Post your funny experiances when you first started playing guitar!

[RebornRockist]

Tell the stories you look back on and laugh at of when you first started playing guitar. I'll start. Not knowing what Distortion was and not knowing that my peavey Rage 158 had a distortion channelTook me about 6 months to figure out it had one...(By that time I bought a Boss MT-2 thinking I needed it for my rock sounds because it had the most knobs). First time figuring out how to string my guitar...Boy was that fun...Took I dunno..3 hours? For some reason after hearing a chorus pedal thinking that I could hear chorus in every songs guitar solo's and that chrous was a must have for guitar solos???(dont ask me) Also gotta love havin my guitar cable stop working. For about 3-4 months used 1 really cheap cable I got for free from a musicstore on christmas eve when they were closed down and wouldnt sell my dad a cable so they handed this cheap one to him for free. So anyways used a really bad cheap cable running into my MT-2 with a $2 patch cable running from the output of my mt-2 to my amp:chairfall. Last one that I can think of at the moment was not realizing that I could use all my fingers on the fretboard for guitar solo's/lead work and only used my pointer finger for everything!:smack: Boy that was fun jumping over the fretboard with my 1st finger only while the others dangled in the air watching...

 

[Gearjoneser]

Re: Post your funny experiances when you first started playing guitar!

My first electric guitar/amp rig was the cheapest thing from the Sears catalog.
Literally, the Harmony guitar/SS amp rig was a whopping $60.

Before that, I had 2 acoustics from garage sales. One of them was a classical that I put electric strings on. After a hot summer, I opened the case, and the whole top of the guitar sprung out....totally delaminated from the body!

I remember asking a guitar store clerk for a pedal I'd seen in Circus Magazine....a Boss Flanger. I didn't know how to pronounce it, and the clerks started cracking up when they heard me ask for a 'flaynger.' LOL

And the funniest one was when I was hiding porn mags in a guitar case, under a guitar. Then, in front of relatives one time, I pulled the guitar out, and there's my aunt, uncle, and cousins looking down on my open case full of Hustlers! LOL

 

[WhoFan]

Re: Post your funny experiances when you first started playing guitar!

i spent 4-5 months in the early 80's with my dads acoustic on my lap with a bad Who music book that is oddly still around, trying to figure out why the music for WGFA didn't sound like the record... took me ages to find out that the book had changed the keys to suit Piano... they had it in the key of F instead of A.... The new Tab Who books are pretty good but man that was a fustrating few months!

 

[SonofaMitch]

Re: Post your funny experiances when you first started playing guitar!

lol, I tried learning a song in the wrong tuning, couldn't figure it out for a week!

 

[Stratovarious]

Re: Post your funny experiances when you first started playing guitar!

when I first saw "P.M" I thought it meant pour milk :|:|:|

parents got really pissed cause I wasted alot of milk LOL

im kidding about the wasting milk but I did think that at first :|

 

[Animal]

Re: Post your funny experiances when you first started playing guitar!

I didn't have a plectrum at first, so I played my acousitc guitar with those plastic tags that hold bags of bread loaves together.

 

[RebornRockist]

Re: Post your funny experiances when you first started playing guitar!

haha oh I remember another one... Hah I learnt all my basic chords upside down.... haha... I read them upside down on the sheet of chords.... Man I was slow when I was young... :smack:

 

[taphappy]

Re: Post your funny experiances when you first started playing guitar!

I bought an invader :/

 

[drew_half_empty]

Re: Post your funny experiances when you first started playing guitar!

for a long time i refused to learn to upstroke in my strumming cause downstrokes sounded tougher

i spent 3 hours trying to make a smooth transition from an open E chord to an open G chord


for awhile i tuned all my strings to the 5th fret of the one below it, even the B

i used to think my friend Jesse had the same kind of amp as everyone on TV cause it said marshall. He had an mg100

 

[fingerace]

Re: Post your funny experiances when you first started playing guitar!

I remember when I learned my first few chords, I found one or two songs lyrics with the chords on top. So I sat there, sang the song and every time I saw a chord name on top of the lyrics I strummed the guitar once! The song had 2 chord changes in every verse!

Then when I learned that I had to strum in a rhythm pattern continuously, I almost destroyed the guitar because I was using a really thick pick, and I really dug into the strings!

 

[CapoFirstFret]

Re: Post your funny experiances when you first started playing guitar!

My first amp was a stinger (made by Martin!) that died on me, then I bought a Peavey Audition Chorus amp that was 2x8 (I didn't know!) that turned out the speakers were so destroyed that only about 6" of cone was left on each speaker...I used that amp for almost a year without knowing that there was something wrong with it.

 

[Diego]

Re: Post your funny experiances when you first started playing guitar!

