Guitar Learning Blog

Such a great collaboration history made when the king of pop Michael Jackson meet Eddie van Halen in one stage and performed "Beat It". Yes, that song is legendary and Eddie van Halen was the guitarist who fill the guitar solo track for that song.and you know what? EVH and the frankenstrat guitar appeared on MJ concert. The frankenstrat has magic spells which brought guitar into new steps and inventions. Here's Kramer 5150 frankenstrat variant appeared on MJ's concert Eddie Van Halen and Michael Jackson perform "Beat It" well, surely it brings back some memories. i just wanna say: Happy birthday Michael Joseph Jackson   (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009)

This question is bothering me sometimes. I'm sort of a retro-music style fan and likely I'd like to have a set of vintage guitar equipments which i can bring them on stage and meet these days' standard live performances. Reason i have for this is Legendary songs were built in old times with that times' technology. Old Amps and cabs, old guitars, old pickups .(while I know nowadays the old equipment is aged by time and some of their quality are decreased) So I made a simulation with old and rusty stuff, and i only have an old guitar pickup, a 1x10" cabinet and a my tiny Xenyx 502 Behringer mixer for this purpose. here's my old cabinet And I installed the old pickup to my first guitar now it's ready for shoot out. here's the video: now, here's the thing. I use Boss GT 8's preamp modeler which i shouldn't in this shootout, but i made no equalizer setting for this, so i guess it's fair enough because i meant to...

well, this is embarrassing. i read some pickups modification and had decided to do pickups wax potting. actually it was my fault. i just didn't get the thermometer and my wax was overheat. here i share you the pics: they are destroyed Fernandes pickups. the plastic shrunk and i totally fucked up this time. they are not in reversible shapes. but one thing that interested me. Fernandes pickups destroyed after wax-potting, only G&L pickup were survived from all those destroyed pickups, there is one survivor. i have a G&L pickup which is not affected by the heat.. it is in great shape and ready. it was the same process since I've put them together in the same time and duration. from this DIY guitar stuff this is my worst ever. actually i kept the wax in moderate heat.. but the pickups plastic material just couldn't stand up against the heat. well, thanks to G&L pickup which stand by my side. it is tough enough to defend me against the shrunk pickups ...

what makes me wonder is, how all virtuosos can be hum-free? i have an old 90's Fernandes guitar which has noise-pickups. it is HSS and still i couldn't find solution possibilities for this until couple hours ago. this is what i got so far in searching the hum problem for my guitar Fernandes FR-55. it's been over a year ago and finally i got the closest possible solution on this. at very first i thought it was the circuitry. so i learn about soldering the components and find out what caused the hum. as far as i could get before the next one is 60Hz cycle hum. It's called "60 Hz cycle hum" because it's a signal that oscillates at 60 Hertz - sixty cycles a second. too complicated, why is it audible, since 60 Hz is so low in frequency range? here's why. we can hear it because it cycles, its harmonic notes is what we heard. 60, 120, 240, 480, 960, 1920, 3840, 7680, 15360, 30720,.. there we can hear them all ringing loudly. creating ground loop is the ve...

 this post is dedicated to my inspiration and my idol Robin Williams. what inspires me beside guitar are movies and actors. somehow the stage performance is related to film acting. every each of learning and guitar exercising are elements of our stage act. you need to read the scripts, practice them, and act them naturally as the story need. you will see some great virtuosos are similar to Oscar winner actors such like Robin Williams. it's a sad news came couple hours ago, Robin Williams died at age 63. He is my favorite actor and comedian. i laughed at every of his jokes and get fascinated to his acts. name them, the hilarious Jumanji to the cold-blood killer Insomnia . Robin Williams and Al Pacino "Insomnia" so there's August Rush. there are scenes those made me feel deeper fans-to-idol connection with him. he and his appearance, holding guitar, somehow made me me give him a big respect as guitarist. his play is totally hypnotized me. it's like ...

