You have sketched your ideal guitar shape, it looks good on paper but will it work full size? Berlin guitar blogger GuitarRen has designed some great guitar shapes. GuitarRen tested his designs with cardboard mock ups, painting them and adding aluminium foil. He even added pickups and control knobs. This is a great way to test a design before starting to build.
We featured an article a while back about making your own headstock decal . Andreas Folvell produced another guide about designing a Fender style spaghetti logo to customise your parts-o-caster. The method uses the excellent (and free) Inkscape graphics program.
Changing strings can be daunting for new guitar players. There are many ways that you can do it, especially the bit where you secure the string to the tuning peg. Is there a right way to do it? Dan Cross of about.guitar.com thinks so. Have a look at his step by step illustrated guide to changing strings on an acoustic guitar.
A common problem for beginner guitarists is getting chords to ring out nicely. You followed the instructions, you have your fingers in the right place, the guitar is in tune but when you strum the chord it just doesn't sound right. If you were to pick each note and listen carefully you might find some of the the notes sound dead or muffled.
Ever wondered what is inside your guitars tone or volume knob? This article at geofex.com is a great introduction to understanding how your guitar controls work. The controls are potentiometers (pots for short) : a type of variable resistor.
guitar.about.com's resident guitar expert Dan Cross has posted some useful tips on how to buy a guitar. Dan is a professional guitarist and guitar teacher from New York.
A well known way to make weird noises with a electric guitar is to point an infrared remote control at the pickups. This makes a sound like a series of high pitched clicks or beeps.
Gary Shutt shows how to get the low 7 string sound on a normal 6 string. What you need to do is get yourself some really thick and heavy gage string like 13 through 56 or a 7 string set and just not use the 9. Once you have your strings on, you tune everything down to perfect fourths. Going from the lowest (bass) to highest strings you will have: B-E-A-D-G-B.
This is a useful instructional video for absolute beginners on the guitar. Jeff Isbell shows how to play the basic open chord shapes, E-A-D-G-C. Jeff gives a few fingering alternatives for the basic shapes.
This is the first in a series of 16 free videos about learning electric slide guitar, by John Armstrong a professional guitar teacher.
This is another video guide from Gary Schutt, about the basics of reverb. Reverb effects create a copy of the incoming signal slightly time-delays it, making it sound like you are in an echoing room.
This is an introductory video guide from Gary Schutt about compression effects. Gary gives a quick run though of the uses of compression. The best part is when he says:
Palm muting is a common technique in rock guitar playing. Resting the side of your palm on the guitar bridge gives a percussive quality to distorted chords. The trick is using just the right amount of palm pressure: too much and you wont get any sound, too little and you will loose the chunkiness.
This is a video guide to tools for basic guitar setup and maintenance, by Tim Ambrosius a guitar technician and manager at Keller Music in Cincinnati, Ohio.
This is a video guide from Gary Schutt about the basics of the wah wah pedal