Entry Level Acoustics You Can Pretty Much Keep Forever

Greetings and Salutations to all in Shred Nation!

HELLO 2 all and 2 all a good morning Spencer here back with another newsletter. Got some off the wall info for ya in today's edition not the usual fare and not a whole lot of "shredding" but some genuinely useful information that has been on my mind this week that I've been just backed up with like this picture until I get to squirt it out to you guys:

Entry Level Acoustics You Can Keep Pretty Much Forever
Get The Giant Headrush Pedalboard For Cheap As $hit
Overlooked Female Rock N Roll Band That Will Brutally Kick Your Ass
Some Guitar Exercises for The Training Professional

Cheap But Hella Good Acoustics You Might Not Know About

Hey here's kind of a wild factoid about me - I don't own a single 6-string acoustic guitar. Well that's actually not true. I don't have any idea who's trunk it's floating around in but I own a Yamaha Silent Steel String Guitar that I bought because our old drummer told me that you had to play stages as big as Dave Matthews to play an acoustic guitar onstage without it feeding back. So instead of arguing with him I just said ok I'm gonna buy this dumb fucking fake guitar and anytime someone asks "why do you have that silent 'acoustic' guitar?" I'll get to tell them the story about how you said that only Dave Matthews can play acoustics onstage without them feeding back. You'll find history has confirmed this! All that to say, the Yamaha actually does sound great and never feeds back.

I digress. Here are a few entry level acoustics that actually sound and play really well and are not like bullshit, beginner, guy trying to make quick commission kinda thing:

Seagull Guitars

In general I think Seagulls are a really great value and are often overlooked and certainly overshadowed by the big names in the acoustic game. They are never at the table with Martin and Taylor, and probably get outsold (I haven't checked the stats so don't quote me) by Takamine, Fender and Guild but Seagulls always sound good including the lower end models. With a good setup these can be super solid guitars with massive bang for your buck.

This guy right here has a demo model for like $550. Find that shit used. The electric-acoustic version has Fishman electronics, not super fancy stuff but still nice. Getting anything long term usable in a semi-professional setting for well below a grand is a win in my book.

Owned by Godin and handmade in Canada! Our good friends to the North. These are not cheap quality overseas productions.

Zager Guitars

A student of mine told me about these as his dad was a big fan and owned a few. He had a great great guitar collection. Zagers are known for their slogan "EZ Play Custom Guitars" which I guess entails all of this stuff. Which boils down to neck shape, a good factory setup, lighter strings, string spacing, and personalized quality control. I actually have played quite a few Zagers and they generally ARE easier to play than most acoustic guitars right off the shelf.

I wish I had written this newsletter last week because he's running a Buy One Get One Free sale right now. Yeah I know that sounds fucking insane, but it really is buy one guitar and get one free. A whole ass guitar. Just team up with somebody and you can each get yours for half off. You get an accessory pack that's worth like $600 too with every purchase. By the time this newsletter goes out the sale will be over, but hopefully this puts it on your radar and he'll do another one for the next holiday I know this isn't like a huge fluke one time thing.

Anyway, again these are nice guitars, his lowest model starts at $795 I believe and although that may seem high for what I'm calling "entry level" consider that you could spend $795 for a guitar you'll keep for a long time and enjoy playing or you could spend I don't know 550 or 600 for something that's kind of a piece of shit. In the grand scheme of things maybe it's worth waiting it out to get something worthwhile?

They also have 100% satisfaction guaranteed and pay shipping both ways. Small company, I don't really know why they do it. I guess his more expensive guitars aren't that cheap and they sell direct so there's no middleman? If anyone has any other info or experience let me know but like I said the guitars are great and the price is right!

I Accidentally Hacked the Headrush Pedal System Again

If you follow me on Insta you may have seen me post about using the Headrush MX5 for gigs. I love the MX5, it fits everywhere (and I mean EVERYWHERE) and once you download IR's it becomes pretty much the same vessel as the much more expensive Helix or Quad Cortex or whatever. Sure those may have more powerful processors, but the MX5 again is way smaller, lighter, and the user interface is like caveman simple. They're $399 new. Great.

So I was talking to a friend last week who asked me if I had a recommendation for a multi effects pedal, said he didn't want to have 50 things in a pedalboard chain anymore. Wanted to keep to around a $600 budget if possible. I first asked if he wanted just a multi FX or if he wanted an all-in-one with an amp sim, direct out etc. which he replied that he did. So of course my go to is the MX5. I have two.

