I get tons of email from guitarists asking me about aspects of my performing gear. Here, I've documented my thoughts on the four most common topics:
- Finding the right electric guitar
- Choosing an archtop guitar
- Guitar humidity
- Tuning and restringing a guitar with a locking tremolo
(1) Finding the Right Electric Guitar
Most guitarists pick their instruments based on what their idols play. This is a great way to gather information on the tone you prefer. But unless you just happen to have the same torso, arm length and hand size as your idol, it’s probably not the best way to pick a comfortable instrument. The key thing to keep in mind is that you don’t have to play a Les Paul or Stratocaster to sound like you’re playing a Les Paul or Stratocaster.
You can certainly achieve the sound of those guitars on other instruments that may be considerably more comfortable for you to play. To me, the single most important factor in selecting a guitar is finding the right neck profile for you physically. When you’re up on stage playing that guitar for three hours a night, several nights a week, comfortability will mean a lot to you. It will also help you mitigate the Carpal Tunnel, neck and back pains that most professional guitarists experience at some point in their career.
I have relatively small hands when compared to most other guitarists. For me, the smaller neck radius of most Fender Stratocasters and Telecasters feel great. Logically, I gravitated towards those instruments when I was a younger player. It took me several years to realize that the tone I prefer is actually the body depth and humbucking pick-ups of a Les Paul.
After the neck, two other key factors to consider when buying a guitar is body density and pick-up selection. The two are intrinsically related. This is where a lot of research into the guitar rigs of your idols is warranted. For example, Jimmy Page most often used a Les Paul Standard, which utilized very dense mahogany paired with Gibson’s infamous humbucking pickups, to produce a very fat and thick tone. On the other hand, Stevie Ray Vaughan played an alder Stratocaster, a much lighter wood, paired with a standard Fender single coil - a much thinner and bluesier sounding pick-up.
The problem is that the neck of a Les Paul is way too bulky for me. This dilemma led me to investigating “hybrid” guitars. That is, guitars containing an amalgam of characteristics normally associated with more classic instruments. Almost any maker other than Fender, Gibson and Rickenbacher is an example of this, such as guitars made by the likes of Paul Reed Smith, Tom Anderson and Roger Sadowsky. I like Sadowsky's hollow-body better than I do the Gibson ES-335 that was its forefather. There are also major manufacturers who make hybrids like Ibanez, ESP and Yamaha.
Even with a hybrid guitar, it is common for players to customize their instruments further. For example, if you were holding one of my main gigging solid body guitars, you would swear it was a stock Ibanez RG420. That couldn't be further from the truth. I've replaced all the pick-ups, the wiring, the pots, even the springs in the tremolo. I've also had a professional luthier completely heat press and re-fret the neck. Basically, we took that guitar completely apart and rebuilt it to be a much higher quality instrument, specific to my playing choices.
To some degree, this is true of most, if not almost all professional players. Every big-time guitarist you can name actually plays a highly customized rig, even if it doesn’t look like it from the front row. In fact, here’s a big secret they never tell you in guitar magazines: The guitar that an artist gets when he or she endorses it isn't the same guitar *YOU* get when you buy one. There are *HUGE* differences!
The guitar you actually see the superstar playing is generally a prototype handmade for them by the master builders in the custom shop of each manufacturer. These are highly picked over instruments tailored to the specific requests of the player. The builders and their apprentices spend hours perfecting these guitars in order to get the player to agree to put his or her name on them. Conversely, the same endorsed instrument that you pay extra for at your local dealer, is a mass produced approximation of the guitar you see the artist playing. Trust me, if you played them side by side, you’d immediately tell the difference.
Let me be very clear on this. Buying a Eric Clapton Stratocaster for $2500 isn't going to help you sound anymore like Clapton than a $650 Standard Stratocaster will. Same thing with the Jimmy Page Les Paul, the John Lennon 325 Rickenbacker, or the Ibanez Steve Vai JEM models.
