Electric Guitar – Page 2 – Lessons from a Stone

The Yin and Yang of Guitar Forums

Collings AT-1 Dark Burst, Courtesy of Eddie’s Guitars

I was about to undergo my fourth back surgery and knew I was going to be laid-up for a couple of months, so I was setting myself up with things to stay busy until I’d recovered enough to re-engage with my usual activities. I’d wondered about these online guitar platforms such as the Unofficial Martin Guitar Forum (UMGF), Acoustic Guitar Forum (AGF), TDPRI (Fender Telecaster discussion group), and several others, so I did a little homework and became a member of the “Big Three” and signed on to a few smaller communities just for good measure. As you’d envision, they are essentially online chatrooms formed in the mid-to-late 2000’s, at the beginning of the beginning of the social media craze. As opposed to sites like Facebook and Myspace at the time, these were guitar-centric organizations intended for the express purpose of providing a space for guitarists to commune and post questions and answers about guitars. UMGF and AGF are for acoustic guitar players and TDPRI is primarily for electric guitarists who mostly play either a Fender Telecaster or Stratocaster. There are sites that are geared toward most of the major manufacturers, though, for a number of reasons the manufacturers themselves do not own the sites and seldom contribute. The owners of such sites are typically guitar afficionados who take it upon themselves to invest in and build platforms that function as a place where guitar players can exchange information, ask the forum questions, or provide the forum with answers or solutions to problems. Essentially, to have passionate, open discussions on their faorite topic. There is also a place on each site to buy and sell guitars and related gear, talk specifically about vintage guitars, review various makes and models, post sound-clips and favorite guitar videos, and discuss famous players and their styles and techniques. There is typically a cornucopia of information as guitarists help each other make decisions on what guitars to buy and what is the best available technology in related gear.

The year was 2019 and these forums had already been around for ten or more years before I joined at a time which proved to be the beginning of the end. People had begun to jump ship and spend their time on more socially driven social media forums such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The guitar forums were in a constant state of flux and people inexplicably began leaving in droves, defaulting to the most strident members, people who tended to be older and less inclined to leave the sanctity of their beloved forums or the warm and comforable nooks in there homes where they sit, tending to these sites at all hours of the day and night. I stuck with it for several years as it was still a place where I could contribute knowledge both as a long-time player and gear fanatic. I’d become an expert on “boutique” guitar manufacturers and vintage acoustic guitars, along with curating my own fairly significant collection of both acoustic and electric guitars. To me, this great hobby of mine was much more involved than just playing guitar and learning to be a better guitarist, it became something far more intensive and that meant learning everything I possibly could about guitars, from the origins of the first stringed instruments centuries ago to to modern guitars of today and everything in-between. Before retiring, I’d had a rewarding career in engineering and project management and, for many of those years, I’d been a competitive endurance athlete for which I was now paying the price with a rapidly degenerating spine. My lower back was going to hell in a handbasket forcing me to leave many of my beloved activities behind. By the time I joined these forums I was all but done for physically and would be needing some alternative oulets if I were to save my sanity.

I wrote my first blog just days before the 2019 surgery, followed by another blog the next day, but I was so focused on my recovery and the potential for getting some of my activities back, that I dropped my attention from the blog altogether. It would be four years and several brushes with death over some other severe health problems before I would pick up where I left off. My entry into the world of blogging started innocently enough. I would write a perspective on a new guitar I’d acquired, or write about my favorite guitar influences. There might be a simple post on what strings I use and why or which “boutique” brands I believe to be at the top of the heap. Boutique guitars are typically made by smaller builders with fewer employees who are talented and disciplined enough to use “Old World” processes, techniques, and tools while eschewing the use of automation in the construction of very finely crafted guitars. In other words, companies who employ skilled luthiers in making these guitars predominantly by hand, without the obvious production benefits behind using high-tech tools and machinery. There is a lot of space on these forums which is dedicated to comparing the various boutique brands against the best production guitars made by companies like Martin, Gibson, and Taylor. Aside from writing about guitars, I’ve written pieces nature, music, social issues, endangered species, some of my adventure trips, watches, cycling, skiing, what it’s like to be caught in the crossfire of the opioid crisis, and a host of other topics.

