Electric guitars and age.
 

From that thread on going between acoustic and electric I realized my electric guitars are used more for being more arthritis friendly, and the Spark Mini amp can keep the house quiet even relative to an acoustic guitar. Sound familiar?

The electrics were also good for some sports injury recovery.

This doesn't mean I'm old and in pathetic shape. I work to meet or beat means and medians for capabilities, and do some adventure sports at expert level. It is just easier to get injured and now recovery is long or impossible.

We are not old, we are vintage! I agree.

My relicked body really shows its age every morning.

I primarily play electric these days. I'm 34, with two kids 3 and under in the house. I work from home and use guitar as stress relief or when I can't look at code anymore. If I play my acoustic the whole house will wake up, so I play electric. Also, 4 years ago I cut a bit of the tendon in my left index finger so it's much weaker than it used to be. Electric guitar has helped a ton in building strength back so now when I do play acoustic I can play for more than 10 minutes at a time without pain.

After playing acoustic and electric guitars for 25 years I began developing issues with my wrist. My doctor advised me to stop playing guitar. So I started playing piano and have been enjoying taking a new road and the journey continues. With the change I've also shifted to music from the Great American Songbook.

I have the same issues with noise in the house, and yes, I've got older finger joints too.

Oddly, I've been going through a bit of an acoustic guitar phase this winter. When I can get to my studio space and it's quiet enough there to play acoustic, I treasure that time when I can uncase one of my acoustics.

If I'm recording there I've often figured out the chords and voicings on an unplugged electric at home. One thing I've found: what sounds good with the plinky sound of a Tele or 339-alike semi-hollowbody unplugged will sometimes not work with a real acoustic.

The old finger joints can sometimes constrain what chord voicings I can use, and I no longer bend strings on the higher-tension acoustic guitars string sets much, but I don't (thankfully) find it particularly painful to play most days. The advantage of an electric on some "bad days" is that playing single note "lead guitar" uses the joints differently.

My hands are old. My hands and wrists have multiple injuries (nerve entrapment, etc.). So I've tried to get comfortable playing electrics. While they are much easier to fret, I can't seem to get the overall ergonomics right. Maybe it's because I've long played in the classical position, and I can't make that work with the electrics I've tried so far. Whether holding it in my lap or standing with a strap, I just can't relax, which adds tension especially to my left hand, which is where most of my issues are. But I keep trying!

Has anyone experienced this kind of thing? And have you found a way to overcome it? (My Epi Casino is fairly comfortable, but when I sit with it on my right thigh, the thing keeps falling off my leg. And when I stand with it, the tension and pain in my left shoulder is just too much.) And don't get me started on the narrow string spacings!

My thoughts:

• Check out a Godin CW II, a dual P-90 (also available with humbuckers), full-size single-cut hollowbody in the mold of the original postwar ES-175D; similar in overall feel to the Seagull mini-jumbo - the weight (mine's just a tick over five pounds on the strap - a full two pounds lighter than many Casinos) and neck are virtually identical - the underwound P-90's and lightweight body woods give it a clear, airy tone reminiscent of a (similarly-constructed) Brooklyn Gretsch, that lends itself well to a variety of not-too-heavy electric styles. QC and playability are what you would expect from Godin, Tony Bennett's guitarist used one on tour for a number of years - I'd tend to think neither he nor his boss were about to make any compromises on tone - and unless you can find a dead-mint or NOS Korean-built Gretsch Electromatic 5400/5600-Series, IME there's nothing out there in the under-$1K bracket that comes close...
• If you need a smaller body size, several manufacturers offer semis and hollowbodies with 14"/15" widths, similar to 00/000 acoustics. Good thing is that there's a broad variety out there, from entry-level Ibanez AM/AG and Epiphone 339 models, to mid-price Gretsch and Eastman, to top-of-the-line mass-production and luthier-built instruments; while the semis may be heavy, an Epi Casino Coupe should come in somewhere in the five-pound bracket - significantly less than the full-size version, and comparable to some of the small-body Westerly (USA)-built Guilds...
• If you're dealing with the twin problems of excess weight on one shoulder and sliding off your lap, there are a couple makers who produce a harness-type strap that allows the weight to be evenly distributed between both shoulders when standing, and alleviates sliding when seated - unless you change instruments several times during the course of a set, one of these might be a viable (and inexpensive compared to a new guitar) option - but who needs an excuse to buy a new addition to the stash... :cool:

For me it's just a matter of whom I get to play with. For the past five or six years, I've only had chances to play acoustic, so that's what I play. If everyone I know wanted to play electric, that's what I'd be doing. Just the luck of the draw.

But my acoustics are all comfortable. Sometimes I have to take a break for nerve damage or tendonitis, but mostly I just get to play. I'm 71.

I have a couple electrics, 2 nylon-stringed, a tenor guitar, and 3 ukulele’s all for the same reason. My aging body, some nerve damage from chemotherapy etc.

Each of those instruments has lower tension than the steel strings and they yield pleasant sounds. No matter how bad I might be feeling- I can always have something to play.

Ironically- my wife really enjoys hearing me noodling around with an electric. We’re mid-60’s so it makes me laugh that she seems to prefer the sound of the electrics.

Thanks a lot for your thoughtful reply, Steve. Funny you should mention the Godin and the Casino Coupe. I've been considering both.

I switched from electric to acoustic a few years after high skool. That is why my hearing is pretty much ok. All my songs were on a dred with 13s

Last 4 - 5 years I got back into electric because my interest moved towards playing lead/rhythm electric and playing more southern rock style than the Bluegrass style which I’d been playing previously.

So I’m now doing a lot full tone bends, double stop bends etc on a Les Paul, 335 and a Broadcaster.

I’m finding that to be harder on my fret hand than playing the acoustic dread with 13s. Starting to notice a bit of wear and tear on that hand but after about half an hour in the morning it’s as mobile as it ever was so I haven’t lost any dexterity yet but I guess it’s comin.

Still playing acoustic but I got sick of open mics so now I’m doing an electric jam band every Saturday kind of thing.

I started playing my acoustics is a sorta-classical position. I often sit to play my electrics and will rest them on my left thigh more than my right. The thinner bodies don't seem to bother me, as part of the sorta-classical position thing with acoustics was to keep the bodies away from torso. Something really narrow like an SG can be an issue, but Teles/Les Pauls/etc less so.

You know what weirdly works well with left thigh classical position? A Flying V. It is a long reach to the 1st postion by the nut, but the rest of the guitar really "sits" well when held in that way.

Right thigh sitting players sometimes prefer the "Offset" electrics like the Fender Jaguar and Jazzmaster which don't have the lower thigh cutout in the symetical middle of the guitar body.

I've been playing both acoustic and electric since 1970. I've had some health periods (allergy to Statin drugs) that involved retrenching to the electrics because they didn't hurt as much to play. That's when I discovered this truth: tall (jumbo) frets require less fretting pressure than mediums or medium jumbos by a country mile. In fact, they require less pressure or the string will be pulled out of tune. Combine that with extra light strings (.009) and you can survive many health challenges.

It isn't for everyone but it worked for me.

Bob

Yep tell me about it

When your face begins to look like a hammered set of John Deere heavy equipment tires, ya ain't no spring chicken :D

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