Loud, Bad Guitar

If you are a beginning guitarist, then picking an electric guitar (or bass) to get started should be a pretty easy prospect. All you really have to do is pick something that comes close to fitting the type of style you will start off trying to play. Hopefully that's something of decent quality from an established brand so you don't end up spending playing time trying to get the instrument to work the way that it should. But even assuming it is not, and you spend a lot of time frustrated by quirks, flaws, and limitations, the most important thing about that first instrument is going to be playing it enough to get to where you know what you are doing and understand how you interact with the instrument. My Hagstrom Swede is a quality instrument, limited a bit by the quality of the original wiring and cheap pots that caused some hum issues and a nut that was cut in a way that made the G string bind a bit. Oh, and the bridge pickup had a coil demagnetize not too long after I got ...

Otherwise known as bass... Yeah, it's been a long time since I had anything to say here. Professional life has gotten more involved and with the dissertation done there's less need for distraction and blowing off steam with awful riffs. As a result, the Hagstrom has been somewhat neglected. Still, we went to see Amon Amarth and Enslaved a few weeks ago and I found myself in the mood to play again. Except that when I thought about the concert, I kept coming back to how I spent the whole time this time mesmerized by watching Grutle Kjellson and Ted Lundström playing. This seemed strange to me because Ice Dale is the quintessential guitar action hero and Johan and Olavi are themselves amazing players. Then I got to thinking about other shows we had gone to see. Opeth: I love Fredrik's playing and Mikael is the most entertaining host in metal, but during the actual songs I end up, more often than not, watching Mendez and his side-to-side headbanging as he jams out on that Ja...