EXTENSION CHORDS

EXTENSION CHORDS

THE THOUSAND DOLLAR DREAM MACHINE

by Allen Hester

Waylon already said it, there’s only two things in life that make it worth livin’, and one of them is guitars that tune good. Like a fine horse or a perfectly tuned engine, a good guitar is hard to find, regardless of the price one might pay for it. Just because the guitar costs eight or nine hundred bucks, that doesn’t mean it is a great axe. Lots of good music has been made on pawn shop guitars, what I like to call the “garden variety” of guitars: Kay, Harmony, Stella, Lindell, Tiesco Del Ray, and other forgotten firearms of the Great Garage-Band era (1965-present. I don’t expect the garage band will ever die, it’s just that in its present form it requires more equipment to operate than the GB of old). It’s amazing to think that the castaways of earlier days, for instance those old Sears guitar outfits that had the amp built into the case, are now considered worth collecting, if only as a curiosity, when people couldn’t stand them back when they were being made! A lot of equipment goes through a sort of metamorphosis. Products can do poorly at first, then pick up later on, such as the Gibson Les Paul, which was discontinued from 1961 to 1968. The Les Paul is very popular now, especially the older models, but there was a time when nobody wanted one.

Great, you say,'but what is the secret of having a “good time” playing music, O Learned One? Well, friends, there are a number of prerequisites, and sometimes even filling all the requirements is no guarantee, but we gotta start somewhere, don’t we? So let us assume that your benefactor was bestowed upon you, the young musician, a tidy sum of a thousand bucks. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to seek and procure a guitar, an amplifier, and some extra goodies that will make you step into the local music store and announce your intentions and the size of your pocketbook then presto! all the money is gone, and you are left holding that “rare, one-of-a-kind, Warp-OMatic guitar. What happened?

Remember the first rule of buying: Beware. Never forget that rule, no matter how much money you make playing music! On the other hand, it doesn’t do much good to go shopping for guitars with no money, either; just let the sales person know that you are serious and that you intend to buy something from somebody sooner or later. You’ll be surprised how attentive and accommodating that sales person will become!

First of all, there is the guitar. What you’ve got to do it find a decent guitar with a sturdy case for three or four hundred bucks, tops. If you’re smart, you won’t buy the first thing you look at, no matter how tempting. Make like Smokey Robinson and “shop around.” Check it out.

What about used guitars? Well, if you know enough to see a good bargain, go for it. If you have a friend with more experience, you may trust his judgement in the matter. But remember, the guitar has to suit you, not your friend! On a rare occasion (increasingly rare!) you might stumble onto a really good guitar in a pawn shop or in somebody’s closet, but on the other hand, you may search for months and months and never turn up a good deal.

The best bet for a young guitarist, just getting started, is to go to a full service music store and buy a new guitar. This way, if the-guitar won’t stay in tune, or if other problems develop, you can take it back and raise hell. Furthermore, by establishing an acquaintance with your music store, you can learn a lot from the people who work there, and if you have any sense at all, you can get a little bit better deal every time you trade guitars, amps or whatever.

OK, so what kind of guitar can you buy? Well, take your pick: Gibson, Fender, Peavey, Ibanez, Vantage, Hondo. They have all got something in your price range. There’s the Gibson Sonex series, the Peavey T-60, T-15, T-30, the Fender Lead I and Lead II, the Ibanez Blazer Series, and several other brands that will fit your budget. Some are made in America (Gibson, Fender, Peavey), others are imports. All of them have some kind of warranty, and at least one brand, Peavey, comes with a hardshell case included in the price. Ibanez makes a really good-sounding solid-body guitar aind three pickups, maple neck and natural wood finish. Get a guitar that looks good, but make sure it sounds right, too.

Of course, since we are talking about electric guitars, a lot of the “right sound” comes not from the guitar, so much as it does from the amp. Yoq, can take a five thousand dollar Les Paul sunburst, and plug it into your stereo system, and it sounds like nothing. But put it through a Marshall stack and behold! Long live rock ’n’ roll!

OK, so what about amps? 10 or 15 years ago, at the height of the boogie-blues rock band era, what everybody wanted was a wall of big amps, usually Marshall or Ampeg, and a thunderous, distorted guitar sound. But guitar playing has come a long way since then. In order to cover all the bases, the guitar player has got to be able to serve up ample helpings of distortion, feedback, echo sounds, chorused sounds, flanging, various tone qualities, crystalclear country-rock solos, and more. In short, the role of the guitarist, especially in the studio, is that of chameleon. The guitarist has to be able to shift gears easily from hard and heavy metal to smooth and sultry blues to cosmic space funk to backporch pickin’. Those who can are in heavy demand.

What does that have to do with amplifiers? Well, the amplifier can either limit or expand the guitarist’s capabilities, depending on its features. For example, the Marshall stacks of yore only sounded good when they were cranked up to maxi vol; but those amps were the trademark sound of an entire generation, even though they only had one basic sound: loud and nasty. Likewise, in the days gone by, the Fender amplifiers,, with the reverb turned up, of course, were the trademark sound of Nashville and the country pickers.

