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

guitarjack66

I thought that joining various guitar themed forums and watching endless youtube videos that I'd know exactly the correct type and style of guitar I'd like to purchase when able. 
The whirlpool is never ending!

Pabcrane

LastMantra said:

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".

I saw The Fall in around 2010 - I wasn't born early enough to see them in their heyday - but anyway, I was told beforehand about Mark E. Smith's propensity to to adjust his band's settings and stuff mid song.

So he goes over to the guitarist's amp and changes some stuff - immediately after Mark has turned away the guitarist adjusts the knobs on his guitar to turn it up and change the tone. I laughed out loud and thought that was brilliant.

Pabcrane

Something i still don't understand - what is a 'step' and a 'half-step'? Some people use them interchangeably with 'tone' and 'semi-tone'.

Do violins and pianos have a 'step' too? I've never heard anyone but a guitarist use the term.

bloodandtears

i once thought the black keys on a piano represented the fret markers on a guitar.. oops

Philly_Q

Pabcrane said:

Something i still don't understand - what is a 'step' and a 'half-step'? Some people use them interchangeably with 'tone' and 'semi-tone'.

Do violins and pianos have a 'step' too? I've never heard anyone but a guitarist use the term.

All (Western, I suppose) music has whole tones and semitones, it's nothing to do with the instruments, but I'll leave it to someone who can explain it better!  

thegummy

Pabcrane said:

Something i still don't understand - what is a 'step' and a 'half-step'? Some people use them interchangeably with 'tone' and 'semi-tone'.

Do violins and pianos have a 'step' too? I've never heard anyone but a guitarist use the term.

Half step means exactly the same as semi tone.

So on a guitar it's one fret up or down; on piano it's one key up or down.

MojoBro

Philly_Q said:

Pabcrane said:

Something i still don't understand - what is a 'step' and a 'half-step'? Some people use them interchangeably with 'tone' and 'semi-tone'.

Do violins and pianos have a 'step' too? I've never heard anyone but a guitarist use the term.

All (Western, I suppose) music has whole tones and semitones, it's nothing to do with the instruments, but I'll leave it to someone who can explain it better!  

Yep, the terms are interchangable and it's nothing to do with a particular instrument. A 'half-step' is the interval between 2 notes directly next to each other on the Chromatic Scale (ie. one fret on a guitar or the next key on a piano), a 'full-step' is 2 of them!

Pabcrane

MojoBro said:

Philly_Q said:

Pabcrane said:

Something i still don't understand - what is a 'step' and a 'half-step'? Some people use them interchangeably with 'tone' and 'semi-tone'.

Do violins and pianos have a 'step' too? I've never heard anyone but a guitarist use the term.

All (Western, I suppose) music has whole tones and semitones, it's nothing to do with the instruments, but I'll leave it to someone who can explain it better!  

Yep, the terms are interchangable and it's nothing to do with a particular instrument. A 'half-step' is the interval between 2 notes directly next to each other on the Chromatic Scale (ie. one fret on a guitar or the next key on a piano), a 'full-step' is 2 of them!

Rightio, thanks.

Do other musicians use the term? What I was thinking was I've never heard it from a pianist or violinist or trumpeter - I've only ever heard a guitarist use it. Everyone else has always just said tone or semitone.

MojoBro

I'm pretty sure 'steps' are used across the board, I've definitely seen it in piano tuition theory books.

Thinking about it, it probably doesn't make as much sense using the term on an instrument that doesn't have notes arranged that way, like woodwind or brass.

I always thought it was an American/ English thing, but I haven't got anything to back that up!

EricTheWeary

MojoBro said:MojoBro said:

I'm pretty sure 'steps' are used across the board, I've definitely seen it in piano tuition theory books.

Thinking about it, it probably doesn't make as much sense using the term on an instrument that doesn't have notes arranged that way, like woodwind or brass.

I always thought it was an American/ English thing, but I haven't got anything to back that up!

I'm pretty sure 'steps' are used across the board, I've definitely seen it in piano tuition theory books.

Thinking about it, it probably doesn't make as much sense using the term on an instrument that doesn't have notes arranged that way, like woodwind or brass.

I always thought it was an American/ English thing, but I haven't got anything to back that up!

Steps seems to be the Americanism. Therefore probably unsurprisingly used more commonly for guitar. 

I spent a lot of time confused about tone and semi tones! Then memorising tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitone.    

Teacherphil

I think strats are easier to play than Les Pauls but I can't bring myself to buy a strat. None of the music I like is played on one. 

thegummy

EricTheWeary said:

I spent a lot of time confused about tone and semi tones! Then memorising tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitone.    

