Possibly, although I find it almost as effective to split my Rickenbacker into stereo, DI the neck pickup and put the bridge pickup through a guitar amp (or simulator)!Originally Posted by RolandG
I like this approach because it sounds good, but also because it has built-in redundancy/failure-proofing. The guitar has two pickups, two sets of controls, and two jacks. There is no electrical failure on it that can stop me getting at least one sound out of it, other than the selector switch physically falling apart... and they don't. Passive magnetic systems are extremely reliable anyway.
One thing that puts me off solutions like the Variax is that you've really got all your eggs in one basket, and the piezo pickup elements and the onboard electronics are both known for failures, even though not *that* often.
"Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand" - Homer Simpson
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Last but one gig. Had a bit of space on stage , so it was 4 guitars each. Red Tele is in 5-sting open G, so difficult to not have that for some of the songs. Normally swap between the Strat and the Les Paul a fair bit, so I now struggle with less than 3 guitars.
IMO the answer is a versatile guitar. SG2000 has coil splits as well as volume and tone pots that work. And a sensible pedalboard. Judicious choice of clean sounds will allow you to get away with doing acoustic songs on an electric. The only reason for using more than one guitar (apart from having a backup) is where a special technique is required which your main guitar does not support easily. For example I would find something requiring classical style picking rather difficult on the SG2k, so I'd choose a guitar with a wider neck, like the SA2200.
He who laughs last ... is still using a slow modem
I would never have two of the same thing, even if they are tuned differently.
I use my Esquire for 75-80% of stuff then the P90 guitar in 5 string open G for stones stufflike Brown Sugar and Tumbling Dice, and the odd bit of blues slide. Then i have the Lap steel for all other slide and country sounds. The Burny was an added luxury for me the other night. Nice sound, did I need it ? no.
I deal with it by having versatile guitars but also by arranging the set around tunes that work with a strat or 335 or acoustic and lump them together. Joe public is very uninterested in waiting for you to change guitars, once or twice a set is bearable but every song gets boring very quickly.
Joe Public probably thinks you look like a pretentious rock star wannabe for even taking more than one, unless they're *very obviously* different (eg electric and acoustic). The idea that you "need" more than one guitar to do different sounds doesn't mean anything to your average punter. It never seemed to matter to actual rock stars in the old days either.
No offence intended, but I see pics like the ones above and wonder whether it's a gig or a guitar shop I'm looking at.
"Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand" - Homer Simpson
http://www.theangelconversations.com
I always take 2 electrics (usually a gibson and a tele) and an acoustic if needed. It's more to have a spare and a little variety than to need different sounds. I'm not that fussy on using set guitars for set songs- I generally use whichever I want, and 9 times out of 10 that's the SG for the bulk of the set.
This was us at our last gig. Our other guitarist also had a Lowden, a PRS and a Strat out of shot
I'm not offended, I don't lay out the stage like the photos above, two different leccys and an acoustic is quite acceptable to me. I don't do pub gigs either so it looks less like a guitar shop on a proper stage.
Might depend upon what type of gigs you do but I'm suprised at how much interest there is in stuff like that, although observed more from the audience than on stage. This maybe because for rock/ blues type gigs a lot of punters will play to some extent and/or guitar gear is a part of the culture.
One of the problems with swapping guitars live is that a lot of the times the difference you hear from the audience perspective is actually pretty tiny, especially on distorted/heavilly effected tones.
My favourite on stage guitar swapper was probably Canadian blues player Colin James.Quite a long time ago this but as I remember it he had two strats and he and his roadie swapped between them for every number, the roadie re-tuning whilst Coling was playing. They, presumably, had decided that with Colin's enthusiastic playing still a strat couldn't stay in tune for more than 5 minutes and that swapping guitars would be more efficient than re-tuning. No good unless you have a roadie though.
Breeding mammals with insects is my personal bugbear.
I'm with ICBM on this, unless there is a genuine need for more than one and a spare, just taking your guitar collection to a gig because you can is questionable,
As the op said "At times I was beginning to lose the plot wondering which to use next, how do some of you cope with this ? "
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