Then I thought about it and Headrush just came out with the Headrush Prime Pedalboard which is their new giant one that features a vocal fx chain and 12 programmable footswitches. Ok that's rad, it's great, it's huge, whatever it's also $1200 new. But that got me thinking, it replaced the old Headrush Pedalboard which was the same size and had basically the same features besides the vocal chain and I bet that dropped the price significantly on V1. And I was right. Now you can find that shit used for like $500-550.

This is on Reverb right now for $525!

The old Pedalboard V1 cannot do the Amp Capture, vocal fx, and some other things that the Prime can do and it also doesn't ship with some of the preloaded Impulse Responses. BUT if you're looking for a big floorboard to use like an actual pedalboard rather than switching between rigs - meaning you'll use each footswitch to turn a specific pedal on and off - this is a super cost effective way to do it.

Just thought I'd share.

These Ladies Will Learn You How To Rock N Roll

Man, there's a couple things I wanna touch on here. I had a long ass day of driving yesterday between two gigs. I guess I drove about three and a half hours when it was all said and done going from my house north to Redondo and then back further south to Laguna and then back up to Long Beach.

don't get me started on parking in fucking redondo

My car is just playing random shit on shuffle and Take It Off by The Donnas comes on and I'm like fuck yeah. My band does a 90s/2000s night every Friday and I'm wondering to myself it this song would go over well or if people wouldn't remember it. It's 20 years old now. Secondly, I'm wondering what The Donnas sound like live, so I pull up a video of them on YouTube and I had my head blown straight out of my ass. The Donnas fucking rip so hard.

For real, from now on when I'm talking to students about putting on a show and being a good band in a "rock n roll" context the foundation for a good show could almost all be learned by watching a Donnas set. It's full of energy, everybody kills on their instrument, everybody sings great, it's not so polished that it sounds fake or anything. Playing everything a little too fast but still super clean. Man. Just watch this video:

Guitarist Allison Roberts is such a bad ass. Legit tone. You hear about Marshall stacks and Gibson guitars, ya know. Nobody is really doing that shit right? Sounds like doo doo a lot of the time. Her guitar sounds so god damn good. She sounds fucking great playing it. I don't know what kind of credit they get in music history as far as inspiring young female rock n rollers in the early 2000s and not that I get a vote but uh hey for what it's worth I think they're great.

Check out other live videos of them too they just fucking go for it every time, there's no bullshit they're really making music and getting their point across. Yes they sound like AC/DC. Yes we've heard this sound before. Yes the lyrics are, well exactly what you'd expect them to. But who gives a shit? It's good and its fun and they were the ones doing it at the time and they were great at it. I even watched some Donnas history and they had been playing in speed metal bands together since they were like 13 years old, really just cool shit best friends who played music together forever and waited until they were big enough and had enough clout and power to sign a good deal with Atlantic and not get super screwed over. Pour one out for em.

Some Angus Young Licks in Honor of Allison

I think it's fair to say that Angus Young was a huge inspiration for Allison Roberts of the Donnas so since its Donnas week at my house we're gonna learn some Angus licks. Definitely a massively important guitarist to know anyway for those of you unfamiliar, and not just because of his schoolboy outfit.

Here's a great quick Angus Young solo lesson from LA based Guitarist/Instructor Wes Theobald.

This is a solo that sounds a LOT like Angus Young and uses some tricks from famous AC/DC solos you may recognize, like the beginning of Highway to Hell, Thunderstruck, among others.

If that's not enough you can also check out yours truly teaching the HTH solo right here.

And speaking of Angus, if anyone out there hasn't seen the 1995 coming of age film titled Angus - this is your reminder to do so.

the soundtrack is nuts too. SUPER fucking good

FARE THEE WELL

OK that's it for today, kind of an easier playing week so I expect you to get through the AC/DC solo cuz it's not as difficult as the play examples usually are. I want to also say that at one of our shows this weekend a woman approached us and asked if we had CDs or DVDs available because she has a company that would buy in bulk to wholesale to China and she was VERY serious about this and made sure to get our phone numbers, email, website etc. So if you see me out here looking like this John Cena video, don't be surprised. I'm just living the dream.

As always hit me with any questions, comments, or concerns and we ALWAYS have new content coming out on Patreon if you want to get serious about learning the guitar!

UNTIL NEXT TIME