Definitely top 3 for me. This is “Ben Sahar” …Cheers!

Lalassu Xul Rings of Saturn

That tone is so fuckin sick and heavy and I plan on doing covers.

My cover of the new Trivium song. Yeah, not enough time since release to nail Corey's solo, but the Matt's one is there.

I picked one up a couple weeks ago and this thing is a killer! The factory pick ups scream with my Rockerverb. The neck feels fast. If you like explorers, try one. Just a heads up, Sweetwater CAN NOT get the cases for these for some reason (at least thats what my rep told me), so you have to go through ESP to get one. It only took a couple days though, so no big deal. Please excuse the background. I'm in my bunk room....

I've always been a huge Randy Rhoads fan, and playing this song has always been a dream of mine. I'd really appreciate any recording tips!

How long does it actually take to learn alternate picking, legato, and sweep picking from scratch to be able to play songs from a7x , etc?

Like there was a brief period in the late 90s and early 2000s where metal bands would be in like Drop A on a 24.75" scale Gibson or Epiphone or whatever, and yet they still have a really great tone, even for modern metal standards.

Nowadays I hear a lot of people go "You can't get a usable tone on a 25.5" 7-string guitar, you need at least 26.5" or even a multi-scale for that."

But that just feels like gatekeeping. Because it acts like the range of "usable tones" is super narrow. Because even within a subgenre, you see bands use everything from super tight, very digital sounding tones to slightly muddy, more raw and real sounding tones, yet they still sound like that particular subgenre of metal.

I swear, tone-chasing in modern guitar playing has gotten out of hand.

Love the song and solo, Noctural-era TBDM vibes

4 high gain amps and some killer guitars too - https://youtu.be/vDOfTBWU-OA

Gear featured:
Suhr Custom Modern Magenta Pink Stain
Jackson Custom Shop USA Special Edition Rhoads Platinum Pink
Friedman Jose 100 100w Jose Arredondo Tube Amp Head
Gibson Artist Slash LP Goldtop Dark Back
Marshall JCM 2555-SL Slash Signature Full Stack
Bogner Ecstacy 101B w/ Bogner 4x12" Cabinet
Charvel San Dimas S-Style Grover Jackson Flamed Maple Top
Kubicki S-Style 1980s Bob Gorske Custom Paint
Dover Amplifiers DA-50 50-Watt Guitar Amp Head

Yo! I decided I needed a tiny guitar to travel with, and to take with me during long summers in fire camp. I was getting sick of not being able to practice/play, and taking my ESPs and/or LTDs to dusty dirty camp was just not an option. I just didn’t want that “travel” guitar compromise.

Enter the Bootlegger Spade. This thing absolutely RIPS. Build quality is insane (Made in Korea, at least on par quality wise with my LTD M-1000ht, probably closer to my E-IIs), and it’s a full scale that does NOT play or sound like a travel guitar. Neck profile is somewhere between an LTD and an ESP. Very comfy. Ash wings, maple/mahogany 5pc neck-through. Proprietary (and nice) bridge and lockers, and some pretty beefy and versatile pickups (proprietary).

Anyway, I was stoked to add it to my collection of almost nothing but ESPs, and even more stoked not to tear up the same in fire camp. I figured you guys should know about these, because they are quite high quality and they rip like nobody’s business.

Cheers! less

Hello all !

I joined a black metal band a few months ago and I'd like to get my trem picking way cleaner than it is today. Unfortunately I don't have any video to share but I can explain where I'm at.

For reference our fastest song yet is at 165 BPM, but all of them are quite stamina intensive and IMO not easy to play (I have about 20 years of guitar xp but never played BM before)

I've got 2 main milestones to meet :

• Trem pick with wrist and not forearm and find a comfortable and reproductible position to do so (I achieved that partly, but forearm gets involved at higher speeds after a few hours of rehearsal when I'm getting tired)
• Improve my accent consistency : my parts frequently require tremolo picking over 2 string chords. I'm not able yet to keep notes volume and rythm within a close range. During parts where I'm the only one to play (intros, bridges, and such) I don't really like how that sounds.

Other than working at slower BPMs, which I already do, do you know any exercises for this purpose that you would recommend ?

I've been playing for 5 years but REALLY ON AND OFF, so mostly i'd say one proper year, One of my biggest struggles right now is getting my picking and fretting hands to stay synchronized, especially when playing faster riffs.