Fernandes Sustainer 101 Sustainer kit Recently I installed the 101 sustainer kit by Fernandes in my self-build guitar made from an oak coffeetable. I've made another of these guitars and I wanted this one to be as close to the original only with an added sustainer pickup and circuit. However, I had to compromise on some things: The original features Ibanez V7 and V8 pickups with their RG 5-way switching allowing the following pickup combinations: 1. Bridge humbucker 2. Bridge and neck pickup splitted 3. Bridge and neck humbuckers 4. Neck pickup wired with parallel coils 5. Neck humbucker I Mostly use setting 1, 2 and 5. To get those 3 pickup configurations I need both pickups to be splittable. The biggest problem is that everything runs through the PCB circuit board which makes it nearly impossible to trace the signal path and therefor come up with alternative switching. The instructions only feature schematics for a Les Paul type guitar with 2 humbuckers (no coil sp...

For us guitarists, there are lot of ways in introduce our music to world. this time I'm using soundcloud instead of YouTube to share what really a Marshall MS-2 sounds like. i made a playlist about this, not too deep in details since this mini pocket amp (?) is simple gear for our needs in practicing our guitar learning. but this mini amp somehow satisfies me inside my room (this marshall ms-2 rocks ! ). so here they are, some Marshall MS-2 sound samples:  Marshall MS-2 clean set 1 - volume at 9 o'clock, tone at 12 o'clock , clean mode  Marshall MS-2 clean set 1 Marshall MS-2 clean set 2 - volume at 12 o'clock, tone at 12 o'clock , clean mode Marshall MS-2 clean set 2 Marshall MS-2 clean set 3 - volume at 5 o'clock(full), tone at 12 o'clock , clean mode Marshall MS-2 clean set 3  Marshall MS-2 OD set 1 - volume at 9 o'clock, tone at 12 o'clock , OD mode Marshall MS-2 OD set 1 Marshall MS-2 OD set 2 - vo...

yeah, i should put more details on the blog post title but actually i want to show you how easy assembling guitar can be. what i got here was a separated squier telecaster neck and pre-wired telecaster body. the only thing you need here is one screwdriver and you can put them into one piece of beautiful telecaster. Assembling an Electric Guitar - neck and body just put them together and,  put the plate and the screw, then tighten them X way. once it is done, put the strings now, the last thing you need to do is take the last picture of your work and you can admire it while you're playing it okay... what so special about this? nothing, yes, NOTHING all i want to say is, guitars can be so simple without decreasing our respects to this holy grail. and wonderful thing about telecaster is. unlike other set-neck guitars, telecaster can be so great since you can get its parts separately, highly customized as your wishes in such an easy way... this guitar ...

what i got for you in June is the sexy guitarist Mr. Steve Vai. I'm not the biggest fan of him, but his work put him between my notable guitarists top list with all my respect. born in June 6 1960, Steven Siro Vai began his guitar learning at the age of 13 and took guitar lesson from Joe Satriani in 1974. he met some notable virtuosos and musicians where those moments were his vital parts in his own great work and stylish guitar playing.  "I enjoy challenging myself to come up with new ideas that I believe are unique." - steve vai Vai started his recording career in 1980 playing with Frank Zappa and has since recorded and toured with Alcatrazz, Whitesnake, David Lee Roth and Public Image Ltd. Since 1983 Vai also released his own studio albums. His discography consists of eight studio albums, two EP's, two special albums, eight live albums, twelve soundtracks, twenty compilation albums and seven videos. Vai has been awarded three Grammy Awards and forty other a...

Mr. V yes, first you gotta let me using that title, then I'll show you some dreams. who's the first? yes, Gibson is the first brand which launched the flying V guitar. it was in 1958, The  flying V guitar designs were meant to a futuristic image of Gibson brand. Lonnie Mack and Albert King were considered the first user of this guitar model. Dave Davies and Jimi Hendrix started using it in the mid-late 1960s. what is the first next thing happened? of course, the variants. Flying V2, Reverse Flying V, V Bass are the next generations of Gibson flying V guitars. who's got the thrill? the metal heads. this guitar model has a strong and masculine look, so impressive and it becomes one of first choice for metal genre. Dean V with V shaped Dean Headstock and V shaped tailpiece, KKV (Kerry King V), also known as the Speed V, designed by kerry king for B.C. Rich guitars, Jackson King V, and Randy Rhoads has his Jackson Randy Rhoads series. so, do you wa...

