tech

There’s more than one way to tune a guitar, you know. The standard low-to-high EADGBE tuning has been commonplace for ages, but plenty of familiar songs take musically fascinating advantage of a variety of alternate tunings. Here are the names and structures of five such tunings (listed low to high in parentheses), along with examples of popular songs that use...

A loudspeaker in cross section as seen from the side. The voice coil is a moving part attached to the apex of the cone below the domed dust cap; it does not touch the magnet structure in which it is very precisely seated. In the most common form of blown speaker, the voice coil is damaged such that it does...

A good voltmeter/multimeter is extremely important. With this, you can check cords, AC and DC voltage, and even for troublesome voltage leaks and ground faults that can shock a guitar player when he walks up to a mike. RadioShack has many different models and price ranges, so you should be able to find what you need there. A battery tester...

What is a humbucking pickup? What does it do? What does it sound like? And why is it called that? A humbucking pickup is a type of pickup that is especially good at doing two things. First, they’re designed to solve the problem of suppressing external noise; built with two coils in a way that makes them cancel the annoying...

Here is a TECH TIP for our friends at Seymour Duncan showing you how to dial in your pickups: By Frank Falbo, Seymour Duncan VP of Products Most guitars have screws around the pickups for adjusting pickup height. Most guitar factories adjust the pickups to a median height, but why not find the best height for your tone? While you...