Taking a guitar on the road

acoustic mate george jones and charlie pride sound better on that oh and not to mention shania twain lol

 

at home, several Gibson LPs

in the truck, made in china strat.

plugged into effects pedal and use headphones or use 1/8" extension cord and plug into AUX of headunit, play thru truck speakers.

 

i ended up buying the fender in the link i provided before. it dosen't seem to be a bad guitar i plays decent it does have to be re-tuned after about a half hour of playing it tends to go flat, i took the tremolo bar off cause if you used it at all it would knock the guitar out of tune every time. other than that though it seems like it will suit my use well. the amp that comes with it is good for what its made for, a practice amp. it does get fairly loud although most the time i find myself using headphones with it. it has some decent effects built in, also has a built in drum machine and some bass guitar lines to jam along with. i think its 12 different selections for time signatures and styles of beats to play along with also has selections for what key you want the bass guitar lines to play in, you can also select for it to play just the drums. it also has a mini input if you want to play along to a cd and a midi input. and a E tuner. none of it is professional quality or something you would use on a gig but seems to be good enough for my use.

considering its been probably at least 8 years if not more senses i last even picked up a guitar i think im doing fairly well over the last couple days worked up some easier rifs like smoke on the water, iron man, white stripes seven nation army and some stuff like that.

 

Martin Backpacker fits in the truck really well.

 

I take my early 50s tube amp and a pedal or two. use a 350w inverter. I have 7 electrics at home, but take only one or two at a time. This time it's a Kenny Wayne Shepherd Strat and a Squier Telecaster Custom II with P90s. I take the Tele because I leave it tuned to open G for Rolling Stones and Muddy Waters slide stuff.

 

I carry a 50 watt Marshall and cheap squire strat with me on the road. Used to take a small 15 watt vox but it just wasn't stout enough and kept falling over......the Marshall has enough weight to stay upright and sounds good and is just big enough to double as a bedside table lol granted, my Volvo doesn't have anything behind the drivers seat so I have room for it there. The squire sounds good enough for practicing with....no way I'd take one of the real strats on the road.

 

If you buy a tube of graphite ( basically ground up pencil lead ) or just take some pencil lead and grind it up and rub into the slots in the nut it will lube the strings through the nut and eliminate alot of the tuning issues using the bar by allowing the strings to slide freely through the nut when using the bar instead of not returning to their original tuned positions, which is generally what happens when you have that problem

 

I highly recommend investing in a set of these.
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Planet-Waves-Auto-Trim-Machines-In-Line/dp/B0002E2N90/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330829204&sr=8-1"]http://www.amazon.com/Planet-Waves-Auto-Trim-Machines-In-Line/dp/B0002E2N90/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330829204&sr=8-1[/ame]

I bought a used MIM strat last year for a couple hundred bucks. It played well but wouldn't tune reliably at all. I put the locking tuners on and it became a completely different guitar. Tunes easy and holds it 150% better than before. Well worth the money.

I've also heard that applying a bit of graphite to the nut when you change the strings can help with tuning issues.

 

Note to all trucker/gitbox players. If you gonna play loud enough to be heard outside the truck; please play more than one tune. Really annoying when the guy plays the same one over and over and.....

 

Hey, the guy may only know one tune!