Does anyone else have this issue with playing electrics?

Elio

Student Of The Blues
Good morning folks.

So this morning I pulled the Epiphone LP SL out and checked again. A half step appears to be an exaggeration, but I do recall it going from G to G# on the screen back when. I'm using an app on my phone, so maybe not super accurate. But even an untrained ear can easily hear the difference.
Light pressure on E string 3rd fret could go to 15c if I wasn't careful 28-35c if I pressed harder than normal to the wood. Turns out I wasn't pressing to wood at my normal pressure but still you could hear and see the strings bend down and up in tone as I fingered simple chords.

The 2nd fret was much worse. Across all strings. Am chord made me start cussing. I ❤️ that chord. In so many songs I like to play...
Cmaj was ugh as was Gmaj. I recorded the tests, planning to upload, but I started screaming F bombs and wanted to smash it against the wall.

Whatever the cause or fault, I simply cannot play these things. I have to let go that dream. It blows my mind because millions can and do. From blues to rock to country to rockabilly, but not me. WTF?

Anyway I've got plenty of acoustic and square neck slide alternatives that sound and play fantastic.

Thanks for all your input.
Frustrated as hell.

It would be interesting to get @Griff's thoughts but since you sat the 2nd fret is much worse, in wondering if your nut is too high and that is causing much of the problem. I had a similar problem with my Ibanez AS73 and realized that the nut was set too high and raising the action on the first few frets. I, of course overcompensated and really's mashed them down to varying degrees depending on the finger and resulted in horrible sounding open chords. Filing down the nut properly solved the problem. Is your issue primarily with open chords, barre chords, or both?

A good friend of mine is professor of music who teaches jazz guitar. He has his students (and me) do exercises identifying and practicing the absolute minimum amount of pressure needed to sound a note on any given string. The theory is that the more pressure you exert on a fret, the more of an impedence that becomes to being able to play faster. His advice is to identify the point at which you can actually feel the string barely vibrating under your fingertip when the string makes contact with the fret and with the note ringing out fully. His explanation is that the string appreciates you not mashing it and so it gives your finger a little massage as a thank you :cool:

Assuming that there are no setup or string height issues, another approach may just be to go to heavier strings. I generally use 9.5's or 10's on my electrics, and 12 gauge flatwounds on my ES175 style Eastman full hollow-body, which I use for jazz.
 

Jack

Blues Junior
My guess is you're just pressing the strings down way to hard. It's a feel thing. Put down the acoustic for a couple weeks and play nothing but electric, that just may fix it.

I'm kind of the opposite, I play electric probably 90% of the time, and when I go to acoustic, with much thicker strings, it's a real chore until I get used to it again. When I first started playing bass I'd mash those strings down really hard (I mean, they're huge! Obviously that's necessary lol). After some time I finally learned you only needed to press them down hard enough to touch the frets and man oh man, did that ever get a lot easier.

A classical guitar teacher had a good bit of advice - play a note or chord or whatever. Now relax your fingers until you start to get fret buzz. Relaxed them 90%? Still not getting fret buzz? Yup :)
 

Stanley

Blues Newbie
If you are in California, you should come to the next socal jam, those guys helped me get better
thanks for the invite but I left there in 1998 for the East Coast. I'm now in Lehigh Valley area of PA, if anyone wants to reach out and either get something going like that or if there is one I can join. I really, really need to both get out, both for mental health and play with others for my progress. I have never really played in front of, or with anyone.
 

Stanley

Blues Newbie
It would be interesting to get @Griff's thoughts but since you sat the 2nd fret is much worse, in wondering if your nut is too high and that is causing much of the problem. I had a similar problem with my Ibanez AS73 and realized that the nut was set too high and raising the action on the first few frets. I, of course overcompensated and really's mashed them down to varying degrees depending on the finger and resulted in horrible sounding open chords. Filing down the nut properly solved the problem. Is your issue primarily with open chords, barre chords, or both?

A good friend of mine is professor of music who teaches jazz guitar. He has his students (and me) do exercises identifying and practicing the absolute minimum amount of pressure needed to sound a note on any given string. The theory is that the more pressure you exert on a fret, the more of an impedence that becomes to being able to play faster. His advice is to identify the point at which you can actually feel the string barely vibrating under your fingertip when the string makes contact with the fret and with the note ringing out fully. His explanation is that the string appreciates you not mashing it and so it gives your finger a little massage as a thank you :cool:

Assuming that there are no setup or string height issues, another approach may just be to go to heavier strings. I generally use 9.5's or 10's on my electrics, and 12 gauge flatwounds on my ES175 style Eastman full hollow-body, which I use for jazz.
I wondered about the nut too, as its worst up there. I would've hoped the pro set up I had done would have addressed that.

