Articles in the Guitar 101 Category
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What the hell is a neck reset and why the hell would you want one?
You’ll often hear talk about neck resets (or sometimes, neck sets) but the reasons it’s required are often glossed over by saying it’s just something that acoustics need sometimes. It’s all pretty simple and it has to do with geometry (stay with me…) and wood.
Huh?
Let me try to make a little sense of that.
Why would I need a neck reset?
When an acoustic guitar is made, it is designed and constructed such that the guitar’s string height …
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Continuing our Guitar 101 voyage of discovery around the guitar, we’re staying with the neck and contemplating the truss-rod.
What the hell is a truss rod anyway?
At it’s simplest, a truss rod is a device to counteract the tension of the strings. We’ll get on to looking at the different types of truss rod in a minute or two but first, lets look a little deeper into that explanation.
The strings on your guitar or bass, when tuned up to pitch, exert a lot of pressure. It’s a tall order …
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A little while back, we posted an article with some information to help you spot a counterfeit Gibson guitar. For a while now, there seems to have been a bit of a glut of fake Gibsons coming from the Far East – mostly China. These guitars are pretty readily available on the net from Chinese wholesale sites.
While these instruments aren’t the worst in the world, I’d hate to think of someone being fooled. If you want to buy what you know is a fake Les Paul, while Gibson (quite rightly) …
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Today, in Guitar 101, we’re looking at the guitar neck. And, this time, we’re taking considering scale length and string compensation.
Scale length
Scale length is, effectively, the ‘sounding’ length of the string – i.e. the bit that actually ‘sounds’ (or vibrates – it’s the same thing) when plucked. This means that we’re only considering the length of string between the nut and saddle (see our article on Guitar Anatomy if you need a refresher on these terms).
Some of the common scale lengths of popular guitars and basses are:
Many Gibson Guitars, Les Paul, SG, …
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While there is a massive chunk of the this site’s audience already very familiar with what each bit of a guitar is, this article is really aimed at those who might be just starting their guitar journey (or even just thinking about it).
This first article in Guitar 101 is a primer (or a refresher if you want to do a little revision) to ensure we all know the basics before we start moving on to look, in more detail, at all of the bits of a guitar. For that reason, …
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Gibson tell us of a recent upsurge in fake and counterfeit Gibson guitars for sale – many of which are sold from Chinese wholesale sites like TradeTang.com, DHGate.com and MadeInChina.com (although this is, by no means, an exclusive list).
You can see such ‘bargains’ as a Les Paul Supreme for $297 or an Dot Reissue 335 for $346.
If only…
Remember, if it seems to good to be true, it probably is. However, some information to (maybe) help in spotting a fake Gibson follows:
There seem to be a few things that the fakers …
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