Electric guitar for an acoustic player discussion

[fred4321]

Hi,
This is probably a silly post but here goes...

When I'm playing electric guitar songs/riffs on my acoustic, I find it pretty easy, even though bending and other nuances are restrained, but I enjoy it. I like to play electric oriented music on my acoustic.

I have a Telecaster which I like, but playing the same riffs and songs on the Tele, results in 'missing' the strings or other notes etc. This is a constant, no matter what I do to correct it.

Could it simply be that the tele is the 'wrong size' for me? That is, a different style of guitar e.g. hollow body would be the better choice.
cheers

[Dru Edwards]

Hi Fred. It might be the nut width and/or the string spacing that's throwing you off just a hair. The Tele would be 1 11/16". What's the nut width of your acoustic?

The other thing might just be how you're holding the guitar, which could be attributed to the size you were mentioning. Your picking/strumming hand might be off slightly.

Have you tried playing standing up just to see if you notice a difference? If you are playing standing up, try sitting down.

[Steve DeRosa]

Originally Posted by fred4321

...Could it simply be that the Tele is the 'wrong size' for me? That is, a different style of guitar e.g. hollowbody would be the better choice...

One of these might be a good choice if you do decide to go the hollowbody route - feels/weighs about the same as a Seagull mini-jumbo (mine's just a tick over five pounds), and the underwound P-90 pickups cover a broad range of styles; I've used mine for jazz comping, '50s/60s R&R and R&B, clean blues, early British Invasion, country - just about anything that doesn't require massive volume, and it's a lot of guitar for the money:



https://godinguitars.com/product/5th...i-cognac-burst

[rollypolly]

I think it’s mostly about adapting to the new guitar neck profile. But I have found that guitars like es-335 style are more similar to acoustic necks and so they’re easier to transition to , compared to fender all maple necks.

[lowrider]

Sorry to see that you are having trouble with you Tele. The Tele is probably more like 1.625 nut width and a tight radius, but I do think you will adjust if you work on it.

In November, I got my first electric, a Epiphone es335;



I've only been playing Martin guitars with 1 3/4 nut and 12 inch radius for the past 6 years and when I play the Epi, the only difference I notice is that it's so much easier to play. Go check one out and see how it feels to you. GC should giver you a 15% discount just for asking nicely

Give it a try, it might make things easier for you.

[waco kid]

Originally Posted by Dru Edwards

Hi Fred. It might be the nut width and/or the string spacing that's throwing you off just a hair. The Tele would be 1 11/16". What's the nut width of your acoustic?

The other thing might just be how you're holding the guitar, which could be attributed to the size you were mentioning. Your picking/strumming hand might be off slightly.

Have you tried playing standing up just to see if you notice a difference? If you are playing standing up, try sitting down.

I had the same issue with my Casino, which I play sitting down. I just recently put a strap on it and that made a world of difference. It seems to hold the guitar in a better position for me....

[Brent Hutto]

If you think a telecaster is suitable for the kind of music, you want to play, just play a telecaster. Trying to match an electric guitar to the exact dimensions, neck shape, and everything else of your acoustic guitar is a Dead End. You do not fret, pick, strum, or play an electric guitar like an acoustic. It is simply a different instrument. The rabbit hole you’re about to go down is going to lead you to using heavy strings on some sort of big, hollow body and it still isn’t going to end up playing like your acoustic or being suitable for the Kinda licks you’re trying to play.

[rmp]

I have a King pin and I like it, but if you can try one, definitely do so.

The neck profile is pretty beefy, it will arrive with 12 guage round wounds.

I had a hard time with the setup when I first got mine. (small hands)

I eventually settled on 10 gauge flatwounds and that opened things up for me and my hands.

It is a nice little jazz box, (ps: have a tele too and these are not like the other)

[Steve DeRosa]

Originally Posted by Brent Hutto

If you think a telecaster is suitable for the kind of music you want to play, just play a telecaster. Trying to match an electric guitar to the exact dimensions, neck shape, and everything else of your acoustic guitar is a Dead End. You do not fret, pick, strum, or play an electric guitar like an acoustic. It is simply a different instrument. The rabbit hole you’re about to go down is going to lead you to using heavy strings on some sort of big, hollow body and it still isn’t going to end up playing like your acoustic or being suitable for the kinda licks you’re trying to play.

Since rmp covered some of my key points above, I'll address the others:

• I owned a Tele - in fact, one of the first run of '52 reissues from 1982 - and they definitely have their place;
• Don't know if you've ever played a Kingpin or CW II, but if someone dropped one in your lap in a blindfold test you'd be hard-pressed to distinguish it from a Seagull mini-jumbo (FYI they also make a "jumbo" Kingpin for the J-200/F-50 crowd) until you put pick to strings - I've A/B'd one against an Entourage mini-jumbo and the feel was close enough that an owner wouldn't need to make any significant initial changes in left-hand technique to hit the ground running, which leads me to:
• There's absolutely no question that electric requires a more-controlled and cleaner approach in the grand scheme - IME a lot of crossover flattop players give up when they discover that they can't rely on acoustic sustain and body resonance to mask any potential technical faults (pretty much the same reason they can't handle an acoustic archtop either, but that's a whole 'nother story...);
• Not all hollowbodies require heavy strings, although the raison d'etre for these instruments is to get some "wood" into your amplified tone (which does in fact mandate heavier gauges on more heavily-built guitars, like the ES-175 or New York-era Epiphone Zephyr Regent, and if you've never played an LP or 335 with 12's/13's it's a whole different sonic palette) - - and let's face it, the electric-guitar world is one great big rabbit hole of body styles, pickup types, amplification, stompboxes, whether or not to upgrade hardware, etc.;
• While rmp uses flatwound 10's on his hollowbody with excellent results (as I do on my White Falcon - which also shipped with 12's in its Brooklyn days), all those fleet-fingered '50s jazzers and rockabilly cats used nothing lighter than 12's, and pulled off riffs that are still being copied to this day - I had flatwound 12's on my Tele (still have 'em on my Strat, CW II, and '64 Gretsch Double Annie BTW), and with a good pro setup you can drop the action far lower than with roundwounds, which makes it possible to do "electric" techniques while enjoying the added woodiness and stronger signal (if you ever wondered why Fenders from back in the day never sounded thin or edgy, this is it) resulting from the increased vibrating string mass...

