What features should I look for? Any warning signs?

What features should I look for? Any warning signs?

Accessories, as any good fashionista will tell you, can either make or break an outfit. Now I’m not suggesting that a guitar played with last year’s guitar pick simply isn’t worth the effort, or that red guitar straps are the new black. However, guitar accessories do have one thing in common with their fashion counterparts-each is designed to help the user get the most out of his or her instrument or outfit, as the case may be.
There is actually a rather long list of guitar accessories available to the discerning guitar player. These range from various types of guitar supports to amplifiers to nail kits. Yes, nail kits. Hey, all that plucking and strumming can be murder on your cuticles. Suffice it to say, there are enough guitar accessory options to ensure that anyone, be they novice or master, can at least look like they know what they’re doing with their guitar.
Some accessories allow the artists to increase the variety of sounds that can be created by the guitar. For instance the capotasto, or “capo,” as it is more commonly called, is used to alter the pitch of the strings. This accessory is clipped to the fret board through either spring or elastic tension, and the use of one allows the artist to play in different keys without having to change the chord formations. Because of the ease with which they allow guitar players to change keys, these little gizmos are sometimes referred to as “cheaters.”
A plectrum, commonly referred to as a guitar pick, is a small piece of hard material used to “pick” a guitar’s strings. While most classical players prefer to use their finger nails (hence the nail kits), the guitar pick is commonly used amongst electric and sometimes acoustic guitar players. It is usually held between the thumb and first finger of the picking hand and is generally made of plastic, although bone, wood, steel and tortoise shell picks can also be purchased. The guitar pick comes in many shapes, sizes and thicknesses and varies depending on the application. Jazz picks are usually small and agile, whereas those intended for base guitars are generally larger.
A guitar accessory does not even need to be specifically designed for the guitar; it can be anything the artist uses to alter the instrument’s sound. The term “slide” in guitar lingo can refer to the neck of a bottle, a knife blade or a round metal bar that is used to create a glissando, or a gliding transition from one pitch to another. Such accessories are commonly used in blues and country music and sometimes in rock. Some guitars are even played exclusively with a slide, and these instruments are referred to as steel guitars.
Then there are those accessories designed to help with the logistics of playing the guitar. Guitar supports, for example, are an alternative to the commonly use footstool. This device lifts the guitar from the player’s knee, allowing the artist to keep both feet on the ground. Guitar armrests are designed to support the picking arm as it drapes over the guitar’s body. And the traditional guitar strap, of course, simply helps the guitarist by supporting the instrument when he or she is in a standing position.

What is a fingerpicking guitar? There has always been a division of acoustic guitars between “folk” and “classical” which mostly refers to whether the guitar is fitted with nylon or steel strings. A nylon string guitar is ideal for fingerpicking because it is easier on the finger nails. The steel string guitars are suited to flatpicking but some people do play fingerstyle on steel strings.

Some guitar makers have recently taken up the practice of calling certain guitars – like the Martin OM-2 - “fingerpicking guitars”. Is this label really accurate? Is one guitar really better for fingerpicking than another? Some people say that guitars best suited for fingerstyle measure one and three-quarter inches across the nut and guitars better for flatpicking measure one and eleven-sixteenth inches. That could be getting a little technical.

Of course Dreadnought size guitars, that many guitarists see as flatpicking guitars are a bit awkward for fingerpicking. This is not a universal opinion – some players prefer the larger size guitars for fingerstyle. There’s even evidence that Merle Travis played a Martin D28.

The Dreadnought guitar was specifically designed to project sound in a live, unplugged setting. As most of the live acoustic gigs of the time were oriented to bluegrass, this would suggest that the larger guitar was made for the flatpicker.

Indeed flatpicking sounds excellent on a Dreadnought or one of the larger style guitars because they produce a uniformly big sound. This contrasts with the smaller guitars that do not have such an overpowering bass but have wider nuts to accommodate fingerstyle players.

A guitar like the Martin D28 is ideally suited to bluegrass, gospel, country and rock. Everybody agrees that the guitar has a great bass response but some people actually find the treble a little on the thin side. Of course, the strings you choose to play on has some bearing on the sound.

A guitar that does not need to be picked with a great deal of force will always be better suited to fingerstyle players. The guitars with small bodies are thought by a lot of guitarists to be fingerstyle guitars because the treble notes are not overpowered by the bass as would be the case with Dreadnoughts.

This article has given you some of the opinions from all sides of the debate about whether particular guitars are for fingerstle or flatpicking. In the real world nobody takes any notice of rules or specifications. You find a guitar that you like to play and you stay with it.

I haven’t been playing guitar long, but apparently I’m pretty good. I’m aloud to get a new guitar soon, but I really don’t know what to look for. Help!

A guitar tuner is an amazing help to guitar players of all stages of expertise. Every guitar player should learn how to use a guitar tuner early in his career. They are small and compact and will come to your aid when your ear is too tired and emotional to tune your guitar with any accuracy. For many guitarists, tuning the guitar is more difficult than playing it, and a lot of time is wasted at gigs and during lessons trying to tune guitars by ear.

The notes on the open strings of the guitar are E A D G B E. Guitar tuners come in several different forms and perform the work of tuning guitars to varying degrees of completeness.

Although a guitar player tuning his guitar by ear might look cool, the fact is that nobody’s ear is as good as a decent electronic tuner. You could forget all about trying to train your ear altogether and just make sure your guitar tuner goes everywhere that you and your guitar go.

An electronic guitar tuner tells the guitarist if the note he is playing on each open string of his guitar is at the correct frequency. Electronic guitar tuners can vary greatly in price but the most expensive is not necessarily the best. Some tuners are just LEDs you can carry on stage with you to tune your guitar on the fly, some tuners are able to tune many different instruments.

There are many guitar tuners available online that simply sound the notes that correspond to the open strings of the guitar and the guitar player has to use his ear to match his guitar to the sound of the tuner.

There are also tuners that are available as free downloads from the internet. Some of these have several different displays to help you tune your guitar accurately and some can tune to various alternate tunings. Learning how to use a guitar tuner of this type would be a good move for any learner guitarist.

Low priced guitar tuners that you can buy at music stores use a similar method but the difference is that the tuner also has a needle that will indicate how close your tuning is. There are slightly more expensive guitar tuners that do a similar job but have a better quality display.

There is a guitar tuner that clips onto the guitar and “feels” the vibrations coming through the guitar when the open strings are played. Although we can’t hear the comparison with this kind of tuner, the result is a little better than with your basic LED display and getting to know how to use this kind of guitar tuner is a little easier.

So, I’m picking up my ovation this weekend. I’ve always been interested in wah pedals and the sounds they make, however I’ve never seen a wah pedal paired with an acoustic guitar. Has anyone seen this, does it sound all right?
Better yet, if someone could send me a link of an acoustic guitar being used with a wah pedal, that would be awesome.
Much appreciated,
Thanks in advance!

Im played guitar and learned the basics and now i need a capo, im not really sure what to buy so some recommendations would be awesome.
I play on a fender acoustic guitar if you’re wondering.

I’m looking to buy my first guitar soon (I plan on getting an acoustic) I have no experience with guitars, but I really want to learn. So my question is, what do I need as soon as I start playing guitar and what should I hold off on buying until later? Like do I need a capo, extra strings, a tuner, etc? Any other tips or advice would be really helpful!

i am going to start learning guitar and was wondering what i should look for in an acoustic guitar.
so any suggestions/advice?
thanks