Out of Pod Experience

I haven't seen any topic about this subject, so thought i would make one myself.

Just seeing if there any fellow guitar players?
Share what guitar you have, what particullar music you like to play, any people you look upto in the guitar world.

I've been playing for 5 years. Currently taking a too long break of 6months :( Just moving around not having any company to play guitar with kind of set me back so right now really rusty.

I particullary love to play single guitar arrangements. I will try to find the artists name but most are foreign to me so can't pronounce any of there name. Only ones i can think of at the moment is Sungha Jung, Tommy Emmanuel, Brad Paisley, Most of Candy Records artists electric and acoustic.

I love acoustic, can't seem to get into electric so much but played a telecaster in a guitar shop and it just made me go "WOW". So want to get a lovely fender tele but missus wont let me, need to save for bigger thing :)

So currently i have in my equipment is :

Faith FJ acoustic guitar, played for most years. Absolutely beautiful acoustic well worth every penny.

Cheap branded electrics which keep breaking. Need to upgrade.

Marshall practice Stack amps 15 watt. Was made in 2007 but only so many made.

Line 6 spider amp 15 watt. Nice little one to have some effects.

I used to play guitar, but then the truss rod broke. It would have cost more to repair than a new guitar, but I can't afford that anyway, so I haven't played in about a year, at least. Before that I think I played for about three years or so.
I had a Yamaha Pacifica and a Roland Micro Cube for gear, though of course I was always hungry for more. I spent most of my practice time on techical stuff, like picking accuracy and speed, bends, hearing, etc.
When I practiced or played songs, I mostly stuck to easy rock stuff, like AC/DC.

Tommy Emmanuel is amazing, he was actually the first music act that I went to see live, and he blew my mind with how good he is.

I've been playing since I was...12? FFS, that's 21 years. Damn, I'm getting old.

Anyway, I'm not as good as 21 years of guitar would imply. First, there have been long periods where I just didn't play because the mood didn't strike me, and secondly, I haven't had many chances to jam with other musicians. Simply put, the latter is extremely important because it allows you to stretch your skills and learn new techniques. Sadly, I don't know anyone else who plays more than half-assedly.

For style preference, I mostly prefer hard rock and heavy metal, but I'm not averse to classical stuff. Unfortunately, I lack the manual dexterity in my right hand to be very good at fingerpicking for the latter (I'm a lefty and play guitar right-handed; go figure). To be honest, I spend more time doing freestyle solos these days than anything serious (though I did spend an hour and a half last night playing the rhythm parts of a medley of Megadeth and Metallica songs).

My axe of choice is the Les Paul, primarily because of the wicked action on the neck and the resonant sound you get from the body. I'd love to have a Gibson, but I had to settle for the lower-end Epiphone brand (which still sounds awesome). The one I've got is an Epiphone Les Paul Custon with wicked sunburst pattern of grey fading towards black.

For amplification, I have an old Line6 Flextone Plus (60W with option to go to 100W with the addition of a cab I don't happen to own), one of the first generation of Line6 amps.

The only effects pedal I currently own is a Crybaby wah pedal, but the amp itself has a plethora of effects built in, so I don't need much else.

As far as strings go, I swear by Elixirs (specifically their medium gauge, which is equivalent to everyone else's heavy) due to the sound, reduction in string noise, and the increased ease of play. For picks, I prefer Dunlop heavies - they degrade far more slowly than the other brands I've tried.

EDIT: Forgot to mention guitarists that I like. I'd have to say my all-time favorite guitarist is Slash. The man's got mad skills with a guitar and comes up with some really great melodies. Other influences would be Dave Mustaine and Marty Friedman of Megadeth, Kirk Hammet from Metallica, Dime from Pantera, and more recently Jesper Stromblad (sp?) of In Flames, Alexi Laiho of Children of Bodom, and Jonas Rorling of Machinae Supremacy.

Been playing in earnest about 5 years, still have a lot to learn. Usually what happens is I work on some song I want to learn using guitar tabs. Next time I sit down to practice the song, I space out on how good the song's chord progression sounds, and end up just noodling around with it all night. Doing different rhythms, playing around with little licks and solo melodies. I have an autistic son who loves music, and listens in from the other room while he's playing around on his PC. If I'm playing crap, he says "Too loud," but if I've got a good one going he says "Yes." That's my filter on what's a keeper and what just my usual bad noodling. So I have a pretty big collection of "original" tunes, all unfinished, with the chord progressions lifted from some song I intended to learn.

