Fender's one of a kind guitars, and a slide guitar crash course

Plus my thoughts on learning songs by ear and so much more

This week’s issue of Six String Sunday Club is filled with amazing people doing great work in the guitar world. We’ll be talking about how to play slide and how to set your guitar up for it, fancy Fender guitars, how to learn the modes in an easy way, and much more.

Right at the top here, if you’re not subbed to Six String Sunday Club’s paid tier, you should check it out! It’s only 5 bucks a month (even cheaper annually), and will have some cool perks along the way.

I just put out my first subs-only post this Saturday. It was a lot of fun talking about all the things I’ve learned from guitarists that have pushed the needle the most in them becoming a better player.

Alright, let’s get into this week’s links!

• Does Digital Sound Just Like Analog? - Brian Wampler uses the Wampler Pinnacle pedal and Amplitube to see how close he can get to the sound of a Fender Deluxe Reverb. He compares it to a real Deluxe Reverb, and while the sound isn’t dead on, it’s pretty close.

• How to Write a LEGENDARY Solo w/ Scotti Hill of Skid Row! - Get your shred ready! Ben Eller breaks down the solo from Skid Row’s “18 and Life”, and then talks to Scotti Hill to hear how he wrote the solo. If you’re a fan of 80’s guitar, this vid is a lot of fun.

• Learning Songs By Ear, and Getting Your Guitar Hero’s Tone - In this week’s episode of Chasing Sound Live!, I kicked off the show talking about why you might buy a certain piece of gear. I also talked about Equipboard, where you can find your favorite artist’s gear that they use. I closed out the show with a viewer request - how to learn songs by ear - where I talk about the importance of ear training, including a cool tool from EarMaster that you can use.

• Practice Routine - Creative Shredder Week - Day 1 - Speaking of shred, Kiko Loureiro has been doing an awesome “Creative Shredder Week” program on YouTube. He’s been splitting the course up into different days with a practice routine, exploring creativity and lots more. The best part is it’s free!

• Slide Guitar Crash Course - Rhett Shull is a fantastic slide guitar player, so I was excited to check out his slide guitar crash course video on YouTube. He said a lot of interesting things in regards to the tone, setup (or lack thereof), muting, and so much more behind slide playing. I’m going to be coming back to this video for a long time.

• Fastest Slide Guitar Setup… AND It’s Reversible! | Guitar Tech Tips | Ep. 97 | Thomann - And if you want to get your guitar set up for slide, and make it easy to switch back to a regular setup easily, check out this new video from Thomann’s Guitar & Basses.

• Guthrie Trapp - “Some Potentially Useful Ideas” - Guthrie Trapp is one of my favorite guitarists out of Nashville. Skip ahead to around 6 minutes in on this video for Guthrie’s helpful thoughts on blues 145’s and how learning to navigate that will help you in other genres of music, soloing over chord changes, and more.

• Melodic whammy bar / vibrato bar control – Animated licks of Mika Tyyskä – Guitar Lesson E6 - Great video from Mika Tyyska on using your whammy bar to reach different intervals, and rather than just using it for dive bombs, etc. using it melodically.

• Mayer Is King - Premier Guitar - I loved hearing Cory Wong and John Mayer geek out on the latest episode of Cory’s podcast. It felt like because Cory was a musician it was easier for Mayer to get across ideas to him. Also, don’t miss Cory’s video on mastering the pentatonic scale and his recent rig rundown.

• The Secret Behind SRV’s Tone - Everyone knows about most of Stevie Ray’s classic gear that made up his tone, but what about the pedal that’s not talked about, which widened SRV’s tone? I’m talking about the Roland SDD–320 Dimension D rack chorus. Check out Vertex Effects’ video on how to get the signature SRV album tone with some more modern day pedals.

• Just Try Stuff (Episode 1) - Use what you have! I love JHS and how funny their videos are, and this new spinoff show was a lot of fun to watch. Larissa chose 7 pedals for Nick and Addison to use to make a song. Larissa’s comment about the Danelectro Black Coffee pedal she chose, is kind of the motto for the whole experiment: “I know this could be bad, but this could also be amazing.”

• The UNIQUE Story Behind This Gibson Goldtop Les Paul - A while back I wrote about the Gibson Goldtop that Jared James Nichols rescued after being in a tornado. It’s so cool to hear Jared sit down with Marty Schwartz to play this guitar, and fill him in on the guitar’s storied past.

• Blowing The Lid on The Biggest Guitar Secret - This is a helpful video from David Wallimann where he breaks down a common beginner mistake - finger placement on the guitar. This is one of those subtle ways you can help your overall tone. Couple that with vibrato, and you’ll have a singing lead in no time.

• Fender unveils 2022 Custom Shop Masterbuilt Prestige and limited-edition Annual Collection models - I love looking at these one of a kind masterbuilt guitars from Fender. They range from around $9,000 to $36,000. While I’ll never be able to afford something like this, I always appreciate the craftsmanship, and enjoy seeing all of the masterbuilders different takes on what’s cool.

• Fender and Mattel partner for 16 one-of-a-kind Custom Shop Hot Wheels guitars, starting at $12,000 | Guitar.com | All Things Guitar - I had to include this link too, where Fender teamed up with Hot Wheels, for 16 one of a kind guitars, which also break the bank, starting at $12K. These are so fun to look at.

• How to solo using the CAGED scale - I loved this lesson from Guitar World, where they show us how to use the CAGED system in our lead playing, with 4 different licks. Not only that, but they also give some music to check out that uses this type of CAGED approach.

• Guitar modes: how to learn all 7 major modes the easy way - It looks like Matt Warnock’s classic post on how to learn all 7 major modes has been updated. This has long been one of my favorite posts on the modes, and I’ve used it to teach students for years. Matt gives us an easy way to learn the modes a little out of order, but by only making one note change per time.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading Six String Sunday!

Want to learn guitar? Sign up to take guitar lessons with me!

If you’d like to support my work, check out the Chasing Sound merch store.

You can find me at: Chasing Sound, Twitter, YouTube, Discord, Instagram, Facebook and even TikTok.