It was before I started my own WordPress site to become more formally engaged in writing that I was at all focused on guitar forums. For the first year, or so, I enjoyed contributing to these forums but somewhere into the second or third year, I began to notice a shift in the kinds of responses I was getting, which had gone from friendly and gracious to argumentative and downright combative. This is where you need to have an understanding of the inner workings of these forums. While there are ten’s of thousands subscribers, there are cliques that form and will come together like a beehive in order to defend any one of their group who seems to be having trouble over a particular topic or is doing battle with the posts’s author (the OP, or “Original Poster”) or someone else in the thread. If you are a poster and are having differences with another member, the next thing you know, there are a half-dozen other members rushing to the aid of the one and you find yourself in the sights of a clique. Put differently, what were once satisfying replies and comments to a particular post I’d written were now belligerent personal affronts. I believe what happened was that the site’s “trolls” were OK with me as long as I wasn’t answering more complicated questions, before I upped my game and had begun accruing more and more followers. It seems that I had unwittingly wandered into their territories and they wanted to put an end to it before they lost all-too-important “street-cred”. These kinds of negative responses weren’t targeted at me alone, but anyone who was writing at a higher than average level, both in terms of content, but also in terms of writing itself. For me personally, I’ve always enjoyed writing and, over many years, have become quite comfortable with the subject matter surrounding guitars. I had no difficulty in taking these people on and found it easy to put them in their place, without the use of foul lanquage or meaningless put-downs. But things got uncomfortable during my third or fourth altercation with one of UMGF’s most prolific and longest standing members, when he decided to really let me have it and got so worked-up that I believe he would have shot me if the whole of the internet didn’t stand between us. After the second or third communication between us, he began writing childish but incendiary insults and lobbing them over the fence. I had called him out and he had all-too-willingly answered the call. Before the trouble began, the post had fostered a good number of contributors and was an already lengthy thread with dozens of replies, so we’d already attracted many onlookers as well as the site’s moderators and the site administrator, himself, who shut us down and closed the post so that it was no longer accessible to anyone, including me. What happened in the next twenty-four hours is the real travesty. The administrator had edited the entire thread from the point where the argument started to where he had ended the post. He then reposted the thread. He had done much of his editing by deleting most of what I had to say and leaving out the ugliest comments made by my opponent, cleaning-up his mess while making me appear to be the uninformed aggressor. I wrote the administrator directly and gave him no quarter while delivering both barrels. He must have felt the sting because by the next day I’d been rewarded by having my membership revoked. I’d known that this was a possibility beause I’d read about being blackballed from other members of these sites, so this came as no surprise, nor did it come at a great loss. I certainly wasn’t about to let it get under my skin. But it made me wonder how the two people, the senior member and the administrator, could have become so close for the one to so clearly take the side of the other. There are similar alliances all over these sites, often between long-standing and prolific contributors and their “followers” who tend to gain confidence once taken under the wing of a well-known member. It’s probably not dissimilar to prison gang rivalries where a less powerful, more timid inmate takes a submissive stance with a given leader (or,”shot-caller”) and does things to prove himself worthy of joining in exchange for the “protection” of the leader and his henchmen. On some of these sites, a senior member may have been around since the forum’s inception and thus has the abundant gratitude of the site’s management and even its owner(s). Some of these folks will have gained such notoriety as to have thousands of followers at their beckon call…good little foot-soldiers in the fight over who’s more knowledgable, the relative newcomer or the tried and true old-timer. These senior contributors with ten or fifteen years of membership behind them tend to be of an older crowd and enjoy the status they feel within he fabric of the forum. To their credit, they are almost invariably highly knowledgable and better that average as writers whose aim it is to get their point across. Virtual friendships and allegiances between people who have known one another for firteen years online, but who have never actually met. Somehow, I just don’t “get” this but it is a dynamic that exists on every forum I’ve contributed to, When these battles come to a head, I’ve been swarmed by as many as a dozen “insurgents” borne out of a simple disagreement between two forum users. I couldn’t passibly keep up without typing so fast as to set my keyboard ablaze, so I choose the most eggregious offenders and take on their comments along with those of their leader. I am sure that this topic would be great fodder for psychiatric experts to tear into. The “why” riding the undercurrent of ill-fated personality types and their inevitable engagement when situations like this arise. In retrospect, I’m surprised at myself for getting as angry as I did at the time. Not unlike road rage, the root of the problem between the two parties is really quite foolish but it escalates disproportionately to the the reasoning beheind it. In my own defense, it wasn’t just the one thing that got me riled enough to don armor and step onto the battlefield, but the downward trend these sites were experiencing because, aisde from those particular moments while in the heat of doing battle, I got a lot of enjoyment out of reading an untold number of posts and contributing a fair number of my own. There’s was a lot of “good stuff” to be found there. But, as someone famously once said, “all good things come to an end”.

