One of the first things that started to slightly annoy me whille practicing on my guitar were the strings rattling againgst other frets when I struck them. My first impulse was to lamely blame the equipment, but I soon found out that placing your fingers directly behind the frets and pushing hard enough helps a lot.
Then I read about the "action" on a guitar. The action is the distance between the strings and the fretboard wich can be altered by changing the height of the bridge. Since my guitar is a relatively (with all due respect) low-end product designed for beginners as myself the action on my guitar was low (the distance between strings and fretboard was small). This makes the guitar easier to play since you don't have to puch down the strings that hard. A low action is very suitable for playing fast solo's the way Gypsy Jazz is intended to.
A major problem might occur dough when the action is too low. And surely when strings get more worn out they tend to rattle even with the fingers well placed.
This was the case ,I guess, with my guitar.
So I tried a little trick I heard Jimmy talk about in his documentary were he told he always used to put two coins under the bridge of his guitars to higher the action.
The "action" is the distance between fretboard and strings.Here I hightend the bridge using two old Dutch coins.
It seemes to work out fine for me! (Dough I wouldn't especialy recomend it on an expensive instrument!)
Click to read entire weblog!
