Gear Highlight: Epiphone Is Giving Away a Slash Appetite Les Paul Standard

Epiphone is giving away a Limited Edition Slash Appetite Les Paul Standard. Click Here to register by October 31st for your chance to win

Intermediate Players: Getting Those Fast Runs

Are you having difficulty with fast runs in the solo or transition of a song? An easy way to learn how to do those runs is to learn scales. Quickly, you'll realize that all runs are done in scales, and most runs are in some form of the A or C major scales. So if you learn the scales, you'll get an idea of how to create your own runs. From there, try playing your own runs at the speed of the run you wish to play. Once you've got that down, give the song a try again and you'll see that the run in the solo or transition just got a lot easier.

Beginner Advice: What's the difference between all the companies?

A very common mistake beginners make is buying a guitar or starter pack that does not suit their interests. A perfect example of this is someone who listens to alternative rock and buys a B.C. Rich guitar just because it looks cool. The guitarist will later hate the guitar because it sounds terrible for alternative rock, and, in most cases, they will lose their drive to continue playing. An easy way to avoid this situation is to research what companies are suited to the style of music you wish to play.

Here is a list of popular companies and what music styles their starter packs work best for :
*Note* This does not apply to guitars outside of starter packs

Epiphone by Gibson - Rock, Alternative, Blues
Squier by Fender     - Rock, Alternative, Punk
Ibanez                     - Rock, Blues, Metal
B.C. Rich                - Metal, Thrash, Death
Dean                       - Metal, Thrash, Rock
LTD                        - Metal, Thrash, Death
Jackson                   - Rock, Metal, Thrash
Schecter                  - Rock, Metal, Blues

Now when buying a guitar that won't be coming in a starter pack, it's best to look at reviews and research what style of music it suits best. Just because the starter packs by a company work best for rock and blues does not mean the $600 guitar that you want by the same company is made for rock and blues. When researching it, you can end up finding out that the guitar you want is made for metal, which may or may not be the genre of music you wish to play. Guitar manufacturers make sure that there are specialized guitars for each genre of music, which means no company only makes guitars for metal or rock or whatever you can think of.

Random Fact: The Guitar Has Been Around Longer Than Most Other Instruments

• The ancestors of the modern guitar can be traced back to the stringed instruments played across Central Asia and India, in ancient times.
• The oldest iconographic representation of the guitar is a 3,000 year old carving of a Hittite or ancient Anatolian bard playing the instrument.
• The modern guitar is believed to have descended from the cithara brought to Hispania by the Romans, in 40 AD.
• The various references to the guitar in ancient times included guitarra, gitarre, guitare, qitara, cithara, kithara and sihtar.
• Traditionally, guitars were constructed with combinations of various woods. The strings were made of animal gut.
• The musical instrument has a mention in records maintained by the Moors, Viking incursions and in traditional Norse carvings.
• Dimension standards of the modern guitar were established by Antonio Torres Jurado, between 1817 and 1892.

Gear Highlight: Dean Dime Slimebolt Razorback

The Dean Dime Slimebolt Razorback is an awesome guitar with many cools specs and a lot of tone. This guitar features the sweet Razorback shape designed by Dimebag Darrel himself, Dime's signature pickups by Seymour Duncan and Dean, an Original Floyd Rose (a first in the Dime line of guitars by Dean. All other Dime's use licensed Floyd Roses), set neck, Grover tuners, V inlays with a Razor at the twelfth fret, and the sweet lightning graphics Dime is known for having, but in green.

This guitar is an amazing collector's item for any Dime/Pantera fan. The guitar is also a powerhouse of tone, being made of mahogany and having Dime's signature sound. Riffs come out nice and heavy and solos are clean and clear. The neck is also made thinner compared to all other Dime signatures to allow for faster playing. The Original Floyd is a lot smoother feeling compared to the licensed Floyds. The Grovers tuners make tuning the guitar faster and help to keep the tuning in place better than most other tuners. Overall, this is a great guitar and much better than its sister guitars.

The average price on this guitar is $1099.00 plus tack.

Intermediate Players: What's the difference between Neck-Thru and Set Neck?

Neck-Thru Vs. Set Neck seems to be a confusing subject for players. What is the difference between the two?

Looks
Visually, neck-thrus and set necks look exactly the same, but the they are made differently. A neck-thru is a guitar where the neck is part of the body. When being built, the neck is made longer and the body is made in two pieces. The three pieces are cured together with neck being at the middle. A set neck, however, is a normal neck, with a heel shaped to feel and look like a neck-thru, that is glued to the body and then painted over.

Tone and Sound
Neck-thrus have more sustain and allow notes to be held longer. Also, the tone is a lot better in neck-thrus due to the wood-on-wood contact, which is sacrificed in set necks. Interestingly enough, bolt-on guitars have better tone than set necks because they also have wood-on-wood contact between the neck and body. Set necks have high quality glue that gets in the way of that wood-on-wood contact, and that causes a lot of sustain and tone to be lost.

Feel
Both neck-thrus and set necks have an amazing reach when it comes to the high frets compared to bolt-ons. The difference here between the two is that you can feel that the neck-thru is one piece. Neck-thrus have a very solid feel to them, while set necks feel like they can break.

What's the positive to a set neck then?
Set necks offer the playability of neck-thrus at a much more affordable rate. Neck-thrus get quite expensive, while set necks can be found for real cheap. The reason, set necks are easier and cheaper  to build than neck-thrus. Also, set necks are easier to fix if the neck breaks. This is cause' of how the neck designs are made. Because neck-thrus are cured together, replacing the neck could mean getting a brand new guitar, while on a set neck, the neck can be replaced by the manufacturer because the body and neck are not one piece.

If you have any questions regarding neck-thrus and set-necks, please leave a comment :)

*Fun Fact* Very few companies ever make neck-thrus. Fender, makes one model that is neck-thru and it's very rare, and every guitar made by Gibson is a set neck.

Beginner Advice: Buying Your First Guitar

Buying your very first guitar can be a very exciting thing. However, it can also be quite scary and annoying if you don't know anything about guitars. If you don't get the right guitar the first time, you can get quite annoyed later about it, and seeing the many different options to choose from can get quite overwhelming.

What should you do?

Become a little educated about guitars. Learn the difference between guitar companies and what genre of music they specialize in. Look at price differences and what you can afford. Look at reviews about how reliable certain guitars are or how intermediate guitarists feel about those specific guitars. Once you know what you want, go off to your local shop and get it.

*quick tip* Don't buy a certain guitar just because your favorite artist uses that company or model, look around a bit and see if you can find something that'll suit you. Remember, that artist uses an expensive guitar customized to what he/she prefers and they may have many effects to tweak the guitar even more. So, getting a similar guitar won't get you anywhere near the same sound as them.