This same thing happened to me on another of the preeminant forums. I guess I must have a problem. ;-). Perhaps that problem is that I refuse to allow these trolls to control any of these forums by fear. Many people are fearful of putiing themselves out there only to be criticized by others. I have done my best to give them a voice even if it’s not a popular opinion that they’re attampting to peddle. The problem is that the more these forums become places where people attempt to validate themselves and the site’s seemingly continue to promote their “Good ol’ Boy” networks, the more people are going to leave and take their guitar-centric worlds with them. The greater problem is that once these forums reach extiction, there will be no place to go the obtain free advice on complex, guitar related issues and nowhere for the many thousands of us who enjoy belonging to a like-minded, music based community. I find this to be unfortunate because I enjoy helping people, whether it’s about which guitars bring forth the best overall value or what kind of guitar strap to use. More complicated questions are always welcome, and haing a place to write an essay regarding tonewoods and which ones work best for differing applications, is quite satisfying. In this respect, I know that I am not alone, nor am I alone in hoping that one day there will be a resurgence of such platforms. Unfortunately, there may already be too much damage done as to how I feel about these forums for me to regain the intense interest that I once had. Unless these forum owners soon do an about face to entice their members from moving on, the mass exodus from their sites will continue and I don’t see these sites as having enough articifcial intelligence to save themselves. The fact is, these guitar forums are already on their way to mass extinction and I believe they will continue to lose members because they are clearly making no efforts to keep them. In the conext of my own experience with these sites and being an extremely knowledgable resource who is forever eager to share that knowledge, it is the rest of the membership who are penalized when I’m forced out of the picture by management. If people are afraid to share their vast knowledge for fear of retribution from some silly “gang leader”, then it is the site administrators and owners who are culpable for allowing this kind of negative atmosphere to exist while on “their watch”. It is these people who owe ex-members an appology for not meeting their expectations of providing a safe environment for people to air their collective knowledge openly without having the “other shoe drop” when they’ve lauched yet another solid, well-informed post that speaks for itself. It is the job of the site’s owner(s) and administrators to maintain such a space which was their intention when launching their creations in the first place. There are obviously greater reasons behind the loss of popularity of similar forums all over the internet. Do people only want topical knowledge on a given subject or are there others out there, people like me, who lament the loss of site’s where significant amounts of information can be found and exchanged?

2011 Fender “Telebration” Series Reclaimed Old Growth Redwood Telecaster

It was something to do during the recovery periods associated with the number of major surgeries and health setbacks I’ve had during those same times. Now, I obviously have my own dedicated space, in part, to write about music and my love of “all things guitar”. I also contribute to a number of guitar-centric platforms on Quora.

The Thing With Comparing Guitar Gods

Much is written in guitar webzines, music publications, guitar forums, and blogs about various guitarists throughout the history of modern music and, in particular, how these guitarists compare over what is now a seventy year period. I need to pick a reasonable starting point, so I’ll begin with the blues craze of the 1950’s. Many of the blues guitar greats were poor black men from the deep south and each of them had to develop their own unique style and musicality. The pain in their songwriting was palpable, and they had only each other to learn from. Those were competitive times, with relatively few black musicians acquired a much coveted recording contract. Even fewer owned a decent guitar. There was little money available to these artists, including those at the top of the food chain. What they had was a love of playing guitar melded with a strong sense of wanderlust. Various forms of blues music evolved ranging from the Deep South’s Delta blues to Appalachian blues, to Chicago blues, and some of these bluesmen drifted to LA, where everything seems to happen in the music world. There was even what became a pilgrimage-based studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, which recorded all sorts of artists from Etta James, Aretha Franklin, Buddy Holly, and, as time went quickly by, Southern Rock bands like the Allman Brothers and Lynard Skyward, to trendsetters from across the pond, the Rolling Stones and singer-songwriters like Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. In this crucible where greatness fused with musical direction, many stars were cultivated, people who would go on to become music icons. Even the session musicians who worked for the studio became well known in their time.

