What if there was a tool that allowed you to get lost in your own guitar-world? You know, that wonderful world where carefully perfected tone can be turned up to eleven without bothering anyone? Enter the BOSS Waza-Air wireless headphones ..read more

The fretless bass is actually pretty rare in the bass world, since most bassists simply prefer fretted models. Listen to the bass of any current hits and you’re likely to be listening to a fretted bass. But there’s no doubt that the fretless bass packs unique character and there are plenty of devotees out there that refuse to play anything else. So, what’s the deal with the fretless bass – what are the good bits? And what are the not-so-good bits ..read more

Whether it’s a single-coil or a humbucker, practically all electric guitar pickups and bass pickups are equipped with a magnet that captures the vibrations of the strings. While magnets don’t boast any sonic properties of their own, the specific type of magnet inside any guitar or bass pickup certainly helps to shape the overall sound of the instrument. Since most pickups feature either an alnico or a ceramic magnet, I’m going to highlight the differences between both and tell you how the well-known Alnico V models compare to Alnico II variants ..read more

Unfortunately, there comes a time when everything breaks, and the same is definitely true of music gear, whether it’s speakers, valve amplifiers, or your electric guitar or bass. In the worst case, you’ll need to get it fixed by a professional, but there are some smaller, more simple repairs that you can actually carry out yourself. With a voltmeter, a soldering iron and a little solder on your side, you can get more done than you might think ..read more

Whether caused by a bad habit or a passionate performance, the injuries related to being a musician can range from a gradually niggling and continuous beep in one ear, to chronic and unbearable wrist pain. If you want to play comfortably for the rest of your life, then it’s more than worth learning to listen to your body, practise some good-old self care, and avoid long-term injury, hearing damage, and dreaded RSI ..read more

While the bass looks a lot like the guitar, it demands an entirely different playing technique. In this blog, we’ll take you through some bass-playing basics, starting with the absolute fundamentals: the correct playing posture, both sitting and standing; the right-hand technique, where you’ll learn how to pluck the strings with your index and middle fingers and with a plectrum, and you’ll also learn to mute the unplayed strings and remove all that nasty low-frequency rumbling from your sound (a technique that actually involves both hands, but more on that later). Then, we’ll close with the le ..read more

Learning to play arpeggios and understanding how they work is an essential skill if you want to write some solid bass lines. Basically, arpeggios are what happen when you play the single notes of a specific chord in succession. They’re well worth learning, since an arpeggio will always match perfectly with the chord that the guitarist or key-player is hitting. So, for a bassist, practising and nailing a small library of arpeggios is actually a better first step than memorising scales, because it immediately sets you up with a full kit bag to work with when it comes to writing your own bass lin ..read more

The fact is, there’s no right or wrong way to wear a guitar strap. But, if the length of your strap doesn’t match up with the way you play, it can have a pretty negative effect. In this wee blog, we take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of a super-long, super-short, or somewhere-in-the-middle guitar or bass strap ..read more