Re: Cloth behind nut
The the guitar i'm talking about is my Jackson DR-7 7-string. Do you have any idea how huge a reverse Jackon 7-string headstock is? Even when i put my full hand on the strings the headstock resonates when i play a chord even if it's muted. The wood makes the vibration transfer and there's no way to mute this with just my hands.
Whatever superstrat you had, was this by any chance a locking trem guitar?
Paul Gilbert has a rather clean sound, it's High gain, but not very much(listen carefully he sounds quite clean).
Muting all strings at all time will be a big hinderance to playing anything but boring lowend-chugging. You can't mute all the strings when playing a sweep or do two hand tapping. If you always have to mute every string then work on precision to not hit all the strings but just the ones you really want to hit. I'm not talking about vibrations from the tuned strings but i'm talking about behind the nut resonance that can't be controlled with the hands.
NO! If you don't mute everything not played on a sweep, it will sound like a mess! Like what you hear every Saturday at Guitar Center. Muting all strings at all times is necessary for any advanced style of rock playing ESPECIALLY sweep styles and tapping as well as circle picking and alternate picking stuff. The fast stuff. It takes practice, but both hands need to mute everything except the string you're playing no matter how fast. I learned this when I was a kid, reading a Steve Morse interview. When he talked about high gain technique.
Paul Gilbert sounds uses quite a bit of gain at times. It sounds clean because his technique doesn't allow the other notes to ring, causing the fuzzies and that's when you hear distortion. A very good player will keep only allow one note to sound at a time even with a fast sweep arpeggio or whatever. If you play it perfectly and articulate it correctly, it will sound like there's no distortion, just clean tone with a ton of sustain. Every note sounds perfect and separate from the next, even at ridiculous speeds.
Now if you listen to Kirk Hammet or someone who can't mute properly, he gets ring because he's not muting cleanly. His notes overlap and it fuzzes on him.
I've experienced the behind the nut resonance on the G string on a few strats, but was able to fix it. I still say it's a poor nut/angle thing. I play Gibson and Fender mostly, working at a store playing a ton of guitars and teaching lots of metalheads. When these kids say their guitar sounds messy and think it's bad pickups or too much ringing feedback, I'll grab their guitar, crank the amp and gain and play something and immediately stop. It's silent. I just say learn to mute everthing at all times.
There are two separate things here. Some guys use that to help with their poor technique. I've seen it. If there's ringing with proper technique it's got to be some setup issue and could be as simple as adding a string tree. I've just never experienced a correctly set up guitar, causing string noise/feedback from above the nut/headstock even with a ton of gain/volume.
Oh, and the reverse head super strat had NO lock nut.
They will never have this problem.
