New Guitar Day!

Chrismas 2011 I picked up a nice Ibanez Artcore. Sounded and looked great. After playing it a bit at home, I found it was too thick for me to comfortably play, at least at this time. I’ve spent the past year or so looking at thinner bodied hollow body guitars. I’ve played a few but haven’t been impressed enough to buy any.

Yesterday I went up to Estes Park to check out the roads in the mountains, spend a few bucks in Estes Park (difficult to access with the washed out roads so businesses are suffering), and deliver a care package to a coworker (a couple of games, a movie, and a six pack of Left Hand Brewery Milk Stout). On the way back I decided to stop in at Robb’s Music in Boulder and spotted a pretty Ibanez Artcore AM93-AYS in “Antique Yellow”. I snagged one of the guys and asked if I could plug it in and give her a spin. The Ibanez sounded excellent, nice and clear. It was in tune too which is unusual to me.

I asked if it came with a gig bag or case and he said that it didn’t but he’d see if he could chase one down and give me a deal on it. Sure enough, he had a slightly oversized case. The guitar fit but with some movement. Find for storage but I wouldn’t want to use the case to take the guitar out on tour 🙂

I paid for it and took it home:

Very nice to play and quite light. I just finished up a Rocksmith event of 6 songs and it went better than I expected. I’ve made a note of the setlist and the next event will be the same but with the Les Paul. Just out of curiosity.

One of the songs I tried was Rush’s Red Barchetta. The problem I have with it are the Harmonics. Normally you press the string to the fretwire and pluck the string to make a sound. Harmonics are where you lightly touch the string at certain places in order to make a tone. It induces a wave along the string and gives you that different sound. You can hear it in Red Barchetta. But I’ve been struggling with Harmonics on the other guitars. But when I played Red Barchetta on the Ibanez, the Harmonics were so loud and clear, it was like a spike in my brain 🙂

I went from fumbling around trying to get the G12/A7/D7 and A4/D5/G5 riffs to being able to play the entire Harmonic riff for Red Barchetta (G12/A7/D7/A7/D7/A7/D7/D7/A7) and have it be nice and clear, just like when I watch Alex Lifeson playing it.

I suspect it is partly the pickups in the Ibanez and possibly my getting better at playing. I’ve been avoiding these songs (along with I Miss You and Space Oddity) just because the problem I’ve been having with Harmonics.

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