ChasingGuitars

Just Another Site for Guitar Lovers

From early carved archtops to laminated archtops to solid body guitar was mostly an evolution in the quest for more volume. See the History of the Solid Body Electric Guitar.

The archtop design was meant to increase the power and quality of tone an instrument was capable of in the days of acoustic instruments. It is effective in increasing volume and projection. Archtops were widely adopted before amplification was available.

The early acoustic archtop guitar was loud enough for small spaces and smaller performances. Once the pickup and amplifier were available many guitar makers like Gibson just attached pickups to the existing archtops. As guitars were electrified and were played at higher volumes, feedback became a problem that needed to be solved. Eventually the solid body guitar build from a hunk of wood routed for pickups solved this feedback issue. No more danger of howling when the volume was raised and the guitar was close to an amplifier. In the case of archtops or hollow body guitars that does not tell the entire story.

Ted Nugent with Gibson Byrdland

Continue reading…

Intonation is what keeps your guitar in tune when fretting notes. Easy with any tuner, be it clip on, pedal or good ears to get your guitar’s open strings set to standard tuning. But as you fret up the neck you want your guitar to stay as close to in tune as possible. If your guitar sounds out of tune when playing some chords or when playing fretted notes up at the higher frets your guitar’s intonation needs setting. Depending on what type of bridge, strings your guitar has plays a big factor in this setting.

When checking intonation and playing your guitar “in-tune” it is important that you fret notes or chords evenly and not use too much pressure. Especially if your guitar has high jumbo frets it is easy to press down too hard and actually stretch the strings out of tune. One reason why your touch is so important in your playing. You strive to fret notes by pressing down the string to the fret, but not push the string down further to the fretboard bending the note out of tune. Be careful with your fretting hand so you don’t inadvertently pull one or more strings out of tune by applying uneven pressure. If you press too hard you can make any chord or note play out of tune. Continue reading…

Back in the good old days of the late 1990s and early 2000, Danelectro was on a wild car ride with their crazy wah-style pedals. Note these are not actually all wah pedals. They certainly look interesting, light up and are great just sitting on a shelf in your guitar room. However they do sound pretty good in a weird and wild sort of way as well. Shaped like an old Cadillac and come in some nice colors and patterns. Continue reading…

What is your guitar’s scale and why does it matter? I will attempt to answer these questions and more.

I recently was chatting with a friend that has been playing the guitar for a few decades. I mentioned that Fender guitars generally have a longer scale than Gibson guitars and was explaining how this contributed to the way the guitar played and sounded. My friend was quite surprised that some guitars EVEN had different scale lengths. He could not fathom how it would affect anything, especially sound.

I have read on guitar forums and watched some YouTube videos claiming scale length, an electric guitar’s design and materials used to build the instrument do not matter… Only the pickups mattered! Even some very intelligent and knowledgable players actually believe this. Some acknowledge that it matters with acoustic guitars, but claim the pickups on an electric guitar is all you needed to be concerned about. The Internet has a way of perpetuating information that is sometimes not all together correct. I am here to tell you, when it comes to the way a guitar plays and especially the way it sounds…. EVERYTHING MATTERS!
Continue reading…

BUZZ, BUZZ, BUZZ, BUZZ. BUZZ, BUZZ…..

Jerry Jones Electric Sitars are unusual instruments and bit rare. Many guitarists have never seen an electric sitar in the flesh. Some may not even know it existed.

Jerry Jones built quality guitars in Nashville, Tennessee since the 1980s. After some Danelectro guitars came in for repair, Jerry started thinking that the Danelectro guitar was what he would build for himself. He liked the unpretentious simplicity of the Nathan Daniel’s Danelectro instruments. Early Danelectro guitars were made in New Jersey. From that point, Jerry began building high quality reproductions of the original Danelectro designs. In 1991, Jerry Jones even visited the Nathan Daniel founder of Danelectro, who was living in Hawaii building sail boats at the time. As of April 2011, Jerry Jones retired and closed down his Nashville factory. The Jerry Jones instruments are a step above the Danelectro instruments in quality and are have now become quite collectable.
Continue reading…

I recently completed a project I called the Gretschcaster and the main feature for this build was a Bigsby on a Telecaster. I wanted to make this build the best I can. Some of these upgrades can work for ALL Bigsby units and you may want to consider doing these.

I purchased a genuine USA made Bigsby B5 kit. Then, I headed to Callaham Guitar Parts for some nice Bigsby upgrades. Callaham has long made high quality parts and I have used them for many builds. Here is what I picked up.
Continue reading…

Funky Mama 0:05
Elvis Medley: Mystery Train/My Baby Left Me/That’s All Right Mama 6:24
Red Label 12:16
Honky-Tonkin’ Country Girl 18:00 (beer bottle slide 22:22 )

Danny Gatton – lead guitar
Billy Windsor – rhythm guitar, vocals
John Previti – bass
Bill Holloman – keyboard, sax, trumpet, vocals
Shannon Ford – drums

Enjoy!