Guitars & Music Tech

Yeah, absolutely! I've not picked up any guitars recently, I think the last one I bought was maybe 18 months ago (it might be longer than that, even!). That was a Harley Benton Fusion mk3, active EMG pickups, fixed bridge, locking tuners. It's really nice but I need to take it to a luthier to get the pickup selection switch fixed, it's a bit scratchy when I select the bridge-only pickup. I have a few guitars and basses. Do you have any / how many and what are they? Do you have a favourite?

Hi and thanks for your message. 

I looked that guitar up, as am familiar with Harley Benton but not that model. That looks and sounds like a nice piece of kit. In case it helps: when you say scratchy on the bridge pickup (the selector switch) is that just when you select it first, or does it continue making scratchy noises? Also, are these sounds coming through the amp/electric output or just acoustic? Depending ... this could be something that 'contact cleaner' would solve. If you search Amazon for 'electric contact cleaner' it should come up. It's a spray that you can usually spray a bit of into the switch from the outside, wiggle it around a dozen or so times, and, fingers crossed it resolves it. If you give me info on the questions I put I may be able to say if that is likely to work. 

Newly diagnosed, but knowing for near certain I'm autistic since learning more about it for the last year or so, I realise now that guitars are a form of comfort object to me, a stimming type thing, a total obsession, and ... they fill a lot of roles both typical to autism as well as just an immense love of guitars. I've owned many and currently have 7 (I know, that's a lot). 

Stratocaster's are a favourite in terms of clean sound and feel and vibe. Ibanez RG type are my 'home' and where I grew up playing and shredding. 

Ah, thanks for the advice, that does sound like I'll try the contact cleaner first. It's been like that since I got it, never had the chance to take it up to the luthier. I have a Mexican Tele which also needs to go to the luthier, there's a loose contact somewhere linked to the jack socket, and I have a Hagstrom Swede shortie bass which also needs the luthier (a faulty selector which properly needs replacing, I've managed to sort-of bypass it for an embarrassingly long time!). I've got a couple of the Squire modern strats which are really nice - one hardtail and one Floyd Rose locking. I've not done much with them recently, I've been deep-dive focussed on learning about synths! One thing I did begin trying was playing with different tuning setups. so I tuned a couple of my guitars to all fourths tuning where the B and top E (in terms of pitch, so the string closest the floor) are replaced with C and F. That made more sense to my brain. I've tried the EBEGBE tuning too, which is kind-of fun.

Oh yes, definitely! I got into synths completely by accident after buying a Boss synth pedal for guitars / bass. I loved the sound and what it was doing and thought "I want to know how that works and how to make those sounds". I have a very good book called "Creating Sounds From Scratch" which goes into great depth but is surprisingly easy to read and follow. I think it might be a course book for a module at Berklee College of Music in the USA.

The thing that really upended me was learning that a lost of sound synthesis comes from subtractive processes! You create the sound you want by choosing a VCO which gives you the sort of transients, fundamentals and overtones that you want and then shape those with the filters, envelopes and effects, and use the LFO to modulate those. It's amazing!

I want to learn more about granular synthesis, but I suspect it's very complicated and I'm not sure I have a use for it at the moment, I'm having so much fun playing with subtractive synthesis! 

Oh yes, definitely! I got into synths completely by accident after buying a Boss synth pedal for guitars / bass. I loved the sound and what it was doing and thought "I want to know how that works and how to make those sounds". I have a very good book called "Creating Sounds From Scratch" which goes into great depth but is surprisingly easy to read and follow. I think it might be a course book for a module at Berklee College of Music in the USA.

The thing that really upended me was learning that a lost of sound synthesis comes from subtractive processes! You create the sound you want by choosing a VCO which gives you the sort of transients, fundamentals and overtones that you want and then shape those with the filters, envelopes and effects, and use the LFO to modulate those. It's amazing!

I want to learn more about granular synthesis, but I suspect it's very complicated and I'm not sure I have a use for it at the moment, I'm having so much fun playing with subtractive synthesis!