(2) Choosing an Archtop Guitar
In my opinion, the most important instrument characteristics when purchasing an archtop guitar are the following:
- Neck Profile
- Mounted versus floating pick-up
- Laminate versus tap-tuned carved top
- Body Size and Depth
I often hear from guitarists who say that they’ve spent a ton of money on an expensive carved-top instrument but are unhappy with how it plays or sounds. The reason almost always boils down to one of these topics.
a) Neck Profile – As I mentioned earlier, neck profile is perhaps the most important consideration in my enjoyment of an instrument. For me, too long of a scale length or a neck that is too deep causes me discomfort in my wrists if I am playing the guitar for three sets a night. Besides comfort, I find I am more technically accurate when playing on a fretboard that has a 25 inch scale. I have owned guitars with 25.4 and 25.5 inch scales, but they aren't my main instruments. Occasionally I do like the larger scale length and a bit wider neck when accompanying a vocalist where I am playing a lot of bass lines as part of my performance.
b) Mounted versus Floating Pick-ups – Most guitarists base their blueprint of what a jazz guitar sounds like on a full humbucking pick-up, yet for some reason often purchase guitars with floating mini-humbuckers or PAF pick-ups. If the tone you are going for is Kenny Burrell, Joe Pass, Jim Hall or Wes Montgomery – they were all playing full humbucking pick-ups mounted in the top of guitar. To me, floating pick-ups are best utilized on tap-tuned carved tops where the instrument is meant to be played with a good portion of the acoustic tone projecting into the room and amplification being used just to augment the acoustic tone.
c) Laminate versus tap-tuned carved top – Most of the great jazz guitar recordings you’ve heard were recorded with laminate top guitars like a Gibson ES-175 or Jimmy D’Aquisto’s infamous Jim Hall model. For performing on large stages where my tone is almost completely the sound of the amplifier, I prefer these instruments or their modern day successors like Roger Sadowsky’s Jim Hall model or Eastman’s John Pisano model. However, classic instruments like Wes Montgomery’s L5 or Johnny Smith’s Guild Artist Award were fully carved instruments.
Now there is certainly a lot of value in a carved-top instrument. Personally I find them more responsive than laminate top instruments, although that makes them 
more prone to feedback if amplified. If you are a follower of modern guitarists such as Peter Bernstein, Jack Wilkins or Howard Alden, you've been listening to the full-bodied sound of a carved-top guitar. The tap-tuned instruments are considerably livelier than the laminate arch-tops. These are instruments that are intended to be amplified just enough to enhance the acoustic resonance of the guitar in an intimate performance space.
d) Body Size and Depth – The overall balance of the guitar is often determined by the body size and depth of the instrument. For physical playing comfort I often prefer instruments with a 16 inch bout and less than 3 inch body depth. This is mostly because I find it difficult to get my arms around larger instruments and the length of my forearm is too small to have a full range of motion. The benefit is that my archtops are less prone to feedback and quite honestly I’ve never heard a significant difference between them and 17 inch guitars with 3 inch body depth. Most importantly I find that 16 inch guitars with 2.25 inch to 2.75 inch body depth tend be wonderfully balanced guitars throughout, with an even voice across the range of the instrument.
A quick note on having a luthier make you a guitar - In general I suggest you work with a luthier close to home whom who you can consult with as he steps through the building process. Have him measure your hands, let him examine your favorite instrument, talk to him about things you've noticed in other instruments that clicked with you. Take a trip to a reputable archtop dealer and play through as many of their guitars as they'll let you. Take notes on what you like and what you don’t, and report back to your builder. If you own a guitar that you particularly like the neck of, let the luthier take precise measurements of it. If not, when you play guitars at a dealer, guitar show or your friends' instruments at a local jam session, take note of the nut width, scale length and diameter of the necks on the guitars that feel "right" to you. Give this information to your luthier. The more he can get into your brain, the better an instrument for you he can make.
(3) Guitar Humidity
One of the most common questions I get from guitar collectors is that of the effects of relative humidity on the instrument. Probably the single most exasperating problem in caring for a high quality guitar is the tendency of the wood to shrink or expand with changes in humidity. Many expensive repairs could be avoided by understanding the effects of humidity change and by applying simple remedies available for dealing with them.
Properly caring for your instrument is more important than keeping it clean or putting new strings on, but unfortunately many guitarists are woefully ignorant of the how to do so. I once had to return a brand new expensive dreadnought acoustic guitar because the top bubbled near the bridge due to poor weather conditions. Lucky for me, the dealer was a friend who was willing to return the instrument to the manufacturer and give me a refund. Most guitar makers are not so accommodating. Hopefully with this article I can help you avoid such heart break.
