Mark Knopfler talks about a Fender Stratocaster

There can’t be many people who’ve not fantasised about becoming a guitar hero. Standing on stage, head down, legs apart, chopping out a blistering guitar solo so loud that it makes peoples ears bleed. And there are a number of truly great electric guitars that have stood the test of time.

One of the most famous electric guitars is the Fender Stratocaster. Originally designed way back in 1954 the Fender Strat was the instrument favoured by the late, great Jimi Hendrix. This is also the guitar selected by Pete Townsend of the Who and, of course, Eric Clapton. The Fender Strat is as popular today as it ever was which is understandable as this guitar is truly a design classic.

Another well known and popular electric guitar from Fender is, of course, the Telecaster. This beautifully simple instrument was first introduced as the Broadcaster in late 1949 and has been in continuous production ever since. There are and have been many well known and talented guitarists who like to play Fender Telecasters. Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones is a great lover of Telecasters, generally tuned to an open G chord for that classic Rolling Stones sound.

If we are talking about classic guitars we must of course mention the fantastic Gibson Les Paul. This is another iconic electric guitar that was first produced back in the 1950s and has been in production ever since. Jimmy Page, of Led Zeppelin and Yardbirds fame, is just one guitarist who loves the Gibson Les Paul. The sound of this great instrument was heard everywhere in the song ‘Alright Now’ by the band Free, played by the late Paul Kossoff and a modern day player of this great guitar is Slash of Guns’n'Roses fame.

Since I’ve given a mention to two Fenders its only fair that I should talk about two great Gibsons. I could have chosen the fantastic ES335, a favourite with many great guitarists, including BB King but instead I have chosen the exceptional Gibson SG. This distinctive looking solid body electric guitar was introduced in the early 1960s to compete with the popular Fender Strat. This is the guitar used by Angus Young of Australian rock band ACDC for all of their well known rock anthems. This is also the guitar used by the great Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath.

There are just so many great guitars but these four are, without doubt, at the top of the list of great electric guitars of our age.

How to Play Guitar for Beginners

The internet is a truly magnificent and wonderful learning resource. Young people today don’t all appreciate how lucky they are to have the worlds knowledge and skills at their fingertips via the internet.

I started playing over thirty years ago with Bert Weedon’s famous ‘Play in a Day’ book, back in the 1970s. In those days I couldn’t afford guitar lessons so I would watch guitarists very closely at every opportunity.

Modern technology has revolutionised the way that people learn to play the guitar. There are so many excellent guitar tuition DVDs that can be played over and over again, unlike a face to face guitar lesson. And the internet is the most ideal way to distribute and deliver some fantastic guitar tutorials.

There are an abundance of guitar teaching websites but my favourite place for guitar tutorials is Youtube. You can find instructional videos on everything from choosing guitars to making your own electric guitar. There are plenty of videos that will help those who are just starting out with the guitar and lots more that are ideal for people like me, who’ve been playing for a while but want to learn more techniques and tunes.

Learning some new techniques, tunes and licks has become my favourite hobby. If the weather is bad then you will generally find me learning a new tune or two from Youtube. I think that my guitar playing skills have improved more in the past five years, thanks to Youtube, than it did in the prior twenty years.

Another useful feature is that the system is interactive. If I find a video of someone playing a piece that I like I can easily make it one of my favourites and maybe leave a comment for the performer to see. Also, I like to ask the odd question and invariably the person who created the video will respond with an answer. Its a bit like having any number of great guitarists as personal guitar playing consultants.

These days I can’t help but feel a little jealous of the young people who are just starting to play guitar. I like to think that if I had been born at a time when the internet was available, providing this wealth of incredibly valuable instruction and guidance, who knows, I might have become the next Jimi Hendrix or Stevie Ray Vaughan.

If you’ve decided that you want to take up the guitar, but prefer to live in the engine room of any band by playing the bass, then you are obviously a lover of rhythm, rumble, and live musical atmosphere. The bass guitar, together with the drums, is the rhythm section of any band and so it will be important to develop a good sense of timing and beat.  Choosing the correct instrument is important, as is dedication to practicing in order to become an accomplished bassist.

