Tender Surrender by Steve Vai Guitar Tab

Pretty self-explanatory - here are the tabs for Steve Vai's "Tender Surrender", reformatted and optimized for printing.

Spray Painting a Guitar With the "Dish Soap" Trick

It's surprisingly easy to get this squeaky-clean guitar finish.  All it takes is spray paint, dish soap, a water bottle, and a guitar body you don't mind possibly messing up, just a little bit.

Ibanez Edge Zero Tremolos Demystified

A quick explanation of the complicated-looking Ibanez Edge Zero tremolos for the uninitiated

A bit of jazz improv / Lightswitch Strat demo

Some mediocre (but perhaps slowly improving?) jazz improv, focusing on the tension of flatted fifths and major sevenths, and demo-ing the sights and sounds of the fabulous Sparky.

Making a simple wood guitar rack

A fun little weekend project recently was building a guitar rack out of a plywood board and a dowel rod.  It's not difficult, saves money, and the end product is something that you can customize and be proud of building yourself.

How to roll guitar fretboard edges

The difference in feel between a $200 guitar and a $2,000 guitar is largely the sum of small tweaks that just take the feel to the next level.  Rolling the fretboard edges is one such tweak that can take the comfort and playability of any guitar one notch higher.

What Kind of Guitar Pick to Use?

If you're a beginning guitarist, or if you just always gave more thought to which riff you were going to learn next than to what you were going to play it with, you might not know much about picking your plectrum.  

No problem, it's far from complicated, I'm just here to offer some tips that might help you along the way.

Different color wires exist for reasons

         At the end of the Lightswitch Strat build, I described the unusual wiring schematic and the incessant ground hum problem it faced - a noisy ground that became unbearably noisy when you make contact with any of the metal parts.  Why could it be so bad?

Stedman "Pro" Flying V Review (Spoiler - it's pretty rubbish)

What kind of guitar can you get on Craigslist for $10, an old airsoft scope, and some magic beans?  Well... quite possibly the worst guitar I've ever seen, and I build instruments out of garbage like it's an extreme sport.

Best Picks for Bass Guitar?

"Best?" I hear you ask with a raised eyebrow, lifting a finger to prepare an objection. 

"Well, I mean, I haven't really tried all that many different picks and I'm not even a great bass player to begin with, plus I'm restricting the search to affordable picks because paying $20 for a hand-shaped glass pick that I'll lose in five minutes just doesn't strike me as sensible, but these heavy Clayton acetyl picks work pretty well compared to the couple of other things I've tried in my day."

Your raised finger lowers, signaling that you've decided a counter-argument isn't really worth the effort of raising after all, and accept the lukewarm, unsolicited product recommendation with a small pile of salt.