If you are a longtime reader of this Boles Blues blog, you know I have a wild history with changing strings. My current World Record for keeping the same gauge strings stood for a good six months: The nickel flat wound Thomastik-Infeld George Benson Jazz Strings GB114. The Benson record fell this week when I gave them up for round wound Thomastik-Infeld Jazz BeBop BB114 strings.
I know so many amateur guitar players who spend thousands of dollars buying a great axe, but they won’t spend a few dollars on a regular basis to put fresh strings on their guitar! The one thing that will improve the sound and the heart of your guitar when it sings for you is always making sure you have new strings on the instrument. Dirty strings are dead strings. Dead strings depress you. When you’re feeling disappointed in your musical sound, you practice less, and you avoid playing more.
A month ago, we reviewed the Thomastik-Infeld Jazz BeBop 12-50 guitar strings, and today, we are reviewing their heavier brother, the Thomastik-Infeld Jazz Swing 13-53 Flat Wound guitar strings — the heaviest gauge guitar string TI makes in that cycle. As I dip deeper into Jazz, finding the right tone is another ongoing mission, and the TI Jazz Swing flat wounds are uniquely different in three ways than the previously reviewed Jazz BeBops — other than just being all-around thicker.
Continue reading → Thomastik-Infeld Jazz Swing 13-53 Flat Wound Guitar Strings Review
As you know, I’ve been working on using only my fingers while playing my electric guitars and the experiment has been both delightful and slightly disappointing.
Continue reading → Picking the Right Strings for Fingerstyle Plucking
There’s nothing quite like playing the Blues guitar using your fingers. It can be another matter entirely when you toss away your pick and play with only your fingers on an electric guitar. Mark Knopfler is probably the best known, and most successful, “fingerstyle” electric guitarist of our generation.
Continue reading → Playing with your Fingers on an Electric Guitar
One year ago today, we published the first BolesBlues.com article called, rightly enough — “What is BolesBlues.com?” — and that article was quickly followed by, “From Old Cooter to Boles Blues” to help explain the provenance of who we are and what we hoped to become in time.
If you play an electric guitar — you have a lot of junk. You have pedals and straps and strings and cables and other stuff you need to store and lug around, and I have found a terrific gig case, the — “Marathon MA-SLDC200W Utility Trunk Case with Wheels” — and I am unable to live without it.
Continue reading → The Marathon MA-SLDC200W Utility Trunk Case with Wheels Review
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