What an amazing story. I was hanging on every word of it.
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Glad you enjoyed it… Leonard Cohen, the songwriters songwriter…! 
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I wrote a reply and then my browser just died on me and deleted it, so I’ll try to repeat it. For starters, I use a Laney RB1 bass amp for practice, it works well for Saint Vitus and Pentagram but gets really muddy when I try to learn something from Metallica or Judas Priest. Despite my mates’ best intentions and pushing, I didn’t consider buying a guitar amp until I plugged my guitar into a Peavey Classic 30 and realising it sounded like a different instrument. Considering I’m a beginner, I’ve set my budget to around 250€ for a used Bugera V22 or Blackstar HT-5R (yeah, I’m in Belgrade but I can find them in Serbia, Bosnia or Croatia). I’d go for an amp instead of headphones because they make me uncomfortable while I’m learning to play.
When it comes to pedals, the situation is better, I think. In stores, I can easily find Boss, Electro-Harmonix, TC Electronic, Jim Dunlop, Ibanez, Fulltone… But I don’t think it’s difficult to find some lesser known stuff that is a bit more expensive like Friedman or Z.Vex.
The Boss DS-1 is a staple distortion unit, cant go wrong, and very popular in the heavy scene.
I have had a lot of trouble with EHX pedals, they are very intrusive to the signal path when NOT on, and so steer clear. Fulltone are brilliant, as are Earthquaker, TC Electronic…and we come on to the same problem. Fuzz Pedals - I have owned 3 of the top Fuzzes and had to sell them all, Fulltone 69, Zvex Fuzz factory and Death by Audio Apocalypse. Same again, really fck the signal path up when not on. Perfectly usable to take out the box and put away, but cant be left on a pedal board intended to do other things. The tone sag is off the scale.
My problem is without doubt my strumming hand. My Guitar tutor says it needs to (and will eventually) unlock. Its too stiff and restricting me thats why it takes me ages to nail down something relatively easy.
Once that unlocks ill start to fly as my fretting hand is excellent and changing chords isnt an issue. (my guitar tutors words)
I learnt the into and main riff to AC/DCs Night Prowler yesterday. Simple but effective.
My issue is with songs where I have (for want of a better word) bounce off a string with rhythm a few times before playing the chord like in Crazy Train by Ozzy.
My guitar tutor says that its a hard skill for a new player but its little things like this that my strumming hand is holding me back with.
So this part is giving me the issue. My tutor has given me some exercises to help with it.
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@Walshy07 you could adjust how you hold the pick, I suppose he has said that to you, but the tightness of grip on the pick and the angle you hold it all contribute to the resistance it meets when you hit the strings and so on.
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Takes time that’s for sure and exercises will help enormously. What you might find, perhaps not with crazy train, is that the single notes are also strummed but the rest of the strings are muted. A couple of Stevie Ray Vaughn tracks spring to mind in that regard.
I’ve started really working on my speed and accuracy this week. I thought I was doing ok until I tried alternative picking a simple chromatic scale pattern (pure exercise to get the fingers going). I was a mess, so it was back to basics and slow it all down. I should be a lot quicker and accurate with a couple of weeks of effort.
it’s good that you’ve got a tutor. They will give you structure, something I never had and am really suffering now as a result.
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Just learnt Penny Royal Tea by Nirvana in lunchtime.
2 days 2 songs. Happy with that.
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Will you remember them a month or two down the line?
I have a brain like a sieve with regard to this stuff and soon forget anything I’ve learned song wise. I’m hopeless
Its a great piece well done! Not that I can play it but I have had many listens.
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I’ve forgotten more than I remember so my tutor said to write the chords down in a pad. Not all of them just intro and chorus and that will jog the memory.
Wish I’d done this since April.
Only started writing them down about a month ago.
I wish I could remember some of my earlier efforts. I’ll go back to them one day and see how I’ve improved.
I’m getting a Big Muff peddle for Xmas so I can switch between clean and fuzz on songs like this with my foot rather than do clean intro, stop, adjust amp, play distortion, stop, adjust amp and play clean.
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I picked one up recently. Really cool pedal to be honest, I like it. Lots of tone options.
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Nearly bought one many times, one of the most important and iconic pedals ever made; just dont buy many other EHX pedals, they destroy your clean tone. Big Muff excels when on but sags tone when off, so you may need a clean booster ahead in the chain. TC electronic spark or Xotic EP booster seem to be favorites in the market.
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I’ll have to check that. It’s not something I’ve noticed much so far, but I haven’t really used it a huge amount. I’ve been playing unplugged mostly of late
Its a universal problem with fuzz pedal transistors; as well as the myth of ‘true bypass’; there is bypass but not true bypass, largely anyway. So because the fuzz transistor is so aggressive to a guitar signal, even an unprocessed signal passing through the pedal suffers dynamic degradation when the pedal is not on. It doesnt matter when the pedal is on because then its doing its thang, its just when it is off. Compare the unadulterated clean tone, with the clean tone through the Big Muff and you should see a reduction in harmonic delivery.
There are two types of fuzz transistor, germanium and silicon. Hard to find an original germanium now, although very expensive and they are still about, but most of that style of fuzz are now clones with no germanium, because it is a little toxic, or not ROHS compliant. A silicon based fuzz, such as the Zvex, will not degrade the clean tone as much, but vis a vis germanium etc, the latter sounds better in my opinion.
Because of this problem I abandoned Fuzz altogether and went for a power amp based distortion, which can naturally drive the guitar signal into a square wave. The difference here is a typical fuzz, generates a square wave, wheres what I use naturally brings it on. Basically if you overdrive and compress the shit out of any guitar signal, the wave signal is going to morph from a sine to a square wave. It is this aggression that is at the root of fuzz pedal tone degradation. So am using this:
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Interesting stuff.
Not sure I’d pick that degradation up to be honest. I’m only using my little one’s tiny little practice amp which doesn’t sound that great in the first place.
I could certainly understand a lot people really getting tied into knots over that kind of stuff as well. I’m trying to keep everything as simple as possible these days.
Reminded me of an interview with Nels Cline , about his huge pedal board: “It does degrade my sound. Degradation IS my sound”.
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Such a great guitarist, has been best in the world to my mind for the past 10 years Id say, since he joined Wilco. A masterclass here:
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@anon27364116 Sorry for my oversight in not realising the subject matter of the above; I do drive a Merc BTW.
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