Category Archives: News

Last week we got to the point where we had a guitar with one pickup and no controls. This week we’ll be taking more steps towards a full understanding of guitar wiring.

Changing your pickups isn’t rocket science and the right set of pickups can completely transform the tone and character of your guitar. Sometimes changing pickups can seem a bit daunting for those who have never picked up a soldering iron or opened up their guitar. Below you can find resources to select the perfect set…

You had to know something like this was coming. This debate has gone on since solid state amps were marketed to unsuspecting guitarists in the 60’s. This article will consider the conventional wisdom is that tube amps are always better. Thirty years ago, I might agree, but now it isn’t so simple. Solid State (or…

Pickups come in two basic flavors. One is active, and the second is passive. If your guitar requires a battery, chances are that it has active pickups. If it doesn’t, or will function without a battery, then the pickups would be considered passive. From what I have seen, guitarists generally prefer one or the other…

If the transformers are the heart of your amp and the preamp is the brain, then the soul must be the tubes. But the thing is, there are so many tubes available, how can we discern the differences?

Previously, the reason behind the different tones that different woods create has been explained. The different tones themselves were not fully explored, though. In this article I will give a global overview of the different tone woods, the sound they produce and in some cases their purpose. This is by no means a complete picture, only a global overview.

In our unending quest to forge a guitar tone that sounds like somebody opening the Ark of the Covenant inside a tyrannosaurus, many of us will eventually find ourselves considering the possibility of using more than one amplifier. As the more mathematically astute amongst you will doubtless be well aware, employing just one additional amplifier will…

Most guitarists have enough struggle with one neck. However, there are times when you might have to play guitar and bass in the same song, or play delicate fingerpicked intros on a 12 string, and rock out with a great big Rockin’ Guitar Solo on that 6-string in the end.

Or…my journey from single coils to humbuckers and back…. For the most part, choosing a type of replacement pickup is based on whatever already comes in your guitar. When exploring the differences between guitar types, it somehow always gets distilled down into 2 categories: Guitars with single coils and guitars with humbuckers. This article will…

I am always intrigued in how things developed. How did the guitar develop to what it is today? How do our views change on what constitutes good tone? Those kind of questions keep me occupied during the slow moments of a day, and one day I was asking myself the question: why do we, as electric guitar players, predominantly use sound systems based on electromagnetism and not on piezo-electrics?