It shouldnt but i like the idea better of sticking to one guitar since psycholocially having an attachment to a guitar makes you feel at one with it, therefore putting more emotion and feel into your playing.

Ive named all mine, its pretty cool. First theres scarlet then theres silvia and goldie, rose, the black bastard, Autumn, Winter and finially, the WiddowMaker.

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"Oh, it's a windy and sunny day
And I can hear the faint sound of distant waves
The past weeks have been going by so fast
It's all the same, the bright sky and shining sun
I have a feeling it's gonna be a fun day"

Gotta ask - if you stick with one guitar, do use petals to make it a bit more versatile or is it balanced anough to give you the tone you want for whatever you feel like playing?

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Stagemaster
Roadhouse Strat
Epi Traditional Pro Les Paul
Ovation Celeb
Esteban Celestial Night(nicely tweeked)
Blackheart tube amp

Man alive that says it all.

I've always thought that getting complete mastery over one type of guitar was the way forwards. Yet i cant help agreeing that Twelvebar's point is equally if not more valid, being someone who does constantly strive to break such self imposed restrictions.

Well I'm on a loser either way. Go one way and I'm limited to a mexican tele. The other and I need to spend another £6K to get the real deal on a Ric and a Yam.

Guess I'll just stay confused.

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No no and no

I'd like to make one more point about the "restriction" of playing just one special guitar.

I don't have any mental block against playing any given instrument.... quite the opposite. I will pick up anything and play comfortably and musically on it. For example, I recently borrowed (for a video game track I was working on) a Variax acoustic, because I needed a shamisen and couldn't find a real one (although I would have gotten what I wanted from a real, fretless, three-string shamisen if I had found one).

The owner of the Variax thought the shamisen model sounded pretty good, but was (not to brag) somewhat startled when I took the guitar, plugged it in, tuned the D, G and B strings to an open D, and began playing the instrument like a shamisen player would... with a strong, overbearing finger vibrato and a large, stiff pick. "Wow!" he said "It sure never sounded that good when I played it!"

That's because the most important part of sounding like a shamisen is HOW you play it. Even a real shamisen doesn't sound right without technique. That is alos the most important part of sounding like any kind of guitar player.... from smooth jazz to psychobilly, it's HOW you play that makes it sound like that.

That's why I stopped buying guitars, and only play the Zencaster now. BecauseI had known hundreds of guitarists who owned a pile of guitars, and would show them off like this:

"Hey, check out this old Strat... dig the tone!" (plays... Whu-wha-wha-whAAAAAAH...")

"And how 'bout this Les Paul?" (plays... Whu-wha-wha-whAAAAAAH...")

"Of course, to cover the bases, you have to have a semi hollow like this 335!" (plays... Whu-wha-wha-whAAAAAAH...")

And that Whu-wha-wha-whAAAAAAH lick would sound exactly the same, "MUSICALLY, every time he played it. It seemed to me that too often, a guitar player would use his interest in guitars to keep himself entertained while his musicianship stagnated, and I decided to work hard against that.

Musically, for me, being able to change instruments all the time that is the restriction... it can fence you off from making the effort of using your hands to make the sounds you want. See, it's not a Tele that sounds like country music or a Les Paul that sounds "heavy" or a Strat that plays the blues: it's the notes and how you play them.

So, that's my word on the subject. If you own a lot of guitars, that's fine, go ahead... some great players do. But please don't try to attribute some kind of raison d'erté to a pile of guitars... from my point of view, there is no musical reason to have them.


stagemasterplyer - I use some in-the-box effects - a chorus or a flange, maybe - to get a stylistic thing going, of course (another reason why a lot of guitars don't appeal to me... a lot of the tonal change on records is effects, not guitars). But the only pedal I own is a compressor, and most of the tonal change is just hands and amp knobs. My oddball Strat is a very complete electric guitar.