I read about those kind of exercises way back when I started and even again in the first book I got when I restarted recently. I did work on that and continue to. I don't think I have that heavy a touch. I tend to think now it's a combination of things, bad setup, high frets, light strings...maybe intonation as well.

I played my Martin this afternoon and felt a lot better about my playing. However, on watching the tuning app. even at that point of lightest fret contact without buzzing. tone of most fretted notes was changing 10-15¢. It wasn't anywhere near as noticeable as on the Epiphone Les Paul. But I could press down and bend the strings harder and get a worse tone. So the good news I'm not doing that as I play. At least not on the Martin or other acoustics.
 

Stanley

Blues Newbie
@Stanley do you have a way to do a close up video of how you are fretting strings? If you could record yourself playing a few notes, chords or even a few bars of chord progression it may possibly give BGUers a better understanding of the issue.

Also, did you have an opportunity to check INTONATION. If you are not familar with the proper way to check it, do an online search for how to check intaonation. Then report the results. That may alos help with determining the cause of the issue...

Please reply with the outcome...
thanks.
I'm going to try to make some video tonight. This morning I just did audio.
I didn't attempt checking intonation, but I did google and learn about it. completely new to me. One would've thought the pro setup I paid for out of the box would've addressed that...
 

Elio

Student Of The Blues
I wondered about the nut too, as its worst up there. I would've hoped the pro set up I had done would have addressed that.

I read about those kind of exercises way back when I started and even again in the first book I got when I restarted recently. I did work on that and continue to. I don't think I have that heavy a touch. I tend to think now it's a combination of things, bad setup, high frets, light strings...maybe intonation as well.

I played my Martin this afternoon and felt a lot better about my playing. However, on watching the tuning app. even at that point of lightest fret contact without buzzing. tone of most fretted notes was changing 10-15¢. It wasn't anywhere near as noticeable as on the Epiphone Les Paul. But I could press down and bend the strings harder and get a worse tone. So the good news I'm not doing that as I play. At least not on the Martin or other acoustics.

You might want to bring it back to the tech and ask them to take a look at the nut. The very first setup I had done when I first started playing again after many years, the tech missed the high nut. When I came back, he saw what I was talking about and filed it down to a better height. Intonation is really easy to check. Just check the tuning on a given open string, and then again on the 12th fret. If they don't match, it requires adjustment.

You mentioned in another post having difficulty with barre chords. One suggestion there is to roll your index finger over a bit so that you are using more of the side of your finger rather than the bottom of it. If I try to barre using the bottom, I can never get it to lie flat enough to cover all the strings equally. Rolling it a bit to the side will get them all every time though.
 

Elio

Student Of The Blues
thanks for the invite but I left there in 1998 for the East Coast. I'm now in Lehigh Valley area of PA, if anyone wants to reach out and either get something going like that or if there is one I can join. I really, really need to both get out, both for mental health and play with others for my progress. I have never really played in front of, or with anyone.

Take a look at the "People to jam with" topic in the Gigs & Jams forum. There is a list of members in various areas that are willing to meet up. https://bluesguitarunleashed.com/forum/index.php?threads/wanted- people-to-jam-with-protected.9579/. I don't see any in PA, but there are some in neighboring states that may be within a reasonable distance. You can also post that in the forum to see if you can make a connection.
 

Griff

Vice Assistant General Manager
Staff member
Apologies for being so late to this party... I was pretty sick last week and got real behind on a lot of things :)

@Stanley if, as you say, others have played your guitar without incident, but when you play it, it goes out of tune, that almost surely indicates a technique issue... but saying exactly what that issue is, would be a challenge without seeing you play.

I don't think it's as simple as "pushing too hard," because if that were the case I think it would happen to a lot of people, and it just isn't a common thing at all. Yes, I can get my strings to go out of tune if I push hard enough, but it takes a huge amount of pressure and if you're exerting that much pressure on the fingerboard casually, either you're order of magnitude stronger than most of the rest of us, or there's something else at play.

Is it possible for you to video yourself strumming some chords on your electric? Ideally position the camera at an angle to your fretting hand, but still far enough away that I can see the rest of you.

I think we could figure out what's going on and correct it with some practice easily enough.

And I wouldn't go heavier than about 11s on the strings, probably 10s. I use 10s, most people use 9 or 10 and that works out just fine. Guitar is a "graceful" instrument, so it will require some practice to approach it that way, but it's certainly not out of reach.
 

