This site is dedicated to freely making available free information about playing the guitar and bass, including acoustic and electric guitars. The site also contains many schematics for custom guitar wiring, for shielding electric guitars to reduce hum, and many other technical articles such as how to set up an electric guitar and how to select a new guitar and so on.

Hum is a terrible thing and guitars should not hum. Don't ever let anyone tell you that, "single-coil guitars are supposed to hum it's part of the Fender sound." That is a crock. While single-coil pickups are more prone to noise than are humbucker (humbucking) pickups, the situation is by no means hopeless and most guitars can be vastly improved with proper shielding and star grounding.

Guitar players of all stripes are welcome here. We have public forums where many players from all over the world gather to discuss technical issues, guitar wiring, amplifier modification, tone secrets, playing style and technique, artist's gear and information, music theory, guitar chords, walking bass lines, fingerstyle technique, how to wire a guitar, how to repair an amp, how to hotrod an amplifier, guitar modifications, how to set up a guitar, how to adjust the trussrod, how to adjust the neck, adjusting a guitar neck, how to shield a guitar, shielding a guitar, and just about anything else imaginable.

If it relates to guitars, guitar electronics, guitar amplifiers, bass amplifiers, bass electronics, bass wiring, guitar wiring, guitar playing, bass playing, tuning, songwriting, performing, or what have you we're ready to talk about it.

We have some factory guitar schematics, many custom guitar schematics for custom guitars and custom wiring, instructions on how to shield guitars to reduce hum, buzz, crackle, and other noise. How to properly ground a guitar or bass. How to test power outlets to prevent damage to your equipment or danger to your body. How to avoid gettting an electrical shock.

Our ScaleMaker online scale maker program will draw dozens of different scales in any key and any six-string tuning.

Articles describing how to set up guitars, repair guitars, pot pickups, rewire guitars and amplifiers, modify guitars, modify amplifiers, modify basses, repair basses, repair amplifiers, choose guitars, buying gear and buying guitars. We have gear reviews where we review popular equipment and give unbiased opinions. In the public guitar forums people are encouraged to give thoughtful, unbiases reviews of the equipment they own.

Some of our articles include: "Quieting the Beast," how to shield a Strat ™ or Stratocaster ™ guitar. "Quieting the Beast's Cousin," how to shield a Tele ™ or Telecaster ™ guitar. Our own S-Tastic,™ T-Riffic,™ Double Barrel Switching,™ or Double-Barrel Switching,™ Tone Monster, Strat Lover's, and other custom guitar wiring diagrams and photo-illustrated modification instructions. How to add a neck on switch, adding a neck on switch, how to wire pickups in series instead of parallel, splitting humbuckers, coil-tapping, adding a mid boost changing tone controls.

Some of our modifications use four-pole, five-way switches while others use mini-toggles or push-pull pots (push/pull pots).

We talk about volume controls, tone controls, volume and tone controls, amplifier tone stacks, stomp boxes, effects pedals and multi-effects, amps and amplifiers, killer tone projects, guitar cords, speaker wires, hookup wire, cloth-covered vs. modern wire, vintage tone, vintage pickups, vintage hype, and just about anything else that a guitarist, bassist, bass player, or other musician might talk about or use on stage or in the studio.

We've even been known to tell a few drummer jokes.

If you want to start playing the guitar, repair your own guitar, or you've ever asked "how can I make my guitar stop humming" this is the place for you. If you've ever wondered why tubes are sometimes called valves this is the place for you. If you've got an opinion on whether 4X10 cabs are better than 2X12 cabs, or 2X10 cabs are better than 1X12 cabs, then this is the place for you.

Bring your Fender or Squier Strat, Stratocaster, Les Paul, bass, Gibson, Tele, Telecaster, PRS, Martin, Taylor, or Harmony guitar and, if necessary, your Ampeg, Marshall, Fender, Crate, Mesa Boogie, Hartke, Peavey or other amp up to the virtual fire and set a spell.

