Guide to Upgrading and Customizing Your Guitar

So you've got a guitar and you want to upgrade some features on it. Well, firstly, there's nothing wrong with stock guitars so don't feel like your guitar needs to have every bell and whistle available. Remember, what matters most is your skill, technique, and composition skills. Quality of tone should always comes after the quality of a song. Let's go over a few significant upgrades that guitars can get.

First, the most important thing an instrument needs to do is to be able to be played in tune. So if your stock guitar hasn't been set up by a professional, get that done immediately. What you'll want to ask your technician to do is to ''set the intonation'' of the guitar. This will allow your guitar to be played in tune all over the neck, assuming you tuned it correctly.

If you have extra cash, an extremely worthwhile investment you can make is the Buzz Feiten Tuning System. The nature of the guitar's original design prevents it from being 100% totally in tune all over the neck. It can only come close, but not quite there. After the Buzz Fetein Tuning System installation, you will finally be 100% accurately in tune all over the neck. An amazing investment.

Now, you'll have many tone freaks out there argue about wood, picks, strings, and nearly anything to the guitar having a huge effect on the tone. Truthfully though, the pickup is 99% of the tone of your guitar. I've talked with session guys who've worked for decades in the industry and instructors at the finest schools on the subject and they all agree. As fun as it is to talk about woods, picks, strings, and other assorted guitar parts, the truth is the pickups are almost entirely responsible for your tone. As such, they should be one of the first things you upgrade after getting your guitar properly intoned. Seymour Duncan makes the most widely used brand of pickups, but I implore you to search out for your ideal tone and leave no stone unturned. There are many boutique pickup companies out there making wonderful sounding pickups.

Another thing you may want to look into is the bridge of your guitar. Graphite saddles can truly reduce string snaps to a significant degree. I've seen extremely hard players tear into very thin strings on graphite saddles and they still won't snap at the bridge. A good investment if you break strings very easily.

The nut of your guitar can likewise use a significant improvement. Getting a properly fitted bone nut for your guitar will improve open string sustain. These nuts are prone to breaking however, and fixing them on the fly is not easy. Upgrade with care.

One thing you can do to increase the overall comfort of your playing experience is to get large stainless steel jumbo frets. Players like to shy away from them because of the price and size, but they genuinely feel like a dream and are worth every penny. They also last extremely long, you will probably never have to re fret your guitar again. Definitely a worthwhile investment.

I hope these ideas lead you down a path where you can have a beautiful sounding customized guitar. Good luck!