String bending on acoustics...

[guitarfishbay]

That was HORRIBLE!

Talk about murdering a tune...

Strikes me as a gimmick more than anything for him to be using an acoustic. Through a nice electric tone some of the licks would have been nice IMO, though obviously overplaying compared to the original.

That sounds like a terrible piezo tone at the start. And when he kicks in the drive pedal it sounds more like a bad keyboard patch than a guitar.

[evilmags]

13s or 12s for me on accoustics. 11s don't sound close to as nice as 13s, which really drive the soundboard and helps project volume. On a mahogony topped guitar this should be even truer, as it is denser and stiffer than spruce, so needs more energy to drive it. If you really find the gauge too much, Thomastik make lower tension strings with some silk wound into them for extra weight. (Plectrum Bronze I think they are called). People with finger problems and some folkies play sik and steel sets, but they need a much lighter guitar construction.

[ICBM]

Agreed!

Good example of someone playing an acoustic like it's an electric instead of using the acoustic for its own sound

No it's not - it's a good example of someone playing an electric guitar that happens to have an acoustic body and a nasty-sounding pickup .

You can play an acoustic like it's an electric - up to point, there are some subtle things that don't work - and still have it sound like an acoustic. But most people who try this seem to want make it *sound* like an electric, and that only works when it's amplified. It's not actually an "acoustic" at that point.

Either that or I play electric so much like an acoustic that when I do it on an acoustic it ends up sounding right, I'm not sure .

[bertie]

not a fan of tippy-tap-tappy-tip slap/harmonics acoustic playing.............used sparingly, ie something that adds a little spice to the song/tune, fine - but when its becomes the whole structure/point of the tune, nah just a load of show-off wankery to me.

[Big Paulie]

not a fan of tippy-tap-tappy-tip slap/harmonics acoustic playing.............used sparingly, ie something that adds a little spice to the song/tune, fine - but when its becomes the whole structure/point of the tune, nah just a load of show-off wankery to me.

And thoroughly un-misical to boot!

[JCA2550]

I use these on my all mahogany Martin 00-15. I love the sound of a wound third on acoustic guitar but prefer the feel of a plain '17 or '18 and they don't snap when I bend them.

[ICBM]

not a fan of tippy-tap-tappy-tip slap/harmonics acoustic playing.............used sparingly, ie something that adds a little spice to the song/tune, fine - but when its becomes the whole structure/point of the tune, nah just a load of show-off wankery to me.

Kaki King is a perfect example - her first two albums are all tappy-slappy showing-off stuff, no real songs, completely samey after halfway the first song and almost unlistenable, to me.

Then after that she started writing actual songs and putting some (or occasionally quite a lot, but not *too* much) slappy-tappy bits in... and she's really good. I've got a couple of her albums (Until We Felt Red and Dreaming of Revenge) which I like a lot. Got rid of the first two though.