Favorite guitarists: Lightnin' Hopkins, David Gilmour, Steve Howe, Bill Nelson, Jimmy Page, East African and Central African guitar players

Gear:
Agile AL-300 (A Korean Les Paul copy. I love that thing! Amazing craftmanship. Switched out the bridge pickup for a Seymour Duncan and it sounds great. I highly recommend anything by Agile-- great quality, great prices).
Fender Stratocaster Yamaha EG-112 (Beginner guitar, but great tones. Sounds better to me than my Strat, really.)
Takamine acoustic I've had since 1986
Jose Ramirez classical (that spontaneously self-destructed. One side of the bridge came unglued, and the string tension rip-split it off of the body)
ESP bass
-Roland Microcube
-Vox 10w tube amp
-Peavey bass amp
-Bad Dog wah pedal
-Boss overdrive/distortion pedal
-USB mic & laptop for recording, Sony Acid Pro for editing

Lets start with HW:

• Ibanez 1077XL (Lungren M7 on bridge)
• Ibanez Prestige custom look-alike w. EMG-81
• Digitech GSP 2101 Artist preamp+fx
• Engl 530 preamp
• Behringer Composer Pro comp.+limiter
• Behringer TubeUltra-Q EQ
• Koch Multitone 100w combo (Celestion 30w x2) running as satelite, mostly...

This is what I'm running now, when I finally got the money to buy stuff, too bad I don't really need this kind of gear anymore.

Got my first guitar at age 15 so it's like 27 years I've spend my time with guitar related stuff, more or less.
My intrest started with the speed/trash metal scene going strong back in around -85, so obvious influences were Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth, Slayer etc., including few traditional metal bands going strong. After -95 to new millenium, I started look other kind of stuff like Deftones, Tool, Meshuggah, RATM and basicly widen my taste in music. Nowadays I can listen just about any kind of songs, including those without guitars
So while I don't consider myself total metalhead (anymore), I did pick up lots of stuff from those "old metal gods".

Watching and playing by ear sounds like a great learning technique. I'll check it out. I've finally got enough of a handle on music theory (just where to find the next note I want on the freboard, really) to do it. I'll bet the song gets soaked pretty solidly into your brain and fingers if you learn it that way.

Cool about the singing. I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to operate a guitar and sing at the same time though. David Gilmour says he composes his solos lines by singing them first, then trying to play them on guitar. Which might be why they don't really sound like 'guitar solos.'

as someone who has dated pretty much nothing but musicians exclusively and having been surrounded and interrested in music since childhood...one might think i'd have a little more musical ability. but it's not so.

i've owned a guild acoustic guitar since i was 17 and now, having just turned 26 yesterday, i can still only play the handful of songs i learned when i was getting started...and those pretty poorly at that. i don't pick the thing up much. never really did. i tinker with it here and there. sometimes while mining in eve lol. as far as play style goes...i never play with a pick. i've always been a finger picker. i used to have picks but they were always disappearing so i was like...eff that.

i guess i figured out pretty fast that i would always be a better listener than a player.

but i like having the thing available for when i decide to pick it up. every now and then i even come up with something i actually really like the sound of. but unfortunately i tend to forget what it was by the next time i pick up the guitar lol

i rule.

Nice gear their man, lot of T2 stuff and officer mods. I bet you get some great tone with that rig.

a 'Custom' Fender Telecaster - a friend had all the various parts of an old telecaster laying aorund, put them together and BOOM got what I was looking for, it is custom also that it is geared towards Hank Marvin / The Shadows Style, I also have a Schecter Diamond series Omen Extreme 6 for when I want to get a little heavier.

Unfortunately I have problems with some of my joints and recently that has spread to shoulders, arms, and wrists so getting harder to play, debating whether to sell, but last time I did my joints miraculously got better..

Amp? Fender Mustang 3... why? just love all the effects and they had sold out of the smaller cheaper, Mustang 1 and 2..

I would love to make some new tunes, based on vocals of some more recent songs like The Shadows / Hank Marvin did, but due to being hard of hearing, playing by ear is pretty much impossible!

Pretty much!