me figure out what was happening (Guns n Roses, Alice in Chains etc).  I guess you have figured it out?  I tried different strings (if I remember correctly I thought possibly heavier gauge would get me there) but nothing worked.

I had the epiphany in the paper shop. I discovered all the tabs in guitar mags and would stand there and try to memorise the songs so I would not have to buy the mag.  In one of them it stated the tuning before the song and they had all the flat sign before the note.  I had studied piano as a kid so I knew the musical symbols.  So I ran home and tuned the bass down half a step.  And bingo I was playing it correctly.  That was one big moment for me.  I had no one to ask and there was no Internet and it never occurred to me you could tune differently than in E.

Snags

Didn't take long to learn the error of this one,  but early on I thought that if you knew the chords to a song (in the "little boxes" format over a notation melody or simple piano arrangement) you'd be able to play it, straight off.

I had no real concept of riffs, inversions, positions etc.

I also used to stupidly expect the music books you bought to be accurate and not just broad approximations of rock songs for piano 

robdynamite

Haych said:

It makes me a better guitarist if I own lots of guitars - does that count?

this too.

Kent747

Buying the pedal that guy owned would immediately get me closer to that sound. Pouring one out for every delay or overdrive I've bought....

ICBM

Kent747 said:

Buying the pedal that guy owned would immediately get me closer to that sound.

I once owned the actual MXR chorus pedal Nick Beggs used in Kajagoogoo.

I didn’t know that when I bought it though . But it wouldn’t have put me off...

Haych

I recall when I first started learning guitar, I thought that to play any kind of rock the gain had to be turned up all the way to 11.  Yeah, distortion was almost binary to my 13 year old self!

Quite embarrassing now thinking about it.  Progressively over the years the gain knob gets used less and is dialled in with much more finesse now, even when playing rock type stuff I use it as sparingly as possible and try to keep it as clean as the song will allow.

I see lots of other players, not all of them inexperienced, making the same mistake I did.

Snap

That strats were just "a bit weedy and soft".

Then I discovered Hendrix.

That you would never be able to do high gain heavy stuff on a stock Telecaster. I was told that by some bod in a guitar shop when I was just starting out playing. Clearly bollocks, but it did set me off down the path to getting a Les Paul.

Here's the big one though - that precision basses were boring and not beefy enough.  

That shred is all bollocks. Still believe that one though.

Tannin

For years I thought I could play electric guitar. Or at least that I'd be able to one day if I just kept on playing one badly enough for long enough.  

Philly_Q

Kent747 said:

Buying the pedal that guy owned would immediately get me closer to that sound. Pouring one out for every delay or overdrive I've bought....

I saw an old advert yesterday for a DigiTech pedal called The Weapon - intended to give you all the signature tones of Dan Donegan from Disturbed.

It brought back a very dim memory... I have a feeling I may have actually bought one... if I did, it's still unopened in the box.  Somewhere.

midlifecrisis

used to think that anyone except other guitarists gave a flying fig about what guitar or amp you played.   also used to think a 10 watt amp was twice as loud as a 5 watt amp. and a 100 watt amp was 10 times louder than a 10 watt amp.

AlexC

After a couple of years of playing in my early teens I thought that jamming with other guitarists would make me a better player. Aside from a few useful technique tips it didn't really.  I then came along in leaps and bounds by playing with other musicians - bass, drums, vocals, keyboards, trumpet, cello, etc. A lesson I stick to more than 30 years on.

ThePrettyDamned

I remember thinking "playing with feel" is a thing. 

thegummy

Onpar said:

Rowby1 said:

Until I was in my late 20s I thought all guitars sounded their best with their controls on 10. 

Rather embarrassingly, I'm still doing this!

Must try amp loud, guitar volume low. 

This is like therapy but less expensive. 

While it's not necessarily the case that the volume and tone on the guitar at 10 will sound best, neither is it true that any other setting will.