First of all - let's define the term itself - it's called "relative" humidity because it is the amount of moisture in the air relative to the temperature. The relative humidity for a guitar should be 45-55% of the temperature of the room. This is because wood shrinks and swells with humidity changes, and this can damage your guitar. The ideal humidity level for a guitar varies from one instrument to another, depending on the humidity conditions in the factory or workshop where it was assembled. The humidity during assembly establishes the basic dimensions of the instrument. This dimensional configuration is permanently locked into the total structure when the guitar is assembled. Thereafter, when humidity varies, the individual components will shrink or expand unevenly, while the dimensions of the total structure tend to remain proportionately constant.
You can easily measure the relative humidity of a room by buying a hygrometer. You can find these in the garden section of most general purpose and hardware stores. In the summer time I keep my guitar studio at room temperature (68 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit) with a relative humidity of around 47%. In the winter time my studio is a bit cooler (around 63 to 65 degrees) with a relative humidity of 52%. The key thing to remember is that the colder it gets outside, the more the relative humidity drops inside. The effects of very low humidity on tone woods can make a guitar sound brittle. At a critical point in moisture loss, the accumulated stress brought about by uneven wood shrinkage relieves itself by producing one or more cracks and sometimes even glue joint failures.
The single most effective way to maintain the humidity of your instrument is to leave it in its case, far away from a heat source, with a guitar humidifier. There are a variety of good guitar humidifiers available on the market, such as a Dampit, Lifeguard or Planet Waves. You should also use these when you are traveling or transporting your guitar to a gig. In the winter you should use a hard shell case when taking your guitar to a gig and not a gig bag.
If you're stubborn like me and have ten or twelve guitars in your studio that you use constantly and don't want to put them all in their cases every day. Then you need to closely monitor the relative humidity in your studio using your hygrometer. One of the best ways to raise the humidity in winter is simply to keep the room temperature lower. However, in most cases that won't be enough. In the majority of the United States, artificial heating will cause the air in your studio to be too dry, and you will need a good quality room humidifier to add moisture to the air in the room. However, if you live in a rainy climate, say perhaps, somewhere like Seattle, you have the opposite problem and should consider using a room dehumidifier to remove excess moisture from the air.
When purchasing a humidifier or dehumidifier, you should be careful to consider the room size it is intended for, which is usually listed in the technical specifications of the product. My studio is a decent sized room so I purchased a commercial dehumidifier that covers room sizes up to 1500 feet. I monitor the temperature and relative humidity daily.
In summary, the best way for you to be able to protect your guitar from damage is to understand what factors affect it and how best to control these factors. Protecting a valuable guitar from humidity extremes, if approached intelligently, can be done with minimal inconvenience. It also makes good economic sense. The most expensive of the remedies suggested above may end up costing considerably less than the expense that can result from neglect, especially if there is a permanent loss of instrument value because of environmental damage such as cracking or neck bulging.
(4) Tuning and Restringing a Guitar with a Locking Tremolo
- Restringing
- Tuning
- Adjusting the Tension Bar
One of the hardest things to deal with when using a locking tremolo is restringing and initially tuning the instrument. Once you get the guitar in tune and lock it down, you can pretty much run a truck over it and it will stay in tune. But getting it there is a true exercise in patience.
This begs the question of why you should use a locking trem at all. It really depends on your purpose. If your use of the tremolo is simply for some accents here and there, I’d recommend an old-school tremolo like a Bigsby. If you want to bend a note a little bit, but not aggressively, then I’d recommend locking tuners rather than a locking nut. In fact, in most cases, locking tuners will suit you just fine. However, your string will still stretch considerably with locking tuners, which is not so much the case with a locking nut. Therefore, if you want to aggressively hit your tremolo, dive-bomb, repeatedly tap it forcefully and pull up as well as down, you really need to go with a locking trem. Another big advantage is that you’ll find the full-floating tremolo a lot smoother, more sensitive and responsive than a partial or non-floating trem.
There’s a ton of conflicting information on the internet about how to tune guitars with locking tremolos such as Floyd Rose, Wilkinson, Ibanez Edge, Kahler and the like. Most of it isn’t intuitive at all. So here I’m going to give you the nasty low-down as simply as I can possibly explain it.
The main thing to realize when tuning a guitar with a locking tremolo is that you want to skip strings when tuning, not tune straight across the strings like you might do with a standard guitar. The 5th fret/4th fret technique will absolutely not work, and neither will the 7th fret/5th fret harmonic approach. I recommend tuning with both open strings and 12th fret harmonics.