-Discovering the A minor chord by accident (tried an E mayor but put it one string 'under' than what it's supposed to) and strum it for hours, amazed at that sad melancolic sound... :laugh2:

-Realizing that you could slide a note from one fret to another! I felt like Clapton or something doing slides in completely out of any scale-note fashion. Boy that must have sounded like ****. Chicks dug it anyway.

-Then, realizing that you could bend strings to get a certain note! I felt like an idiot for not knowing before.

-Spending years playing my first electric guitar plugging into an Aiwa Mini Hifi System. 10 watts of pure Rock! :headbang:

-Then, getting my Yamaha 15 watt amp as a present for Christmas, and thinking the distortion was the ****!

-And last but not least, believing that you got the 'wah' sound by hitting the strings harder! I tried for sooo long... and of course it never happened. Thank you Kirk Hammett. :fing25:

EDIT: One more: When I got my Jackson KV4, the high E string broke only a few minutes after opening the box. It took me hours to realize how to swap it! That was my first encounter with a Floyd Rose. Now that was silly.

 

[JohnnyGuitar]

Re: Post your funny experiances when you first started playing guitar!

I think this thread belongs to the Sound Room...

Anyway...

Plugging a "Jazz box" guitar into a high gain Marshall was an interesting experience....

 

[Fresno Bob]

Re: Post your funny experiances when you first started playing guitar!

When I was a kid, I used to cut a file down my mom's old discarded credit cards to make a pick.

I didn't know how to tune a guitar to standard, so I'd tune it all open.

I didn't know how to hold a guitar, nor could I chord anything. So, I'd set the guitar flat in my lap (Jeff Healy style) and barre my thumb over the fretboard, zipping up and down while strumming.

 

[tubeman87]

Re: Post your funny experiances when you first started playing guitar!

Mr first guitar was as a strat style Memphis guitar. Man I bought that thing at a pawn shop, I thought I was the coolest mo'fracky in there.....I didn't realize that it was a 3/4 size guitar, and let me tell you when your 6ft and 220+lbs it looks funny. My first amp was a small maybe 8in spreaker Hondo amp, the tone control was broken but I thought it was the JUnk!!!

I also use to refer to a wah pedal as a wah wah pedal all the time, people thought I was some retard asking for water.

 

[RebornRockist]

Re: Post your funny experiances when you first started playing guitar!

Ya I remember cutting tear drop shapes outta cardboard and using them as picks... didn't work too well hah.. Also not really knowing what pinch harmonics were so I had a guy show me and he said put your thumb close to the pick and hit the string so its hitting the thumb and the pick and then hit the string moving from left to right between the pickups to find the sweet spot.. Not knowing what a sweet spot was I thought pinch harmonics were doing the sweeping motion of picking the string at different spots on the string just going from left to right and back on the string... So I sat their doing that thinking I was doing pinch harmonics...

 

[joelap]

Re: Post your funny experiances when you first started playing guitar!

LOL thats so funny cause I got a Peavey Rage 158 and I also had no idea the thing had distortion and bought a Metal Zone!!!!!

Another funny thing is my first head/cab ever: a Peavey "Century" solid state head from the late 70's and a Peavey 2x12 that I doubt was even made for guitar. My drummer at the time said once "why does your guitar sound like a dying cat?"

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Post your funny experiances when you first started playing guitar!

For the first two years I was playing, I refused to adjust the EQ knobs on the amp (my dad's Fender Super Reverb) to anything but 10.

Oh yeah, I played metal with a Fender Mustang and Super Reverb and a distortion box built out of a wah casing and the guts from an 8-track. "Creeping Death" sounded like "twangy-twangy-twang twaaaaaannnngggg twangy-twangy-twang twang-twang"

 

[louthunder]

Re: Post your funny experiances when you first started playing guitar!

I didn't have a plectrum at first, so I played my acousitc guitar with those plastic tags that hold bags of bread loaves together.

Hey, Plectrum?, you ain't from these parts are you:laugh2: I know you mean pick, just thought I would rough ya up a little. Merry Christmas by the way!Anyway, talking about funny exp. When I was in 7th grade,(1969) I was up playing in front of the class and all of a sudden they all started laughing. At first I did'nt know what was wrong, but I realized that I had a string of snot dangling all the way to the floor. I just sniffed real hard and the snot trail snapped back into my nose. By then, even my teacher was on the floor laughing and she was a Nun ( ya Catholic school ):smack: Just thought I would share.:chairfall

 

[joeydude]

Re: Post your funny experiances when you first started playing guitar!

thinking that 8 guage strings wer the ****in shiznat!!

not changing that set of 8 guage strings for like half a year, and using a metal pick.

when i first started i would do the flat on my lap smoke on the water with my thumb on the e string thing.


hahaha oh yeah strap that wasnt put behind my right shoulder, so basically hanging my guitar from my neck.