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I read a lot of discussion on the “action” of guitars.
I have an acoustic Fender, Sam Miguel model from 1992. It’s a cutaway design. I had the guitar tuned up recently, which included a neck adjustment and some new strings (light). But I find that it takes a lot of physical effort, pressure, what ever you want to call it, on the strings to get a nice clean sound. Hammer ons are a real b*#%! and to really appreciate the effect I really have to hammer down on the string hard. I’ve developed good calluses on my fingers (I practice at least an hour a day seven days a week) and I’m wondering if it’s just the “action” of the guitar.
I’ve been thinking about buying a new guitar, but I don’t have enough knowledge or experience to hear the subtle differences in guitars but hope I could feel a difference in the action.
So is action a function of the string gauge, the guitar construction, technique or all of the above? Should I invest in a better guitar or suck it up for now?
Any thoughts? -
Haha, I totally cracked up when I saw the title of this thread. At first I thought it was a spam bot posting porn.
Hammer ons can be a pain on any acoustic – no matter how good the acoustic is (especially when you compare how easy it is to play a hammer-on on an electric). That being said, it’s totally doable and somewhat essential to being able to play. If you haven’t already, check out the video on hammer-ons and pull-offs I did as part of the beginner guitar course on this site. It’s really more of an overview, but I’m doing them on my acoustic – so you can see how they should look / sound.
It might be your action, although it’s doubtful that action is what’s causing the issue, and with light gauge strings you should be able to play them without too much sweat. Fender acoustic guitars are decent starter guitars (Elvis played one I believe?), but Fender has never really been top-notch when it comes to acoustics (the Stratocaster is another story). If I were you, I’d head down to the local music store (assuming you have one) and play on some of their higher guitars and see if it makes a difference.
I’d say it all still comes down to practicing the effect, maybe you aren’t doing it correctly? If you have a web cam for your computer, maybe you could hop on Skype and I could help you out.
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