How my new gear helps me getting a better player

[Dominik Gräber]

Hey guys, I am a little quiet around here lately so I just wanted to share what I’m up to.
Since my birthday a week ago I have a new amp, the Boss katana mini and a new guitar as well, a Schecter Classic. And while I try to play the old stuff with my new Equipment and learn something new, I realise that this setup actually helps me improving.
First of all for the obvious reason. The equipment is fresh for me and the amp sounds soo incredibly good (compared to my fender mustang). Second I play way more standing now, as a guitar strap came with it. That is challenging at first but it feels great as you are able to put more emotion in your playing. Third, taking the highest distortion and shredding metallica riffs, I notice that the new amp is WAY more sensitive about palm mutings ranging from really muted chunks to fat, evil sounding palm strokes, which forces me to really work on my muting to get it right in every situation. Lastly I am feeling that using that new gear pinch harmonics are slightly easier to perform, giving me yet another thing to work on.
So I would definetly say that new gear can help and motivate. And the best thing is that, when researching and testing a little, it doesn’t even have to be expensive. The new gear was less than 500 Euro in total! (Okay, the Schecter was sold over Ebay for an awesome price, but there are always cheap opportunities)
Finally, if you made it to the end to this boring post, I would be interested if you guys agree with me and if you experienced something similar.
Oh, and have an awesome day

 

[Filip Tomiša]

Happy birthday even though it was a week ago , yeah I agree that new gear can help you become a better player. I’m not saying that the more expensive gear you have the better player you are, absolutely not but better gear does help you. I started playing on a shitt behringer strat and when I bought a schecter guitar I was finally able to do proper hammer ons and pull offs (i though i sucked at doing them but i figured out my guitar was shitty and it just didn’t produce the sound i wanted) and I could actually sustain notes where as on behringer my note would last only couple of seconds. So yeah better gear does help you

 

[Gabriel Corso]

Although I think that motivation comes from within, buying new stuff is a really good way to feel brand new – or at least experimenting new types of sound.
I mean, I have been playing guitar for the last 7 years and never had a good amp or any pedals, just my synyster custom + Brazilian brand amp.
I never thought that I needed anything more than that.
Nowadays I realized that I was kind of lost.
Don’t get me wrong though, Equipment does not make a great guitarist, neither makes you play fast or well. But, for me at least, the main pleasure was to sound close to your favorite artist.
And that is where gear comes in!
For the last 3 years maybe I was playing guitar 5 times a month, never more than that. I did not have the motivation to do so.
However, 4 months ago 5 friends of mine cheered me up to pickup my guitar again and play with them in a regular basis and to buy some effect pedals.
When I plugged in my first delay I was in shock. Never had used something like that – and it was mine.
Nowadays I play the guitar maybe 4 times a week + and have maybe 7 pedals:
– big muff pi
– Mighty sounds delay
– ds1 boas
– vox wah 847
– chorus Fuhrmann ( Brazilian brand)
– tube driver maxon OD 808.
I don’t want to say that it changed my life, but made me feel fresh and happy about experimenting new sounds.
Trying to learn how to play better still hahaha.
Cheers mate !
Keep rockin’

 

[Sayonil Mitra]

New gear will make you familiar with different kinds of tones, their variations. You can be more precise about what kind of tone you exactly like since you now have the options.

 

[Gabriel Corso]

And the cool thing is that you can shape your effect styles after some time.

 

[Dominik Gräber]

I agree with you all! But I would go a little further and say, besides new motivation, new gear will bring new exercises to master. A new guitar will feel different and you want to learn the perfect spot to play everything clean on it, an amp might have different strenghts and weaknesses, which is why you might want to work on certain techniques more.
and thanks @Fillip