The Guitar Compromise Spectrum
Last week, I talked about dancing the Compromise Waltz with our guitars. While I like the image of all of us one-two-three-ing around the place, I think there’s a better term what I’m about to discuss:
The Guitar Compromise Spectrum
So much of these instruments we love involves some sort of compromise.
We want to have super low action but our style has us hitting the guitar really hard and aggressively. We have to consider whether the fret buzz we encounter is the price we’re willing to pay or whether we’re happy to raise the action or change our style.
We want great big bends but love how our vintage radius fingerboard feels to play. Do we pay for some fret-work trickery to make it a little better, replace the neck for a compound radius, or live with what we’ve got?
We want a bucketful of greasy gain but we don’t want to sacrifice clarity and focus. Do we go for Mega-Hot Distorto-Shredd™ pickups or do we pick something less hot and try get our gain at the amp or effects?
We want more output so we raise our pickups but the magnetic field starts to impact the string vibration, killing sustain or causing wolf tones or even fret buzz.
We want to be able to pick up our electric and play it acoustically without any buzz but don’t want it set up like an acoustic. We want the great tone of a stop tailpiece but would like better intonation or we love how our three-saddle Tele sounds but chording higher up the neck drives us nuts.
And there’s more, and more, and more. If all of those links above make this read like Gerry’s Greatest Hits, it’s because I’ve written about compromise a lot. And I’ll certainly do so again.
So many decisions about our hardware and setup require that we spend some time considering where we want to land on the Guitar Compromise Spectrum.
Think about this and make a call that works best for you. It may not be exactly what you dreamed of but that’s the nature of compromise. I’ve said before that guitars and basses are not perfect instruments. Playing them will almost certainly require a little give and take.
When you’re thinking about setup and hardware, think about the Compromise Spectrum.
Then try find your happy place on it.
This article written by Gerry Hayes and first published at hazeguitars.com
