How to Read a Guitar Spec Sheet Part 2 Video Lecture - The Ultimate Guitar

the fret markers are oversized dots in
my opinion these are appropriately sized
dots the neck finish just like the body
finish you want to kind of protect the
neck of the guitar but you want to do it
in a way where you're not really
fighting the neck so this is a gun stock
oil and hand rub special wax blend on
the back of this neck
now the strat that I have has a
nitrocellulose finish on the back and
it's kind of a sticky finish that wears
off over time and that's something you
want to pay attention to because a lot
of people really like the drier finish
because it seems like you can kind of
get around the neck a little easier it's
not you're not getting caught up on it
but again this is personal preference
and sometimes you can even refinish your
own necks and kind of treat them in
different ways to get them to feel a
certain way but that's just how this one
set up neck colors you know what that
means
tuning machines these are sheller Locker
tuners now locking tuners now a locking
tuner there's some confusion about that
too it doesn't mean your guitar your
instrument is gonna stay locked in tune
it just actually has to do with how the
strings go through the the windings here
all right so if you get a closer look of
this you can see there's not a lot of
slack right it's pretty clean how these
go through and that's because they're
locking tuners
on the back here you have these things
that you can kind of unscrew so it's
really easy to restring a guitar because
you just thread it through the machine
tuner here and then you lock it down you
don't have to kind of tie it or anything
there's a lot of different ways to a
string guitar you just lock it down and
then you can cut it and then just tune
it up from there so locking tuners are
really more of a convenience thing they
don't necessarily help your guitar stain
any better tune but if it has locking
tuners usually you can tell us a higher
quality guitar for the most part that's
also an upgrade that you can do yourself
too but just beware that when you add
mass to the headstock it can also change
kind of the setup in how your guitar
sounds to and locking tuners generally
are a little bit heavier than standard
tuners truss rod adjustable no component
or string removal so guitar necks are
made out of wood and as we kind of
talked about before moisture and a lot
of different elements can affect
how those work overtime so inside
anything with steel strings is what's
called a truss rod and all that is is
like a steel rod that runs the length of
your neck and it keeps it straight
because there's a lot of tension from
this string like if you think of how
these how tight these strings are
they're pulling the headstock of your
guitar towards the neck right and
sometimes your next can be bowed and
what a truss rod does is it kind of
keeps it intact now sometimes you have
to make an adjustment over time if it
gets really bad and that's why there's
no the nice thing about having a no
component or string removal thing you
can just access the truss rod right here
without having to like do a lot of work
some truss rods will be harder to access
but this system is that you pretty nice
a lot of times you'll see that there's
like a plate like a cover right here and
that's called a truss rod cover and you
can just unscrew that and then use a
tool to access the truss rod from their
neck attachment five bolts perfect
alignment with no shifting sculpted neck
joint allows smooth access to the higher
frets you can see right here this is how
the next use the five bolts how the neck
is actually bolted on to the body of the
guitar there's a couple different
systems on how to do that especially if
you're into like maybe swapping necks
out like there's a lot of websites that
have like different next you can try out
if you really like how a guitar sounds
but you hate the neck a lot of them are
you can just kind of bolt a mom and bolt
them off and kind of plug and play so
it's a good thing to know the controls
500 kiloohm volume and tone point 0 4 7
farad tone capacitor so this is
something that really gets into the
minutia I'm not gonna spend a long time
on this but I will link to a couple
articles that will kind of explain how
these controls work a little bit more
now a 500 kiloohm pot right pot stands
for potentiometer was just real quick so
like a volume pot right when you're
turning the volume down you're really
not turning down a number you're turning
you're increasing the resistance of
electric signal from flowing through so
the pots the potentiometers can be
different levels of resistance and that
actually affects the sound so rule of
thumb is humbucker humbucking guitars
will generally have 500 kilo ohm pot
and single coil like a strat will have
like 250 kilowatts now on cheaper
guitars these are usually really some of
the easiest to upgrade replacement parts
so if you're into tinkering with stuff
like that really it's kind of reasonable
to buy different pots and maybe switch
them out on like a cheaper guitar and
make it sound a lot better
switching five-way lever pickup selector
so that's gonna be this thing right here
now I would say it's totally unusual for
a humbucking guitar to have 1 2 3 4 5
different positions but a lot of times I
was the default standard way would be 3
different positions so mostly like a
single coil strat type thing is going to
have a five-way selector and there's
kind of a traditional way in which those
are wired but that's why you should
always look at the schematics because
this has something that's maybe not as
intuitive like position 1 and by the way
position 1 is always the one closest to
the bridge when I first start I thought
me position wouldn't be the close one to
your face but that's that's not true so
close to the bridge is 1 2 3 4 5 if you
ever see a pickup selector switch but
you can see by going to the
specifications that the position might
not be what you think it is so it's
always a really good idea because
there's a lot of different kind of
special ways to customize and wire your
pickups with running in parallel in
series etc etc the pickups for this are
hh4 humbucker humbucker 2 DiMarzio
custom humbucking with chrome covers so
there are a million different kind of
pickups and configurations you can get
and chrome covers are also something
that's kind of common sometimes you'll
see them uncovered and you can actually
kind of see the the wrappings it around
the poles and stuff for the pickups but
yeah these ones have chrome cover covers
a lot of less polished so you might have
the zebra ones is what they're called so
like you'll see like a like a black top
and a white one or a black or any motor
or something like that it look pretty
cool and last but not least strings so
this comes with 10 to 46 custom slinky
strings now you might think this is just
kind of like a throwaway thing because
you might want to change the string soon
after you get a new guitar anyways but
it's actually very important because a
good guitar should come set up for a
certain gage of string so this right
here the Ernie balls come with
hands-on right 10 being the thickness of
the finish string the high e-string
now assuming it's a good setup right out
of the factory which sometimes it is
sometimes it isn't different
manufacturers have a dynamic and quality
control for stuff like that but assuming
it's a good setup if I were to just take
these off and put nines on it right away
it wouldn't be set up four nines and it
might not play like in an optimized way
so in that case if you wanted to change
to a different gauge than when it comes
shipped with you might want to take it
somewhere and actually get it set up so
it plays its best so hopefully you've
learned a little bit about some of the
specifications of carry already have or
you can more easily distinguish
differences between potential guitars
and really just there's really no
substitute for actually just holding a
guitar in your hands and playing around
with it that's why I don't really
recommend buying a guitar slight slide
on seen online it's always better to buy
a guitar that you have played because
even between the exact same models it's
always gonna play a little bit different
so hopefully that was helpful thanks