Today, both Marshall and Fender are still around, so is hard rock, and so is country. But the amplifiers, like the musical styles, have been cross-pollinated and mixed to such a degree that it is hard to tell where one genre stops and another one begins. Take the sound of Linda Ronstadt, for example. She covers musical territory from Hank Williams to Elvis Costello, and her guitar players have to be able to make that transition as well. In order for this to happen, the equipment must be versatile, as well as the musician.

Because of this demand for flexibility, amplifiers are designed to shift from hard to soft, from distorted to smooth, with the touch of a footswitch in some cases. Peavey, for example, has a very well-designed new amplifier line, the Solo Series, that enables the guitarist to switch channels or combine channels with a footswitch. This amp also has independent master volumes for the two channels, and it has several other features that make it ideal for the working player who has to cover a lot of musical territory. There are other small self-contained amps on the market that have a great rock sound, such as the Mesa Boogie, the Legend, the Lab Series and the Roland Cube. However, I feel confident in saying that the Peavey Renown for $450.00 retail is the best, most versatile amplifier on the market today for under 500 bucks. In fact, it outperforms some of the highest priced amps around, and I say that not as a hype, but just as a simple fact. When you look at features versus cost, the Peavey comes out as a great bargain. However, you might not like the amp, and if the Marshall sound or the Mesa Boogie sound is all that turns you on, then go for it. Just remember one key word when looking for an amp: flexibility.

Let’s assume now that you’ve spent about $350 on a guitar and a case, and $450 on the amp; that leaves about a hundred bucks or so to cover the effects. Well, a hundred bucks won’t buy much these days, let’s face it. However, it will buy some much-needed accessories, such as cables, strings, picks, slides, pegwinders, guitar stands and so forth. Naturally you’ve got to have a guitar cord, so you might as well get a good one, with Switchcraft phone plugs and Belden cable. Whirlwind makes some excellent cords that will last a long time, provided you give it reasonably good care. As far as strings go, find out which gauge strings are on the guitar when you buy it; choose your strings carefully and make sure that you stay with the same gauges when you change strings, otherwise you may foul up the intonation of the guitar neck.

One piece of equipment that every guitarist should have is an electronic guitar tuner. Why? Because tuning the guitar is a tough thing to learn for most players. Tuning is an art in itself; some players catch on easily, others never quite solve the mystery of tuning. We could devote this entire column and then some to just this one problem, but just remember this: if you aren’t in tune, you cannot make your best contribution to the music going on around you. I don’t care what the avantgarde crowd says, you are either in tune or out of tune, period. It’s either a strike or a ball/

Tuners come in a variety of sizes and prices. One inexpensive one that works well is the Korg WT-6, which has a lighted meter and runs off of batteries. Seiko (same folks that make your dad’s watch) now has a linp of quartz tuners that are very good alfo. I would suggest that you consider an electronic tuner before you buy any effects, because tuning properly is so basic. Besides, effects can cause you ta sound out of tune sometimes, even when your guitar is in tune, so it is best to have a solid foundation of standard pitch to proceed from.-

If you are dead set on getting some effects, let’s take a look at what you can expect. First of all, you can forget getting anything like an Echoplex or a Digital Delay for a mere hundred bucks. Even the most reasonably priced echo units go for at least $150. You can still get a wah-wah pedal for less than a C-note, but they aren’t in great demand today as part of a guitar player’s sound. If you are heavy into the Larry Carlton sound, you may want to get a simple volume pedal, and you can get one for around 70 or 80 bucks. However, you probably are going to want either a phase shifter, a flanger or a chorus box as your first effect, because they can be used in a variety of ways, and because they aren’t terribly expensive. Of the three, the chorus box is probably the most-used sound of the present day, with the flanger coming in second. The phase shifter has slipped a little in popularity recently, but you may be able to pick up a used one fairly cheap. Be careful when buying used effects; they usually get a lot of abuse (let’s face it, they were made to be stepped on, right?). About the only brand that really stands up to serious abuse is the MXR stuff. They have a really rugged case, and a heavy-duty switch, so they usually last a longtime.

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As for new effects, I like the Ibanez Chorus unit a lot. It has the ultra-quiet FET footswitch, a status indicator light, an AC adaptor, and it can be run in mono or stereo chorus modes. This unit costs a little over a hundred bucks retail, but with a little bargaining you should be able to get it for a good price, especially if you buy the guitar, the amp and the effect at the same time. In addition to Ibanez, there is the Boss Line, Morley, MXR’s new Commande series, and DOD. Effects are constantly changing, losing or gaining popularity, and being improved upon. For right now, considering both price and features, Ibanez looks really good. But no matter which brand you buy, remember that there is a time to use it, and a time to turn it off. Effects are not always the answer.

In the months ahead, I’ll be talking about these thing, and trying to answer some of your questions (and some, of my own!) about how all this stuff works, how to use it, whether or not to buy it, and why. If you have questions about a product, a guitarist, or a sound that you have heard on record and would like to be able to duplicate, please write and let me know. I may not know the answer; but I’ll find somebody who does, and we’ll come up with an answer to your questions.

In the meantime, take your thousand dollar dream machine and practice as much as you possibly can. You can bet your boots and saddles that Joe Walsh and Rick Derringer and Eddie Van Halen spent a lot of time practicing. Besides, it’s cheaper than putting gas in some other guy’s car all the time, right? ^