BLOct.ToWeb

The Column
By Chuck Van Riper
Guitar Talk
started playing guitar, amongst other things, in 1966,
I back in the Mesozoic Era. Guitar life back then was
pretty simple. You had your Telecaster/Stratocaster type
guitars, Les Paul type guitars, and semi-hollow 335 type
guitars, and a myriad of acoustic styles.. You get your
light, medium, or heavy strings. The biggest thing in
guitar cables were the curly ones, like the cable on your
phone. You know, the one attached to the wall. They were
awful. If you put them in a gig bag or in your guitar case,
they would macrame themselves into a contorted ball
from hell, and the more you tried to untangle it, the more
knotted it would become. So you end up just getting another
one. Pretty soon you have a 5 foot ball of wires that
will never be straightened out. Now you can get cable ties
of varying styles for your straight chords to keep them
straightened out. If you’re a beginning guitarist, I strongly
suggest investing in these first to save yourself from guitar
chord hell. Now you can get “braided” cables with right
angle or straight jacks, or one side straight and one side
angled, with metal ends or wrapped in rubber ends, stereo
or mono. Personally, I’ve used those skinny, little, black
chords that they used to give away with guitars for years.
No problem. If they only made them longer than 4 feet.
As I’ve mentioned, you pretty much had your choice of
light, medium, or heavy strings, until they came out with
super slinky! When you’re 11 and just learning guitar, it
seemed like a good idea. Skinny strings must be easier to
play. Well that fallacy fell apart very quickly when I found
out that not only did they slice your fingers, but they went
out of tune as soon as you pressed them down. On acoustic,
heavier sounded better but hurt like hell to play. My
first acoustic was an old Stella with really high action. It
hurt to play anything above the 3rd fret. My first electric
was a “Teisco del Ray” that I bought at Sears for about
$28. My brother’s first electric was a guitar that we won
playing the wheels down on the boardwalk in Point Pleasant,
NJ. Boy did we love that guitar! Three pickups and
everything! Now you can spend relatively little money
and get very nice guitars that play very easily. I have a
Chinese copy of a Gibson that I paid $125 for. It’s still one
of my favorites. Of course, with electric guitars, it depends
on the amplifier.
18 - Brevard Live October 2021