These are Custom Guitars you can actually afford (under $1000)

Greetings and Salutations to all in Shred Nation!

Hello hello and welcome back to the newsletter. Had some busy weeks full of music making and merriment but I’ve finally returned to being hunched over a typewriter smoking unfiltered Lucky Strikes and chugging black coffee in a studio apartment for your journalistic entertainment. BUCKLE UP we’ve got a bit to cover here:

Can you buy a custom guitar for under $1000?
Guitar legend drama
New Pickup Music course dropped and it's Legit
Check my COVID-era Guitar Workout

AFFORDABLE CUSTOM GUITARS? THEY DO EXIST?

THEY DO EXIST! -- So I’m always on the lookout for gear that I don’t necessarily need and ways to keep my credit usage to limit ratio looking, well, BAD. Anyway I stumbled across a really incredible guitar builder out of Jalisco, Mexico who is building hand-made custom guitars that you can have ordered to your specs and delivered for UNDER $1000 USD. If you haven’t seen these already please familiarize yourself with Paragram Guitars.

Sure there are only a few different body styles, and they don’t have the never-ending Cheesecake Factory menu of options like some builders do - but I actually think that’s pretty cool. You can get in analysis paralysis sometimes with that sort of shit, and to be honest whenever I go to one of those burger places where you have 6,000,000 options I end up with some weird ass cheeseburger with all my favorite stuff on it that doesn’t really go together and I’m just like “fuck I am stupid.”

At the time I ordered mine, the solid body models were $700 and the semi-hollows were $800. Stock appointments are Wilkinson hardware and pickups, but you can upgrade to anything else for the cost difference, or send whatever parts you want to use directly to Carlos the builder/owner. Who by the way is a SUPER nice guy and really really accommodating. He’s gone above and beyond with communication and making sure I get exactly what I want, doing some custom options that he wouldn’t normally offer, as well as being super down to clown with implementing some funky extra electronics stuff.

I think this is a really cool option for someone looking to get a nice guitar that is made with human hands without breaking the bank as well as supporting smaller companies and artisan builders. Here’s a picture of mine which will arrive in a couple weeks. It has Gemini Wide Range Humbuckers, a medium V neck profile, swamp ash body, ziricote fretboard, cream binding, Graphtech ghost string saver saddles with piezo pickups, and a tonestyler varitone. Pretty fucking nuts, dude. I supplied all the extra parts but all in I’m at like $1300 maybe? 14? I get a discount on the Tonestyler and the Graphtech stuff but seriously that is an insane guitar for that price. Peep this pic and hit him up for a build. You put 50% down and the remainder when the guitar is done so you’re in like 350-400 bucks and then the same 4-5 months later.

REAL HOUSEWIVES OF THE SUNSET STRIP

I saw an Instagram post today from Nuno Bettencourt that I thought was so awesome. There’s real-life guitar person internet drama, and boy do I love that kind of shit. Me and my girlfriend watch all the trashiest reality shows (please ask me for recommendations but top of my list is temptation island followed by love after lockup) so seeing some housewife style shit between guitar icons is really funny.

Apparently Richard Fortus (replacement GNR guitarist) took issue with an interview Nuno Bettencourt (Extreme, Rihanna’s touring guitarist) did where he mentioned how difficult a gig like Rihanna is and how most rock guitarists would not be able to do it, including Slash. Fortus reposted the article and said something like “I have played with Rihanna and have done countless gigs with Slash, I disagree he would not struggle with this gig.”

Now first things first, Nuno Bettencourt is legitimately one of the best guitarists on earth. Everyone is straight up twerking on his crotch over the new Extreme single and the guitar solo and yeah it sounds like a Nuno Bettencourt solo, he is that good and he’s always that good. I took my girlfriend and my 80 year old dad to see Generation Axe (Tosin Abasi, Nuno, Zakk Wylde, Steve Vai, Yngwie) obviously everyone was great but man Nuno is SO slept on. He fucking rips x1000.