Iconic bass guitars like the Fender Precision not only drove many a jazz, rock and surf band but became as recognisable as the screaming lead instruments.  Unlike lead guitars, where most novices are advised to start out with an acoustic, prospective bass players will probably go straight to a four sting electric bass guitar. Some great brands for starter deals include Washburn, Squier and Epiphone. These companies produce guitars that look good and play great for the price. Fretless, acoustic and five-string basses each have their own type of sounds and can be very powerful and sonorous, but they are very hard to learn compared with four string electric basses. Most tutorial books or CDs for beginners are written for the four-string fretted bass.

You can buy a second hand bass guitar.Most used equipment drops in price over the years and can offer better quality and sound for the same price as a new bass.Many other used instruments have poor sound quality and setup with unreasonably high action, or simply do not hold tune correctly.Always check a second hand instrument for damage and play it (or have someone else play it) before buying it.   The time and effort you would have to put into carefully selecting a used bass guitar is substantial, and it’s probably safer to look at some of the quite reasonably priced electric guitars and bass starter packages from well known brand names.

The Behringer bass guitar pack for example includes the guitar and a dedicated bass guitar amplifier, gig bag, cable, an adjustable strap and picks. The Ibanez GSR190J 4-String Bass Guitar Pack also includes a 10 watt amplifier and accessories at a very affordable price.  Or you could go straight to Squier Precision bass guitars.  They are the worlds best-selling bass because of their excellent value. They feel good, sound good and fit the needs of any starting-out bass player on a budget.

Whichever purchase route you take, always try before you buy.Most guitar shops will let you plug in and play around with any instrument so you can check how it sounds, looks, and feels in your hands. Do not buy something used without playing it first unless it comes from a reputable source you trust and has some sort of return policy. There are very reputable and well established Internet-based music stores that can generally offer better deals than high street retail but be very cautious about buying instruments on Internet sites such as eBay.Bring someone along who is an experienced bassist and let them play the instruments you are considering buying.

The replica or tribute phenomena in music can be taken either way.Some tribute bands are manned by decent musicians, in a few cases probably better than the originals they mimic.  That’s almost certainly true with the dozens of Status Quo tribute acts out there!Replica guitars are also a burgeoning music industry business.  Some tribute acts take things to the extreme of insisting on using their hero’s original instruments if they’re still available, or getting replicas if they’re not.

Guitars are more than just a musical instrument.They are also cultural symbols, fashion statements and badges of personality.Replica guitars have a mixed reputation and many people don’t want to see further than the logo stamped on the headstock.  Cheap Chinese copies have flooded the market and their quality is certainly dubious.  However, very high quality replicas of vintage guitars do exist. Fender is a favourite target for these lovingly created copies, based on the 1951 Telecaster (originally called the Broadcaster) and the 1954 Fender Stratocaster.
In its prime, the Strat had a contour body of swamp ash, one piece maple neck and three pickups.  In 1960 Fender bodies changed to alder as standard and the slab board necks were manufactured up until mid 1962 when a curved board was offered. In 1964 the curved board was replaced with a veneer when the CBS Corporation purchased the company leading to a well documented decline in quality. So replica Fender guitars made today may actually be better quality than post 1964 originals!

The Tanglewood RVB-2  60s Beatles style violin bass is another good example of just how good replicas can be. Based on Hofner’s 500/1 ‘Beatle Bass’, The RVB-2 recreates a vintage semi-hollow tone ideal for ’60s style pop/ rock, blues and jazz, without breaking the bank! It has the same vintage features as the Hofner: rosewood fingerboard with pearloid dot inlays, maple neck, floating wooden bridge and pearloid pick guard. Of course, the pickups aren’t the Hofner stamped ‘Staple’ humbucking pickups, but the two toaster appearance mini-humbucker pickups work just as well in achieving that Beatles un-EQ’d classic pop sound.  So don’t dismiss electric guitars just because they are replicas.Just like the tribute bands, sometimes these guitars can be as good as, if not better than, the original.

What’s a fair price for a good electric guitar?You’ll get a decent Fender Telecaster for anything from £550 to around £1,000 and you might have to fork out between £3,500 to £5,000 for a Gibson Les Paul.Would you believe £25,000?Yup, twenty-five thousand pounds.That’s the asking price on what is a beautiful instrument from the hands of Paul Reed Smith – the PRS Paul’s 28.Paul Reed Smith is hand making just 28 guitars, of which 20 are for the US and only eight will be available for the rest of the world.  The only guitar in the UK is available through a company called Digital Village.