In other words, everything on 10 might be your preferred setting (and is a very common one). It just might not be.

chromatuna

That old chestnut - bridge pickup should always sound great with the tone on 10 / full

It’s only in recent years I have discovered the benefits of actually using the bridge tone pot - doh!

Slash'N'burn

Tikibird44 said:

Slash'N'burn said:

For about 20 years I assumed that a 5 string bass had an 'E' 5th string and the 'extra' first string was a B like the guitar, for doing more higher register playing - have only just discovered that the 5th String is actually a low B !

Had a mate who broke his bass before a gig and borrowed a five string from another band. Took him most of the first song to find out what was happening.

Saw White Lies play at Glastonbury, they started one of their better known songs and the bassist was playing everything a semitone lower than everyone else in the band, they carried on like that for about 3 minutes before they stopped and redid the song properly! You can imagine how wrong it all sounded.

LastMantra

thegummy said:

Onpar said:

Rowby1 said:

Until I was in my late 20s I thought all guitars sounded their best with their controls on 10. 

Rather embarrassingly, I'm still doing this!

Must try amp loud, guitar volume low. 

This is like therapy but less expensive. 

While it's not necessarily the case that the volume and tone on the guitar at 10 will sound best, neither is it true that any other setting will.

In other words, everything on 10 might be your preferred setting (and is a very common one). It just might not be.

I think part of the problem is that louder usually = better. You need to adjust the amp a touch too.
I set guitar controls in the middle then set everything else up to sound good like that. That way if I need more volume/treble I've got it and can roll off more too. So more about having full use of the controls than "tone".

ICBM

midlifecrisis said:

also used to think a 10 watt amp was twice as loud as a 5 watt amp. and a 100 watt amp was 10 times louder than a 10 watt amp.

Try playing a typical 10W 8"-speaker transistor practice amp up full, then a 100W Marshall Super Lead and 4x12" up full, and you could easily believe 100W is *at least* ten times louder .

(The real mistake is not knowing that speaker efficiency is more important than amplifier power... that took a while to dawn on me as well.)

LastMantra

Milk said:

When I was a teen and getting into guitar on a strat shaped thing. I was under the impression that I need the heaviest gauge on there possible as it would sound the best, therefore I would get the feel for them fast. all it actually did was slow down my progress learning massively and then I gave up and binned everything.

When I restarted playing last year from pretty much the beginning as I didn't get far because of unplayable strings for me I started on 9s but I experimented recently to discover I like 10s on strat scale length guitars

I'm the opposite in that I believed the lighter the strings the easier it would be to do cool stuff. It's kind of true but I actually get more control with heavier strings. People talk about "fight" but for me it's just having the right amount of "resistance" when bending etc.

Funnily enough my mate that started playing at the same time and who was my main jamming buddy until he moved away still uses the lightest strings he can get. He never really got into the whole "tone" thing...he's not a member here   

DaevidJ

In my formative days thinking chorus was a good effect for rhythm parts... 

skullfunkerry

LastMantra said:

Milk said:

When I was a teen and getting into guitar on a strat shaped thing. I was under the impression that I need the heaviest gauge on there possible as it would sound the best, therefore I would get the feel for them fast. all it actually did was slow down my progress learning massively and then I gave up and binned everything.

When I restarted playing last year from pretty much the beginning as I didn't get far because of unplayable strings for me I started on 9s but I experimented recently to discover I like 10s on strat scale length guitars

I'm the opposite in that I believed the lighter the strings the easier it would be to do cool stuff. It's kind of true but I actually get more control with heavier strings. People talk about "fight" but for me it's just having the right amount of "resistance" when bending etc.

Funnily enough my mate that started playing at the same time and who was my main jamming buddy until he moved away still uses the lightest strings he can get. He never really got into the whole "tone" thing...he's not a member here   

I still use pretty light strings (someone expressed utter amazement in a thread the other day that I was using 10-52 for drop C and not 12s)... I think my tone is pretty good, tbh (although someone not into metal would probably disagree very strongly!)