OK now that that’s out of the way here’s his post where he basically is just like fuck you Richard Fortus idk who you are and why would you post this and make me look like a dick to Slash”

Then I looked up the quotes from Nuno and it made me laugh pretty hard. The direct quote is “most guitarists could not in their lifetime play with Rihanna - even Slash. It’s only because of my diverse musical background that I’m able to keep up with this gig.” That's a little uh... I mean come on dude. There’s no reading between the lines, that’s just reading the lines.

So, do I think Nuno is wrong? He probably should have said it in a different way and also like who is he trying to impress by saying that playing these Rihanna songs is really hard. That’s great and he’s great at guitar and we all love him. I don’t think he’s better now for directly telling me that he’s better than other people. He’s still the same amount of better. Reply and weigh in if you have an opinion, this is really a “who gives a shit” but this stuff is so rare it’s pretty funny to me.

GREAT NEW ROCK N ROLL PROGRAM FOR GUITARISTS

I may think I know everything already but Confucius once said “a good teacher is always learning” or “buy my bikes” or something like that. Anyway there’s a relatively new Rock Music Pathway on Pickup Music and it’s honestly really good.

Taught by hat-wearing ginger man Joshua Ray Gooch, the class not only teaches a lot of essential techniques for playing rock music but what I love about it so much is that it teaches you some HISTORY of rock music. I think this is is such an important aspect that is missing from a lot of instruction these days. I will say as someone who has taught a lot of students in middle school, that is like the age equivalent of being an amoeba. You don’t know who you are yet, you’re not sure what kind of music you like, what’s cool what’s not whatever ya know. A lot of teachers ask a student in 6th grade “what bands do you like?” and they say “I don’t know.” And they’re probably not lying, they really don’t fucking know.

There’s no radio that they’re forced to listen to. There’s not like humongous PR campaigns for the new Coldplay or U2 albums or at least not like it used to be. Sure there are big bands but you don’t see bands on the side of city buses or billboards like you did 15 years ago. And just having the option to hear everything all at once on Spotify I think people can miss out on a lot of the essential listening as far as rock and guitar history goes. So this class teaches you licks, phrases, riffs, whatever in the style of famous guitarists and bands throughout the ages in chronological order featuring people like Chuck Berry, Smashing Pumpkins, The Cure, Van Halen, etc. All stuff you or your students should be aware of. Check it out here:

https://www.pickupmusic.com/master-classes/rock-learning-pathway

SHREDUCATION GUITAR WOODSHED WORKOUT

Hey guys remember COVID? Well I used to manage an in-person rock and roll music academy with around 200 students, and right when covid hit of course we had to switch everything over to virtual and we came up with a bunch of online master classes to temporarily take the place of our rehearsal hours. I unearthed some of MY masterclasses and thought it would be fun to share with you. It’s basically very VERY long form guitar gains, including some stuff from Chop Builders, Guitar Aerobics, Fretboard Freedom and other popular books and workouts along with some exercises I developed on my own. It’s long as shit, something like 30 pages for this first week, but it would probably only take about 15-20 minutes to get through depending on the tempo you choose. Works on alternate picking of course, but also some string skipping, sweep picking, and hybrid picking. Check it out and hit me if you need help on any part:

Guitar Pro and PDF here

FARE THEE WELL

WELP that’s it. I wanna also mention that this weekend we played our regular Friday night gig, ended at 1 am and got home around 2. Left for a friends wedding in Big Sur at 8 am the next day. Left Sunday morning at 8 am to drive back for a Dana Point concert in the park for a few thousand people. About a 5-6 hour drive each way. If you can believe it we actually made it on time to every event. We once drove 24 hours straight to Austin, Texas. Actually one time we were up for like 36 hours straight doing a gig and then driving straight to SF for a beer festival and then instead of staying up there we opted to drive home so we didn’t have to pay for a hotel. We’re a lot older now and a little wiser and don’t do stuff that’s that stupid anymore but, hey man the concert in the park was super fun. Here’s me greeting all my friends in the crowd:

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