Stanley

Blues Newbie
Apologies for being so late to this party... I was pretty sick last week and got real behind on a lot of things :)

@Stanley if, as you say, others have played your guitar without incident, but when you play it, it goes out of tune, that almost surely indicates a technique issue... but saying exactly what that issue is, would be a challenge without seeing you play.

I don't think it's as simple as "pushing too hard," because if that were the case I think it would happen to a lot of people, and it just isn't a common thing at all. Yes, I can get my strings to go out of tune if I push hard enough, but it takes a huge amount of pressure and if you're exerting that much pressure on the fingerboard casually, either you're order of magnitude stronger than most of the rest of us, or there's something else at play.

Is it possible for you to video yourself strumming some chords on your electric? Ideally position the camera at an angle to your fretting hand, but still far enough away that I can see the rest of you.

I think we could figure out what's going on and correct it with some practice easily enough.

And I wouldn't go heavier than about 11s on the strings, probably 10s. I use 10s, most people use 9 or 10 and that works out just fine. Guitar is a "graceful" instrument, so it will require some practice to approach it that way, but it's certainly not out of reach.
thanks Griff. hope you're feeling better.

I recorded some clips the other day, but needed to edit them. as they ended up a bit long, as I kept experimenting, and occasionally cussing. LOL

I'm also hesitant to buy the pushing too hard reason as its impossible to believe all the hard core rockers you see jumping all over and playing in really awkward positions are playing with a light and delicate touch in order to not bend strings out of tune. Even concentrating as hard as I can to barely touch the frets, it's difficult to get a pure tone.

on the cheap Epiphone LP, it really looks to me like the frets are really high. the action is actually pretty good. and when I watched my typical fingering, I wasn't pushing to the wood as I has thought, but the weight of the strings and the height of the frets I think combine to allow too much bending on the high strings at my normal pressure. having the fret board there to stop bending goes a long way to help. and I suspect that is why my acoustics all sound fine. But I run into problems on my better electric guitars too.

I'll see if I can grab a short clip out of what I shot that shows what's going on. or record a better one.

thanks!
 
Last edited:

Elio

Student Of The Blues
Here is a link.

That works!

I just grabbed my two closest guitars in my office, which are a G&L ASAT Deluxe Carved Top and a ridiculously inexpensive Monoprice strat to see if I could match the pitch variation that you getting on the first couple frets. The ASAT has had a professional fret leveling and plays great, while the Monoprice is pretty much untouched since I got it but plays reasonable well.

I honestly can't even come close to matching your pitch on either guitar no matter how much pressure I exert. If I pluck a string at maximum pressure, I get a slightly sharp note but as soon as I release it to the correct pitch, any additional release mutes it. In other words, there is vary little variance between a very slightly sharp pitch and the correct pitch.

At least on the guitar used in the video, my guess is that your nut is high and causing much of the problem. What I am seeing in your video looks/sounds exactly like what my Ibanez was like before I had the nut filed down.
 

dvs

Green Mountain Blues
@Stanley, to me it does look like you're using quite a bit more force than needed. And the nut might be a little high, too. But more important, it also looks like you're bending the strings up (towards the ceiling) in addition to pressing them down into the fretboard. Are you using your thumb to grip the neck? I think that might be causing you to be pinching the string between your finger and your thumb, probably without intending to (or even realizing you're doing it), pulling the string towards your thumb. With your thumb over the top of the neck, the result is a bend. What happens if you bring your thumb around to the back side of the neck, put it right in the middle, and squeeze with finger and thumb?

Here's a quick video of what I think I'm seeing, hope it helps explain what I'm trying to say.


Anyway, that's my $0.02 worth. (Obviously, if Griff has something more or something different to say, you should listen to him & not to me ;):Beer:)
 
Last edited:

Stanley

Blues Newbie
That works!

I just grabbed my two closest guitars in my office, which are a G&L ASAT Deluxe Carved Top and a ridiculously inexpensive Monoprice strat to see if I could match the pitch variation that you getting on the first couple frets. The ASAT has had a professional fret leveling and plays great, while the Monoprice is pretty much untouched since I got it but plays reasonable well.

I honestly can't even come close to matching your pitch on either guitar no matter how much pressure I exert. If I pluck a string at maximum pressure, I get a slightly sharp note but as soon as I release it to the correct pitch, any additional release mutes it. In other words, there is vary little variance between a very slightly sharp pitch and the correct pitch.