[jseth]

I think your issue is that you have not yet surrendered to the simple fact that playing an electric guitar and playing an acoustic guitar are just two very different endeavors...

While what you know with an acoustic is valuable, in many ways, on the electric guitar, trying to play both of them "the same way" won't work for you! Keep digging into that Telecaster and discovering the things that you love about electric guitars...

There are so many fun differences, some subtle, some not-so. It can take a long time to really get your electric "chops" to the point where you can express yourself equally fully on both acoustic and electric. Personally, I find electric guitar much easier to play and make sense of, when playing with others... but you are never going to have that Tele feel exactly like your acoustic guitars...

[fred4321]

Hi all,
So many sage posts I wanted to quote.

As an FYI the nut width of my Maton Acoustic is 44mm (1.736" - 1 47/64"), with my tele being about 1.65" to 1-11/16" (42-43mm). While searching specs I did see a variation for my 2011 MIM Tele.

The transition from acoustic to electric I acknowledge has a different technique, but I enjoy using the tele for rhythm-no probs. I haver no intention of getting rid of it.

I do have a problem 'choking' the electric guitar when playing as I am heavy handed which I make sure I am aware..

I had other acoustics with smaller nut sizes that I did move on re play-ability. The Maton acoustic width works for me.

Funny enough, I have been looking at at semi hollow types as an alternative. But I do like the single coil tone.

[Steve DeRosa]

Originally Posted by fred4321

...As an FYI the nut width of my Maton acoustic is 44mm (1.736" - 1 47/64"),... The Maton acoustic width works for me.

Funny enough, I have been looking at at semi-hollow types as an alternative. But I do like the single-coil tone.

The Godin CW II's nut is 1.725", like the modern Gibson acoustics but with a definite D-shape - should be right up your alley if you're OK with a full-hollow (and if you're serious about the electric game you will need one sooner or later)...

If you're willing to go up to 1-3/4", this variation on the Epiphone Casino theme might tickle your fancy:



https://www.eastmanguitars.com/t64_v

[j3ffr0]

Electric guitars have the strings a lot closer together. Recognizing the need for the required adjustment has always been enough to solve the problems when switching between different guitars with different string spacings for me. It can take a 5-10 minute warm-up period when making big adjustments, but after that I find that my accuracy is good enough. It wasn't always this way, but over the years I've found that the more I switch and adapt the better I get at it.

[Bob Womack]

You know, it might be early enough in your endeavor that you just need to spend more time on the electric. For that matter, you have stated that you are attempting the same music on the electric as you play on the acoustic.

There are a couple of points to be made here:
1. The neck, action, and ergonomics of th typical electric are different from those an acoustic. There really is some adaptation to be done in the transition.
2. You might be trying to make the one behave like the other. These are two really quite different birds. Never try to make an instrument do something it doesn't want to do unless you want a new, progressive sound to emerge. There is a saying, "Never try to teach a pig to dance. You will get filthy and you will annoy the pig." Transferring music between the two instruments isn't simply picking it up from one and putting it on the other. It is adapting the music to fit the strengths of each instrument, and possibly even rearranging it.

For instance, I play some instrumental melodies on electric guitar where I have adapted the vocal techniques of jazz singers by pre-bending some notes to pitch before I sound them and then drop the pitch as soon as it is sounded or drop down a fret below the intended pitch, prebend to pitch, sound the note, and perform left-hand vibrato going both flat and sharp from the pitch. Both of those techniques produce striking differences in sound from normal electric fretboard techniques. I wouldn't try them on acoustic guitar because the strings are too taut to allow me to pull them off.

Bob

[nostatic]

Originally Posted by Bob Womack

You know, it might be early enough in your endeavor that you just need to spend more time on the electric. For that matter, you have stated that you are attempting the same music on the electric as you play on the acoustic.

^^^ this

I have played guitar for 50+ years, and almost exclusively gigging electric (with some acoustic thrown in) between the mid 70's through the late 80's, then doubling with bass until 2000 or so. At that point I didn't pick an electric up very often, and went years without even having one - was exclusively gigging on bass.

Over the past decade, I've picked guitar back up here and there and always struggled on electric. Despite having all that previous experience. Over the last year or so I've been woodshedding acoustic guitar and added an electric back into rotation (along with a dobro). I'm back to being comfortable on electric but it took deliberate practice.

No substitute for time in the saddle, and as others have noted, acoustic and electric are two different instruments that just look the same if you squint real hard. While a Tele and a 1-5/8" nut may not be for you, I'm going back and forth between the OM-28eMD which is 1-3/4" nut and 2-1/4" string spacing, to two different electrics, one that is 1-11/16" and the other 1-5/8". When I first picked them up was I shredding? Hardly - more struggling that shredding. But muscle memory is a thing that develops (or comes back) if you spend the time and effort.