If you're looking for a technician, guitar repairs, or DIY do it yourself guitar wiring instructions we can probably help. If you are looking for a teacher or instructor, or a repairman, or a guitar shop, in your area chances are that one of the thousands of people who use our forums may be able to point you in the right direction.

We'll talk about caps, pickups, wiring, single coils, humbuckers, capacitors, resistors, pots, potentiometers, controls, tone circuits, how to get killer tone, what is killer tone, who has killer tone, and all the rest of it.

We talk about tube amps, tube amplifiers, solid state amps, solid state amplifiers, preamps, DI boxes, effects loops, tone controls and tone pots, volume pots, guitar cords and guitar chords, wiring guitars, wiring basses, shielding guitars, shielding basses, why you should shield guitars and shield basses, how to stop hum or eliminate hum or reduce hum and many other things. We have modifications to hotrod the Crate VC-508 tube amp and the Pignose G40V tube amp. Yes, we tell you how to hotrod a tube amp, how to hotrod a crate VC-508, how to hotrod a Pignose G40V and how to hotrod an amp - how to hotrod an amplifier. We have an amp builder's forum as well as guitar technical forums.

We have schematics and wiring diagrams for all sorts of projects, and are adding more all the time. Our gear reviews, guitar reviews, amplifer reviews, amp reviews and effects reviews are as unbiased as we can make them.

Read our unbiased reviews of Ampeg Jet J-12T review, Route 101 Solimar review, Seagull S6 review, Fishman Rare Earth pickup review, Band in the Pocket CDs review, and more.

Join the discussion forums and air your views and share your experience.

The low-watt project is about modifying small amps for even lower power output. The first step was to modify an Ampeg Jet J-12T so that the voltage to the output stage could be controlled independently with a MOSFET voltage follower. It was mostly successfull, read about it here.

The BloozBaby™ is a construction article for a new design amp having 3 to 5 watts output. It's a stereo guitar amp with 3 to 5 watts per channel. It has big amp features like a full tone stack, master volume, effects loop and more. It uses 6BQ5 (EL84) tubes in the power section, Hammond transformers throughout including a 270EX power transformer and two 125ESE single-ended output transformers. The preamp is a 12AX7 and the driver is a 12AU7.

We've added information about Ruby Tubes' (Magic Parts') legal action against Mr. Paul Ruby, a small custom amp builder.

Instructions for modifying a Crate VC-508 amp. This Crate VC-508 amplifier modification ( Crate VC-508 modification ) greatly improves the tone, changing the amp from a tonal horror to a very sweet little amp suitable for most styles of music but especially for blues harp and blues guitar. We exchange a 12AT7 tube for the 12AX7, change the attenuation between the first and second tube preamp stages, and move the master volume control to the "correct" location between the preamp and the power amp. The stock amp drives the first stage into very harsh clipping at the top of the waveform before the power amp begins to overdrive. After this modification, both preamp stages are overdriven sweetly, with rounded fat compression at the bottom of the waveform instead of harsh clipping at the top, and the preamp and power amp can be controlled independently for any combination of preamp and power amp overdrive. The Crate VC-508 amp modification is fairly simple and can be done by anyone who is qualified to safely work on high-voltage tube amplifiers. It is not necessary to cut any PCB ( circuit board) traces so technically the modification can be reversed (though not invisibly, it would be apparent that someone had worked on the amp). Of course, I can't imagine anyone wanting to reverse the modification, I don't know anybody who actually wants an amp that sounds like a table-saw hitting a nail! Obviously, this mod will void the manufacturer's warranty on the Crate VC-508. I'd hesitate to call this modificaton "hotrodding" the Crate VC-508, but it certainly gives it more usable overdrive.

If you want to experience the great misfortune of hearing me play you can catch me with the praise team at Maplewood Baptist Church of North Richland Hils, TX on Sunday mornings.  I'm easy to spot.  I'm the one with great tone and ten thumbs, trying desperately not to screw up badly enough to get booted from the band.