It was a time of predominantly healthy competition, before the big named record producers got a rope around this hopeful few to launch the next big names in music, which was quickly evolving from blues to rock n’roll and the folk craze of the 1960’s. The music industry was evolving at an unprecedented pace and agents and managers were fast becoming an important aspect of the business. Unfortunately, for the musicians themselves, they were struggling to understand things like contracts and royalties while at the same time attempting to navigate this “brave New World” where virtually everything was caught in the throes of constant change.

As a guitarist in some of the big-named bands of the time, you were being pulled in different directions, the most complicated of which was how to build your name as an individual with a very important role to play in the overall context of a band. How to be successful as a guitarist while playing a sort of side role, or role as a “sideman” to the “frontman” (usually the singer). Every guitarist had to wrestle with how to keep everyone happy, including themselves. Each had to figure things out for themselves and it could be a tricky road, fraught with crossroads that might lead to nowhere. I can’t imagine being a twenty-two year old musician trying to navigate such complicated and potentially hazardous waters.

Chuck Berry, Albert Collins, Les Paul, and Jimi Hendrix
(Public Domain)

Early on, many incredible artists chose to take on opportunities as session guitarists. For a period, even famed guitarists like Don Felder, Duane Allman, and Jimmy Page took regular paying jobs to make ends meet. Fortunately for us, some of the best answered the call to arms and went on to join some of the greatest bands of all-time. Today, rather than take the likely long road to success, numerous guitarists choose to report to their day jobs at the studio. For those with families to feed, this is a viable option in terms of getting paid for being a musician and it is from this perspective that throughout guitar-god history, there have been many session guitarists who are just as talented, if not moreso, than their hard rocking counterparts. What you should understand about being a session guitarist is that these guys (and gals) need to have the ability to morph their chops to accommodate multiple musical genres, and they need to do it at the drop of the hat, day in and day out. But, without the associated fame, they seldom become household names or make capricious lists of the “Greatest Guitarists of all Time”. While this is a shame, it is the way things work in the business of making music.

In my mind, the first guitarist to come along armed only with the early blues artists to learn from was Chuck Berry. It is only after his moment in the sun that others like Keith Richards would come onto the scene. Richards has stated many times that his greatest guitar heroes were among the blues artists of the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s and that early rock n’ roll artist Chuck Berry was his biggest influence. There are several videos on YouTube where you can see them collaborating or simply performing an impromptu jam session. I think it suffices to say that Chuck Berry’s influence was as great as his success. I would be curious to know if the fresh crop of up and coming guitarists today tap into Chuck Berry’s playing, style, and performing capabilities that made teenage girls everywhere scream with delight. Many would follow, but he was the first.

Certainly the brightest star to emerge into the limelight of Chuck Berry was Jimi Hendrix. Clapton, Page, and Beck would come just a bit later and all three are on record stating that Jimi Hendrix was among their greatest influences. Since Hendrix’s tragic death came at what was only the beginning of his prime, we will never know just how far his gift would have taken him. But virtually every guitar great credits him with being the valedictorian of his class.

There are simply too many “Guitar Gods” to list and that’s not the objective of this feature. What is, is the problem with comparing them. Perhaps there are lists of great artists of all flavors but I haven’t seen them. The analogy is that comparing history’s best writers, painters, sculptors, and the like would be impossible; that is, to the extent that these comparisons would be viable. It can be argued that great musicians are just as gifted as artists of any kind. How could we possibly compare Bach to Mozart, or Mozart to any of history’s virtuoso composers. What about Van Goh to Monet? There are centuries to sift through.

There are also the performing aspects of being a guitar god. There’s an athletic component to quickly moving around on a stage while wielding the guitar like it’s some sort of specialized martial arts weapon. Granted, being extremely athletic isn’t a prerequisite to being a great guitarist. For, whatever reason, guitarists like BB King and Jeff Healey have been relegated to seated performing for decades, Still, they are among the most gifted musicians that come to mind. I think you get my point. For the most part, being a guitarist is being a performance artist, at least inasmuch as being the lead guitarist in a rock band. Chronicling through time and taking a good look as to whom we vote for on any of these guitar-great lists can be like witnessing high-level circus acts, where an incredible amount of work goes into creating fluid, graceful movement. If these performances are set to some really powerful music, which suits the type of performance, all the better. It is a thrill to go to a Cirque de Soleil show and watch such performers in action. I think it’s equally as thrilling if, like me, you’ve had the opportunity to go to a Who or Led Zeppelin concert and watch Pete Townsend leap from atop his twin Marshall stacks or bear witness to Jimmy Page setting the fingerboard ablaze while flying up and down the neck of his Les Paul. It also takes more than a little hand-eye coordination to elevate one’s self to being among the best. On top of that, there are the thousands of hours of practicing the craft and making difficult choices in how to spend one’s time. This is what I think of when the word “sacrifice” is put on the table. Heck, I get excited watching the antics of Joe Walsh moving around on stage while making some of the best “guitar faces” known to man.