I still wish that was more ingrained in my automatic memory - to the point that I just always knew where the next scale tone was regardless of what I had just played.

thegummy

Teacherphil said:

I think strats are easier to play than Les Pauls but I can't bring myself to buy a strat. None of the music I like is played on one. 

Luckily for me, when thinking of all my favourite guitarists from history, the majority were all Strat players.

I feel sure that's just a coincidence though - I don't think the Strat necessarily sounds better than any other guitar, just that the players I love mostly happen to play them.

Maybe there's something subconscious going on.

Haych

I used to believe that the keyboard player served a useful function in the band.

runs and ducks for cover

prowla

1. That I'm a great bass player.

2. That a few beers makes me an even better bass player.

(Substitute singer, guitarist, etc. to suit...)

dazzajl

thegummy said:

......I don't think the Strat necessarily sounds better than any other guitar.........

No, you were right. It does.

SPECTRUM001

Haych said:

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.

Yes, when I first started playing (trying to emulate all my Punk heroes) I thought having tons of gain and distortion equated ‘heavy’. Actually it just turned into a thick mushy mess.

It was only when I got to play with an American group that I learned a heavier sound could come from the space and way you played and were synching to the rhythm/song. 

I also thought you had to use all six strings when playing chords.

And you had to play all the time.

And that you must need a huge amount of amplification to have enough volume to fill a hall.

Although I know some of these things now, it is still really hard to get beyond them.

Slash'N'burn

Pabcrane said:

Something i still don't understand - what is a 'step' and a 'half-step'? Some people use them interchangeably with 'tone' and 'semi-tone'.

Do violins and pianos have a 'step' too? I've never heard anyone but a guitarist use the term.

The step/half step thing I only hear when people are talking about tuning changes, e.g. ‘tune down half a step from standard’
but when talking about playing/fretboard/notation  it would always be the proper ‘tone/semitone’ - unless I’m mistaken?

Dominic

S56035 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 !

I've known that for about 1 mins.  I am 45 years old.

Before I'd ever even picked up a guitar I assumed that on a 2 pickup guitar one was for the distortion sound and one was for clean.

WTF man ...........they're both for Distortion .........Peace out

Nerine

Back in my younger days myself and another poster by the handle of Chudanez got into a massive argument on the Harmony Central Amp Forum (man I miss that place, haha!) because we were arguing that boost pedals were pointless. We were both on the same side bear in mind. 

This was back when Nu Metal was prevalent and everyone was playing Framus Cobras and Madison Divinity’s and the such like. It was all about “teh br00talz gainz”. 

That spawned quite a rift. The Americans didn’t like it. We argued that it didn’t “tighten” an amp and it was just a crutch. Some of the more serious posters were absolutely triggered by it. We were half trolling to be fair but literally anything went on that forum and it was just a vaguely amp related troll meme forum. Some of the threads were absolute gold. Some of the characters, personas and posters there were hilarious. Some of the trolling was top tier. Most of the threads were pointless or parodies, some were massive, long running scandals, a lot of the posters were mocked beyond belief. 

The Gear Page used to get constantly shelled by HCAF members. We all used to absolutely rip the whole “Tag knows tone” line. But it was all quite well natured and I think everyone sort of bought in. I literally skived off work a few times to read that forum and listen to American radio station WJRR all day. I can remember some of the threads and their content like they were yesterday back in the infancy of the internet. 

In any case, boost pedals are probably my most bought these days and the term HCAF can now be seen on Urban Dictionary as a result of the implosion of that thread. I think I may have been the thread starter of “Boosts are pointless” and I remember seeing the Goatse post Chudanez eventually made in that thread committing forum suicide which got him “pwnt with teh bant stick” which is referenced on Urban Dictionary.  

As an aside, Josh from JHS pedals occasionally wears a T-shirt with “Haunting Mids” on it. JHS also made a pedal called Haunting Mids. 

My HCAF forum avatar for the longest time was a chicken head knob with “Haunting Mid” above it. Whilst I don’t think I quite invented the term, I think I was one of the very early proponents of that particular meme. I was definitely about or involved in its growth and spread. 

Dunno what happened to Chudanez after that. He was some English dude with a black Ibanez. He even made a YouTube video of him demoing the boost vs non boost argument. Dunno if it’s still there. Cool guy. Hope he’s doing ok. Was a good player if I remember rightly. 

I can remember sooooo many of those old forum handles too. Good times. Remember that forum very fondly. 

You had to be there. 

Cool Story, Bro.