Here’s a little riff my guitar teacher taught me to help with playing bar chords. It’s pretty simple and sounds pretty cool. Just pick a strumming pattern you like.
G7 | C7 | G7 | G7
C7 | C7 | G7 | G7
D7 | C7 | G7 | G7
D7 | C7 | G7 | G7
Since I’ve been posting about buying my guitars lately I might as well round it out with what has been my favorite guitar to date (although the Les Paul I bought last weekend is nipping at its heals for that title)
I wasn’t planning on buying a new guitar (I think all my guitar purchasing stories start that way). At the time I already had two guitars (a Gretsch 5120 and Rickenbacker 330) and as I’ve said before, one guitar is more than enough for a beginner, let a lone two… let alone three (and let alone four now)!
But, I love guitars and had recently heard about Rockers Guitar in San Francisco so I thought I’d check them out. It turns out they were having a really good sale because they are trying to get rid of all their inventory so they can focus on making guitars rather than selling other manufacturer’s guitars.
The list of guitars I want is endless and their stock seemed to be endless as well. But, the guitar I fell in love with was a Gibson ES-175SP.
When I was looking for an amplifier I knew my price range topped out at $600 and I knew I wanted a tube amp. After looking around a bit I narrowed my choice down to the Vox AC15CC and the Fender Blues Junior amps.
I needed to hear the amps, so I headed to a local Guitar Center to give them a listen.Since I’m a beginner I didn’t feel like I could really get a good idea of what the amps could do since I have a limited range of things I can play (that and I’d be too embarrassed to crank up the volume to get a good listen). So I asked one of the employees to play on the amps (and believe me, this guy could play. I had him playing Blues, Rockabilly and Jazz). As he played we tried out the spectrum of settings on each of the amps. I had him play a Strat and a Les Paul to get different sounding guitars in the mix as well.
Well, I wasn’t really expecting to add a new guitar to my collection today. I posted the other day I was looking at Les Pauls and Telecasters but I didn’t really plan on getting a new guitar any time soon. But, today was the Four Amigos Guitar Show in San Rafael and I found a guitar and deal I just couldn’t pass up.
I guess it was love at first sight when I saw the 2009 Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul 1957 R7 Korina Goldtop Reissue. This is a limited edition run that is made from Korina wood rather than the normal mahogany. I honestly always expected to buy a sunburst Les Paul if I was ever going to get one.
And they had plenty of nice examples at the guitar show. But, when I saw the Goldtop it was all over.
Gibson ’57 Les Paul Korina Goldtop Reissue Electric Guitar Features:
I dropped by Rocker’s Guitars here in San Francisco today. I’ve been wanting a solid body guitar since my guitars are hollow or semi-hollow. The two I’m thinking about are a Gibson Les Paul and Fender Telecaster. Very different guitars to say the least. I liked them both for different reasons.
The two specific models I was looking at were the Fender Custom Shop Custom Classic Telecaster and the Gibson Les Paul Standard 50’s Neck.
The Les Paul was obviously louder and had a thicker sound and was able to push the amp to the point of distortion.The Telecaster was brighter and had a cleaner less muddy sound but couldn’t get any distortion out of the amp. For the overall feel, I preferred the Fender Telecaster. The neck felt better to me, but that could be because the Les Paul has the thicker 50’s neck. As for the looks, I’ve always loved the sunburst Les Paul.