Among the pitfalls in comparing guitarists who have achieved demigod status is the plethora of differing musical genres they represent. Though closely related, playing blues is quite different than playing jazz and metal is worlds apart from country. So just how is it that some guitarists are comfortable joining a great player (from a different genre) who’s going to be playing well within their comfort zone while the invited guitarist has an altogether different background? It’s because the invited guitarist is so good that they can play across multiple genres with equal aplomb. Think about how intimidating accepting such an invitation would be to a mere mortal guitarist. I also find it intriguing that this sort of thing is reminiscent of one gunslinger standing out in the street in a carefully chosen spot and “calling out” another infamous shootist from within the relative safety of a crowded saloon. There has to be some serious level of competition felt by each of the gunmen and some giant egos hidden behind their cold, black eyes. Yet, far more often than not, the egos in a guitar-based “calling out” seem to be left at the door while both guitarists go at it with equal looks of concentration and sheer joy for those few precious moments or an entire set, or more. I love this about musicianship!

One of my criteria for someone to be referred to as a guitar god is that they can play across multiple musical genres without missing a beat, as discussed in the above paragraph. Another of my criteria is that in order for someone to consider themselves as among the best (a truly complete player) they should be able to play both guitar modalities, electric and acoustic, equally well. I think you’ll find that many of your guitar favorites can do this, as they long ago realized the value in playing both, each form lending prowess to the other. But I also think you’ll find just as many guitarists who find their way to making some list without bearing that medal of honor. I have played both electrically and acoustically since I began my guitar journey, and I can offer testimony as to how much more difficult (but rewarding) it is. Not one of my guitar heroes plays one form to the exclusion of the other.

(Public Domain)

Another key component that I have a ton of respect for is those guitarists who add slide guitar to their arsenal of skills. For those of you who have tried (as have I) to learn slide, you well know how difficult it is. I would equate it to learning an entirely different instrument. Guys (and gals) like Duane Allman, Dickey Betts, Derek Trucks, Warren Haynes, Bonnie Raitt, and Joe Walsh are tremendously gifted. If they’ve got this form of playing under their belts, I tend to view them in a brighter light.

I’ve mentioned but a few guitarists who have rightly been bestowed the guitar god title. These are players who came off the top of my head. I used no list in coming up with names, though I am sure I’ve missed a few that I would have liked to include. Vince Gill has already popped into my head. The guy is certainly good enough to make anyone’s list, from his masterful picking skills and overall musicality to his gilded tenor voice. The latter brings to mind another criteria that raises the bar. Singing and playing simultaneously is extremely difficult, particularly at the level that Vince is able to do it. It is very much like playing two instruments at the same time and finding more and more novel ways to weave the two together.

Last, you may not recognize one of the guitarists in the final four photos, but, to me, his trademark skull cap and wry smile are dead giveaways. His name is Greg Koch. He was classically trained and I believe holds a master’s degree in jazz from one of the finer music schools in the Midwest. He is, perhaps, best known as test pilot for Wildwood Guitars in Louisville, Colorado. There are literally hundreds of videos showing he and his chops while playing the latest in high-end guitars from Gibson and Fender. His prowess on the fingerboard is unmistakable, as he makes run after run showcasing the tonal spectrum of each guitar. He does this with humor and humility, seamlessly flying up and down the neck covering a half-dozen genres at alarming speed and somehow making them sound like they belong together. On a list of the most underrated guitarists, I would place him in the number one slot. Do yourself a favor and jump on YouTube to search Wildwood Guitars or Greg Koch, and, after seeing him in action, I am certain you’ll agree.

I hope that I’ve done a decent job of getting my point across such that the next time you peruse a list compiled by some music publication, you’ll do so with an open mind toward the thousands of guitarists everywhere, grinding it out one small venue at a time all the while dreaming of the day when they’re named. Or, dive into the world of those session guitarists I spoke of. It is as likely as not that they already have the chops to make it. Let’s hope that the next, latest list is based more on merit than on popularity.