At least on the guitar used in the video, my guess is that your nut is high and causing much of the problem. What I am seeing in your video looks/sounds exactly like what my Ibanez was like before I had the nut filed down.
Thanks.
I really am hardly pressing at all.
The strings feel soft as noodles.
Very easy to bend in any direction.
Buy I'm trying only to bend down across the fret toward the wood. It takes no effort at all to press to the wood. You can hear how much the pitch changes.
I still think the frets maybe very high. The angle of bend in the string viewed from the side, looking down as the player, appears enormous.

I suspect that the setup I paid for did nothing but put on new strings. Which I didn't want or need, as they'd never been played. I strummed a few chords out of the box and it was so unplayable I took it right in for setup. I noticed zero improvement when I got it back. Never touched it again for almost 2 years.
 

Stanley

Blues Newbie
@Stanley, to me it does look like you're using quite a bit more force than needed. And the nut might be a little high, too. But more important, it also looks like you're bending the strings up (towards the ceiling) in addition to pressing them down into the fretboard. Are you using your thumb to grip the neck? I think that might be causing you to be pinching the string between your finger and your thumb, probably without intending to (or even realizing you're doing it), pulling the string towards your thumb. With your thumb over the top of the neck, the result is a bend. What happens if you bring your thumb around to the back side of the neck, put it right in the middle, and squeeze with finger and thumb?

Here's a quick video of what I think I'm seeing, hope it helps explain what I'm trying to say.


Anyway, that's my $0.02 worth. (Obviously, if Griff has something more or something different to say, you should listen to him & not to me ;):Beer:)
I know what you're saying. I did notice on some pretaping tries on one or 2 notes the string was so soft I moved it up. I tried my best to not do it as I taped. In the note by note examples, I'm really using no pressure or strength, simply placing my fingers on the string to fret and then to wood. I feel nothing, absolutely nothing resisting. Also I don't ever play like that, of course. It was designed to show both how easy they bent and how far.

But the effect you saw was no doubt happening. I saw it myself earlier as I said. It's way too easy to move it in any direction. Especially when it has all that distance to travel.

I'm trying to get my pro friend over to check it this weekend. We'll collect measurements etc. I'll post the results.

I'm also going to try to get some stills close up.

Thanks.
 

TexBill

Blues in Texas
@Stanley, to me it does look like you're using quite a bit more force than needed. And the nut might be a little high, too. But more important, it also looks like you're bending the strings up (towards the ceiling) in addition to pressing them down into the fretboard. Are you using your thumb to grip the neck? I think that might be causing you to be pinching the string between your finger and your thumb, probably without intending to (or even realizing you're doing it), pulling the string towards your thumb. With your thumb over the top of the neck, the result is a bend. What happens if you bring your thumb around to the back side of the neck, put it right in the middle, and squeeze with finger and thumb?

Here's a quick video of what I think I'm seeing, hope it helps explain what I'm trying to say.


Anyway, that's my $0.02 worth. (Obviously, if Griff has something more or something different to say, you should listen to him & not to me ;):Beer:)
Doug, I believe your observation is spot on. I noticed the same thing you demoed in your video while watching Stanley play.

Another point, I also think think the nut may be slightly high. Not knowing the specs on his guitar, it is difficult to determine how much. And the angle video was shot at does not give a good view of the nut.

The other thing I noticed in his video was his technique of fretting. His finger is almost in the center between two fret wires. That is putting more pressure on the string when as you piointed out he grips over top of neck and squezes upward at the same time he is pressing down. In essence bend the string sharp...

My $0.02.
 

Elio

Student Of The Blues
Thanks.
I really am hardly pressing at all.
The strings feel soft as noodles.
Very easy to bend in any direction.
Buy I'm trying only to bend down across the fret toward the wood. It takes no effort at all to press to the wood. You can hear how much the pitch changes.
I still think the frets maybe very high. The angle of bend in the string viewed from the side, looking down as the player, appears enormous.

I suspect that the setup I paid for did nothing but put on new strings. Which I didn't want or need, as they'd never been played. I strummed a few chords out of the box and it was so unplayable I took it right in for setup. I noticed zero improvement when I got it back. Never touched it again for almost 2 years.

DVS makes a really good point that I hadn't noticed, which is that you do seem to have a but of upward motion, which in combination with other factors can make quite a difference. If you have a string action gauge or a small ruler handy, try to measure the distances of the unwound strings to the tops of the first couple frets. Based on how far down I see you being able to press the strings, it really looks to me as though they are fairly high.
 
  • Like
Reactions: dvs
Top