Church Sound 2: Guitars

In my 20 years of experience as a musician, I've found that you don't have to break the bank in order to get great guitar tones.



In fact, I've gotten the job more than done with a $200 MIM Strat I got used off of kijiji and a Behringer Vamp2 I got on sale for $100 five or six years ago. And that's my next point. There are some great deals out there on used instruments. Plus if you get them set up professionally, I would dare you to tell the difference between them and more expensive offerings. I have a $200 MIM strat that plays better than the $1600 strats I've tried at my local Long & McQuade. It's my go to. I've probably put $300 into it between changing the pickups and having the fretboard re-finished ... so I have a $500 guitar that plays way above it's price range. There are effectively two things that make r break an electric guitar: it's pickups and it's neck. A crappy feeling neck makes a guitar worthless, as does crappy pickups. however, there's something to be said for spending the time and effort to search for a cheap but well made guitar that gets you 60% of what you want, then kick in a couple hundred bucks to bring you the next 40%. The result can be spending less (sometimes much less) than $1000 for a guitar you will never, ever want to give up ... like me and my faithful MIM strat.

For bass guitars, the same thing applies. I bought a $160 squier jaguar bass and recorded an album with it that I'm proud of. I also used that bass numerous times at church, and it sounded great ... because I spent time setting it up and fiddling with amp settings and the knobs on the guitar until it sounded right. I also used a little Bass DI box made by Harman, which was fantastic. Recently, I also picked up a Squier vintage modified Tele Bass for less than $200. This thing has a maple neck and a nice sounding fender designed humbucker pickup in the neck position. All it needed was some fretboard conditioning, a neck adjustment and some fine tuning of the intonation and action ... it plays like a dream and looks/sounds great! It's another one I likely won't part with anytime soon.

The key is to have every instrument you play professionally set-up. Then spent a lot of time getting your tone. I spent quite a bit of time working with the V-Amp to coax a decent tone out of it. Truth be told, I still use that thing to this day both at church and for recording. I love it! It's simple, sounds good and best of all, it was inexpensive.

Speaking of, one thing I've found with cheaper modelling units is that less is more. Keep the gain settings down and use a distortion pedal to add gain after the fact. Noise reduction pedals are also worth their weight in gold. If you do use heavy distortion in your guitar sounds, cheap modelling units aren't likely going to work for you.

You could also spend upwards of $700-$1200 on the latest Line 6 offering. That's totally legitimate depending on what you need to accomplish. The other route is to get a small good quality amplifier (Orange, Fender and Line 6 each make great options) with a few pedals which have been tone shaped. The key once again is to spend time setting things up according to your needs.

With acoustic guitars, it's a little more complicated still. You don't need a $2500 Taylor, but splurging for at least a solid top instrument with a good pickup is a must in my books. Most acoustic guitars below $300 aren't what I would call fantastic, but you might be able to score something great for around $300 if it's used. Takamine, Martin, Yamaha, Taylor,  and Simon & Patrick make great "road worthy" acoustic guitars for well under $1000. I am particularly interested in Martin's Road Series instruments. They are solid wood and have built in fishman electronics, and are less than $1k.

Or you could go the route I did: get the best acoustic guitar you can afford without electronics, get it professionally set up and then use something like the Lr Baggs M1 Active acoustic pickup.

Until next time ...