For example, when I'm playing the main riff from War by Burzum, I've noticed that my picking hand sometimes gets ahead of my fretting hand. I'll have already picked a note before my fretting finger has even reached the fret, which obv results in it sounding sloppy as hell

I know the obvious advice is to slow down and gradually increase the tempo with a metronome, and I've been trying to do that. However, I'm wondering if there are any specific exercises or techniques that can help improve synchronization beyond just repeatedly playing riffs at slower tempos.

Any advice would be appreciated!

My friend taught me this riff from orobus, I know I'm not that good at it that's not the point of this post, it's more just how the hell does he do this live and sing at the same time 😭

P.s. before someone says play with a metronome or something, I've been playing for about 11 years I do practice with a metronome this is just a silly video it's not that deep pal

Picked up a Caparison Horus M3 in a Sweetwater sale the other day. Most high end guitar I’ve ever had. It took me over a week to get a decent tone out of the bridge pickup. It was dark. Sounded good but I’m used to fishmans and this thing had a dark quality I couldn’t fully eq out to my liking. Once I thought I had it I would find myself endlessly tweeting these frequencies.

Decided fuck it lets get a passive metal pickup so I don’t have to do too much in the swap. Settled on a Nazgul. Now I do all my guitar work. I’ve been to some luthiers in the CT area and I’ve never truly been happy with the work. So I decided I’m going to solder this myself. Not that soldering is difficult, but it was my learning day and on my $4k guitar. This went terribly. Ultimately worked. But I burnt the fuckin wood removing the old solder. The screws weren’t long enough and I had to drill a fuckin new hole…😫the hole is to mount the pick up and the burnt wood is from me angling the solder pen to reach the solder. It’s in the cavity so it’s hidden by the cover but still….

All this to say, the Nazgul is SICK AF. To me it’s the passive Fishman modern. It has the same tone but more warmth to it. Let’s of a cold sterile sound and has a really nice fuzziness and warmth to the low end with all the bite I wanted. I’m so happy and am now questioning passive pick ups. In a good way.

I have a Jackson I keep in drop A# that I might get a black winter for. Currently has Fishman modern open cores. Also an e2 eclipse with emgs and quite frankly I like the Nazgul waaaayyy more than the emgs. 81/60.

Just had to get this off my chest to the community. I slept on passives for a long time (20ish years) and now I’m excited to explore a a route I’ve neglected.

I'm self-taught, somewhere beyond beginner but definitely not intermediate. I listen to (and desire to eventually play) heavy metal: mostly thrash, lots of death, some stoner/doom stuff, and even some black metal. As such, of course I jumped all over learning and mastering power chords on the low E and A strings (in standard tuning). Drop D tuning of course is fun too.

But I'm in a bit of a rut. After the usual spider exercises and string skipping warm-ups, I bang out some basic progressions with a few open campfire chords (the usual open string A, C, D, E, F, & G chords, but not B which kicks my ass lol!). I do my best to practice hammer ons and pull-offs.... as well as galloping on the low E.

But most of my time practicing (that devolves into jamming) is just a near infinite number of power chords. So. Many. Power chords. Enjoyable for an afterwork stress release, but doesn't provide much in the way of "forward progress" in my guitar playing, I suspect.

TL;DNR: What can I do to get out of my rut / bad habit of my practice sessions always ending up simply being power chord mosh jams, and actually expand on things I should concentrate on to be a better metal guitarist? How can I beef up my practice sessions to challenge myself in a realistic manner?

Thank you and cheers!

Hi folks! So, I started practicing downstroke picking for that insane Metallica speed and searched for a metronome app to improve my speed. Even though there are thousands of options, I thought it would be an easy web app to create via vibe-coding.

Well, this is a free practice metronome with all the bells and whistles, open source, runs offline (you can install it on your phone via PWA too), multi-language, recent practice history, etc. There's a "Speed Loop" function to set a practice duration, start and end speed, and number of bars for each transition. It runs entirely in your browser, you can download it, modify it, do whatever you want.

• GitHub page: https://github.com/nandoticon/practicemetronome
• Online page (bookmark it!): https://practicemetronome.vercel.app/

Let me know if it's useful to you, and if there are any bugs or improvements needed,

Cheers!