The recurring expense of guitar strings is a price all guitarists must pay. There’s a wide variety of price points for guitar strings, and like any purchase, a greater price tag may not necessarily mean a better product. Are expensive guitar strings worth the investment? Expensive guitar strings are often worth it due to their…
Musical instruments utilizing a keyboard, like all pianos and many synthesizers, are sometimes a matter of confusion. Whether acoustic or electric, these musical instruments have distinct characteristics and specific applications in music-making. What are the differences between synthesizers and pianos? Pianos are acoustic string/percussion instruments that produce sound by hitting a string with a hammer….
Electric guitars are versatile instruments that can be tweaked by virtually any guitar player with moderate knowledge about how they work. This is particularly true in the case of the pickups in electric guitars. Pickups can be swapped in and out, adjusted in height, removed completely from the guitar, or added to the design in…
Electric guitars rarely have only one pickup, but one-pickup guitars do exist. Normally, guitars have two or three pickups installed. This may prompt the question of whether the number of pickups makes any significant difference in the sound. Does having more pickups improve a guitar’s tone/sound? Having more pickups won’t necessarily improve the tone and…
When we look at the market for guitar strings, we’ll often find distinctions between the types of guitars each set is meant for. Since most acoustic and electric guitar strings have steel cores (as opposed to the nylon cores of classical guitar strings), there may be some questions regarding whether acoustic and electric guitar strings…
Synthesizers can be awesome, powerful instruments in the right hands. On the contrary, they can be a stale ornament to any studio if they are not understood fully. Thus, we created this blog post to help you better understand what synthesizer patches are, where they come from, and what you need them for. What is…
Synthesizers are, perhaps, the most powerful musical instruments available in the world today. Indeed, they can recreate virtually any other sound and create new sounds that wouldn’t exist otherwise. Although most of us know what a synthesizer is, few know why they are called that way. So, why do we call synthesizers that way? Why…
Boiling water is usually associated with cooking or blanching. You will probably not hear the phrase “boiling strings” very often in everyday vocabulary. Why do guitarists and bassists boil their strings? Boiling guitar and bass strings is a method of cleaning within their windings, between their outer layer and their core. The boiling water expands…
If you’ve been a guitarist or bassist for a long time, the chances are that you’ve restrung your guitar or bass numerous times. This means that you may have a lot of string sets saved somewhere if you haven’t thrown them away. Should guitarists and bassists save their old/removed strings? Old strings can be saved…
When we play our guitar or bass, we transfer a lot of the pollutants gathered on our fingers from our own bodies, the environment, and, in some instances, the everyday goods we handle. It’s beneficial to wipe down strings after playing to prevent the accumulation of corrosive substances and filth on them, but are there…
Stainless steel has been around for well over a century and is cherished as a building material for its strength and resistance to corrosion. Since guitar strings are often made of steel, and their performance suffers as they begin to rust, it would make perfect sense that stainless steel should be a viable material in…
Electric guitars and basses are naturally mono instruments, but the music they’re used in is most often in stereo. So then, it makes sense that there would be some confusion as to whether guitar/bass amplifiers are mono or stereo. Are guitar amplifiers mono or stereo devices? Electric guitars and bass guitars are naturally mono instruments,…