what i got lately is the Roland GR 55 guitar synthesizer, the most popular guitar stuff on YouTube right now i guess. it has been almost 2 years i dreamed  about playing this guitar synthesizer, until now. It's like (one of) my dreams come true. i always imagine a wide range of guitar playing in  live performances, with this stuff, I'll manage somehow. connected via Roland GK-3 synth guitar pickup, the GR 55 reaches the whole new vision in guitar playing. you can make synth layers without distracting the originality of your guitar characteristics. i made few user presets and it works well with my playing. last night was the first tryout for my Roland GR 55 combined with Boss GT 8 and i love the results. Roland GR 55 combined with Boss GT 8 actually at some levels, i love how my Boss GT 8 sounds and there times when we all feel that the real electric guitar sounds should take control. but there are sometimes when the guitar sound is not needed, still you want to take p...

That's what I said when I was younger, when some (few) girls asked about love to me, or to the other guitar boys, i guess. Fewer girls loved to hear what i was saying, yes, but none of them wanted me to write down those words on love letters. if they did, they would have known that U2 is involved with everyone's music. you can love me already, but i love U2 first. (haha, what some wonderful moments at that time..) U2, is the best two letters in music. The Edge is one of most inspirational guitar player on my list, and for me, Bono is still carrying the most soulful vocalist title until now. can't explain more than this since U2 are already damn famous. what a great band. so, when i have to choose one from their songs, which is actually difficult i think since their songs are great, definitely I'll choose " stuck in the moment that you can't get out of ". it's a long-titled song, but i think soon everyone will say it fluently. why? it's a son...

this was my promise a year ago and this time, i will fulfill it. yes, uploading videos to YouTube. i have to admit, that saving money for this blog purposes isn't easy. but whatever. i just bought a camcorder yesterday and i think it is a great camcorder. what do you say if i bought a samson's ZOOM Q3HD for this? haha. yes, as expected, this camcorder represents the fulfillment of musicians' needs. it has a great audio recorder and the video format is in HD. I've read about it and it doesn't support capture still images and we can't use it as external camera device for laptops, still all you need is a bright studio to get your best image captured by it while you need minimum enhancement for audio since this camcorder are meant for best audio recording. my first tryout stuff for my first video is a Yamaha APX 500 II acoustic electric guitar . and i like the result. the audio is astonishing, while unfortunately i couldn't get the best visual shot becaus...

Have you ever consider using DI box for your live performances, or your recordings? what is EXACTLY a DI Box anyway? does it really a tool for better sound output? all these questions are being asked around here and there, but actually, for me, i can't hear the differences,at least, not with passive DI box. okay, so what's the point in this post anyway? well, i tried to read and summarized all sources i can get which brought me to some conclusions. yes... (one of stupid things I've done is writing something i don't actually know, but here it is)  DI box is important it regains the lost signal of your guitar sound. it converts high-impedance , line level, unbalanced output guitar signal to a low-impedance microphone level balanced input to mixers. the low impedance allows the signal to be sent over long cable runs with significantly less signal loss. .... the lower impedance (around 600 ohms is normal) allows an insignificant load to the input of a mixing con...

Happy New Year 2014! yes, i congratulate all of guitarists who still fight for their music until today, i hope all of you stand still with me. Well, this post will be the continuation for my post: Fun in basic, Major Chords ,  and now is about the minor chords on guitar. FYI: these minor chords follow the natural minor scales, so as you can see the A natural minor scale notes are A(1) - B(2) - C( ♭ 3) - D(4) - E(5) - F( ♭ 6) - G( ♭ 7) - A(higher octave) and its interval is w-h-w-w-h-w (w = wholenote, h = halfnote) Basically Minor chords consist the root, the flat-third and the fifth note. if you have an A minor chord, that would be A as the first note (root),  C as the flat-third note( ♭ 3rd), and E as the fifth note. A  (root),  C( ♭ 3rd), and E (5th)  so, what you have to do next to get B minor chords is write down the B natural minor scale which is B(1) - C#(2) - D( ♭ 3) - E(4) - F#(5) - G( ♭ 6) - A( ♭ 7) - B, see the bold font, and you'll get ...