Here are the main tools you will need:
- The appropriate Allen wrench set
- 2 mm, 2.5 mm, 3 mm for Ibanez Edge & Floyd Rose tremolos
- 0.5 in, 1/16 in, 3/32 inch for Kahler & Wilkinson tremolos
- An offset Phillips screwdriver
- A good tuner like a Boss TU-12 (and of course an instrument cable)
- A string cutter
It’s always essential to have an Allen wrench set handy to tune your guitar. For this reason I recommend installing an Allen wrench holder (pictured above) on the back of the headstock. You can find these at any online guitar parts outlet.
*WARNING* You should only use this method for restringing a guitar, not completely setting up a locking tremolo bridge. If you are starting from the point of having no strings at all on the guitar, you need to consult a professional guitar technician or repairman who is familiar with locking tremolo systems to have them set-up your instrument.
(1) RESTRINGING A LOCKING TREMOLO GUITAR, STEP BY STEP
- Using the appropriate Allen wrench, loosen all of the screws in the locking nut at the head of the guitar.
- There are three in the picture above. Some models may have as many as six, one per string.
- Detune the A (or 5th) string until it is loose, and then loosen the corresponding screw on the locking bridge
- Remove the string
- Cut the ball off of your replacement string
- Insert the end of that string into the corresponding bridge slot and tighten that screw
- Feed the other end of the string through the locking nut and into the tuning head. Tune the string up to its normal pitch. Do not tighten the screw of the locking nut.
- Repeat steps 1-6 for all strings in the following order:
- A or 5th string
- G or 3rd string
- High E or 1st string
- Low E or 6th string
- D or 4th string
- B or 2nd string
(2) TUNING A LOCKING TREMOLO GUITAR, STEP BY STEP
*CAUTION* Often a tremolo with a floating bridge can appear sharp (across most if not all strings) when the tremolo has just been used. In this case, leave the nut locked and lightly pull up on the tremolo bar to stretch the strings back in place. The guitar should immediately snap back in tune.
- Once all the screws are loosened in the locking nut, tune the guitar up to approximate pitch using the order listed in step #7 above.
- Don’t go too far, leave the guitar slightly flat.
- If the guitar is really out of tune, take all strings down a step and tune the low E and A strings to about half a pitch flat, then tune the remaining strings to close to pitch. This will help balance the bridge.
Once the tuning is close to pitch but slightly flat, tune each string using the order listed in step #7 above, but tune each string slightly sharp, to as much as it was showing flat before you tuned it. Do this for each string, EXCEPT the last one (the B or 2nd string), which you tune precisely to pitch. As you get closer to pitch, you’ll find this evens out and balances the bridge as you go.- BE PATIENT. This often takes 4 or 5 cycles, especially with new strings. Tuning a guitar with a locking tremolo is never going to be as easy and straight forward as a traditional guitar.
- If you find that the bridge keeps creeping up, but never quite comes to pitch, this probably means that your tremolo springs are a bit too loose. Using your offset screwdriver you should tighten the springs, but only very slightly. Use a quarter turn once at a time and then tune. You can usually do this through the slots in the cover, without needing to remove the cavity plate.
- This is also the way you would lower or raise the action of the guitar
- Once you have the guitar holding itself in tune. Lock down the locking nut by tightening the screws with the appropriate Allen wrench. Get them tight but don’t overdo it or you run the risk of stripping either the nut or the wrench. Generally, you should stop when you feel resistance.
- Fine tune the instrument using the small tuners on the bridge. Usually this will mean flattening the pitch, as the strings tightened a bit when you locked down the nut. You shouldn’t have to use them very much at all. If you do, loosen the screws on the nut and go back to step #1.
(3) ADJUSTING THE TENSION BAR
If you find your tremolo bar is hanging loosely and you would like to tighten it, all you need to do is tighten the bridge screw with the appropriate Allen wrench. Usually the screw is located right under, or near the high E string on the underside (underneath) of the bridge. To tighten it, gently press the tremolo bar down, raising the bridge until you can get a wrench in the screw. A minor adjustment is all that will be needed. You don’t want to tighten it so much that you have difficulty getting the bar in and out of the socket.
Once you get used to it, it’s really not as bad as it sounds. However, these are finicky instruments and they can often present unexpected problems on stage. For this reason, I always bring two guitars to a gig and leave one tuned to the side.