Guitar Forum Spotlight: July 7th 2009

– Over at guitarforums.com there is a discussion over whether you should practice sitting down or standing up. Like many of these questions, the answer depends on your goals as a guitarist. If you intend to play live a lot, it would probably serve you well to also have frequent practice playing your guitar in the standing position. For more tips, our own Peter Vogl has free videos on the seated guitar position and standing position

– Trying to decide between the real deal and a knock off? Take a look at this post on Gibson Les Pauls vs. a copy. Take a look especially at dspellman’s comments:

IMHO, Gibson doesn’t start making a really good Les Paul type guitar until you get to the $3000 mark. Even at that price point, there are guitars that are far less expensive that easily compete with Gibsons in terms of playability and build quality.

At the low end, Rondo Music’s Agile AL3000 series (AL3XXX, actually, since there are 3000M and 3100’s) are real contenders, and normally run about $389 – $599 (if you want a 3/4″ solid maple top). The pickups in these are Alnico V’s that actually sound and respond very much like Gibson’s ’57’s. The controls in these are serviceable, but it would certainly be cheap to shake these out and replace them with the best availalbe. But these guitars come with multi-layer binding around the body and headstock, single-layer binding on the fretboard. They have ebony fretboards and real abalone inlays. The fretboards have a 13.7″ radius (Gibsons are 12″, the frets are hand-dressed, the necks are a bit thinner than Gibson’s ’60 series (you can also get necks that are wider and thinner) and very comfortable. The bodies are SOLID mahogany (I think there’s one series that has chambered bodies available) and the result is a guitar that measures up very well against what Gibson tosses out there in the sub-$3000 range.

– And finally we have a thread debating Rosewood vs. Maple fretboards. Two arguments come into play. Does the type of wood that the fretboard is made from make a difference? And if it does what are the differences.