PRS electric guitars are the creation of the eponymous Paul Reed Smith, who made his first guitar at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and he carried on building guitars after he finished college.He made them one at a time, one every month.  Smith would often bring his guitars backstage at concerts, and eventually got his break when Derek St. Holmes, of the Ted Nugent Band, agreed to try out the second guitar Smith had ever made. Smith then contacted Ted McCarty, former president of Gibson and creator of the Explorer, ES-335 and Flying V guitars, who became his business advisor.  The result of their collaboration is reflected in the current line up of PRS guitars, which includes electric guitars utilising a vast range of exotic materials such as elaborately figured tone woods and intricate shells for inlays.

The PRS Paul’s 28 Electric Guitar is the is first guitar for almost a decade that has been hand made by Paul Reed Smith himself, hence the price tag of £25,000.It’s got one of the curliest tops PRS have ever made and a rare tiger -striped mahogany back that was hand-selected from an entire warehouse of wood.An extremely rare Pernumbuca Neck combines with an exotic black Rosewood Fretboard, a dark Mexican Rosewood Headstock veneer, and rippled Green Abalone, Paua Heart, and Mammoth Ivory “Celtic Cross” inlays.

Paul Reed Smith spent several years refining all of the parts and processes that went into this instrument:  the wood drying methods, the colour “Burnt Gold” (PRS has been working on this stain method for the last two years), the very special paper-thin nitrocellulose finish, the pickups (PRS proprietary 1957/2008 pickups made from PRS’s rare magnet and wire supplies), the nut, the tuning pegs, the frets, the glues…everything.  Smith even spent two years researching the materials for the case. Paul Reed Smith personally supervised the work picking out all the woods, re-carving the body to original specs, carving the neck by hand, stained it, played and adjusted it until it was perfect.  Run of the mill (if you can use that phrase) guitars from PRS usually range from £300 – £6,000

Metal has a huge string of guitar players who completely destroy and own the stage as though nothing else mattered. Lets talk about three guitarists who influenced the sound of heavy metal, and how they still impact on the genre even today.

• Randy Rhoads. Randy Rhoads was remembered more for his work with ex Black Sabbath singer Ozzy Osbourne rather than the LA band Quiet Riot. Rhoads helped write such classic Ozzy songs as ‘Crazy train’ and ‘Dee’. Randy’s classical influence and background can be seen on the first two solo Ozzy albums which he played on. 1979’s ‘Blizzard of Oz’ album and 1981’s ‘diary of a madmen’. Ozzy believed Randy would’ve gone on to leave the band and further study classical music, which seemed to be the direction he was going in. The specialist Jackson guitars made for Rhoads are a popular choice amongst guitarists today. Rhoads lost his life in a plane crash in 1982 and guitar playing and character has been paid tribute to numerous times throughout the years.
• Chuck Schulidner. ‘Death’s main axeman, vocalist and head songwriter. Hailed as the father of the death metal subgenre, a term he himself wasnt comfortable with, Chuck was a huge influence on many guitar players and extreme metal. ‘Scream bloody gore’, the first album from Death, was the template for the genre known as death metal, but with each album the style and directions changed. Death released four more albums before Schuldiner folded the band in 1999 to play guitar in a new band ‘control denied’, which released the one album ‘the fragile art of exsistance’. Chuck Schulidner died after a long battle with cancer in 2001, which saw the metal community unite many a time to try and raise funds for his surgery.
• Darrell Lance Abbott -’Dimebag’. Guitarist of the infamous Pantera later of Damageplan and also played guitar on the country band rebel meets rebel. Pantea began as a ‘glam metal’ band in Texas in 1981, but thier sound changed dramatically and 1989s ‘Cowboys from hell’ album saw them becoming heavier, with a groove in their sound. Thier next album 1992’s ‘Vulgar display of power’ was the band breakthrough album, featuring the songs ‘this love’,'walk’, and ‘a new level’. Next album ‘Far beyond driven’ jumped to the top of the US charts on its release, proving at the time that metal was still ‘alive’. Pantera brought out 2 more albums before a breakdown in communication split the band into two camps, never reconsiling before the guitarists death. While playing onstage with Damageplan in Dec 2004, Dimebag was shot and died instantly. His sound is still seen in alot of bands today- ‘Lamb of god’ are an example of this.

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