the differences in electric guitars vs. acoustic

Quote:"I can HEAR a difference between different acoustic guitars"

Yes, the size, shape, strings, materials its made from, room acoustics, etc, and even the person playing it, all effect how the guitar sounds.

Quote:"it doesn't sound anything like the music I listen to"

With studio techneques at their best and technology moving forward everyday you can create some great sounds from an acoustic these days. Try adding a compressor, Eq, and light on the effects (chorus,reverb,delay).

Quote:"playing some Guns and Roses or something"

You maybe hearing all the guitars, which may include a electric, acoustic,etc. This can come from all the band memebers practicing together to studio mixdown.

Quote:"a cheap electric strat-knockoff, and make it sound like an expensive one"

Yes, with the right equipment you can make any guitar sound like anything. Example: I could plug any whatever kind of brand of guitar into my racks of mounted equipment and have it sound just like the more expensive brand name guitars.

Hope this Helped

Joe

Yes, with the right equipment you can make any guitar sound like anything. Example: I could plug any whatever kind of brand of guitar into my racks of mounted equipment and have it sound just like the more expensive brand name guitars.

The other side of this is that playing electric guitar is as much playing the amp as playing the guitar. The sounds you hear that are difficult to emulate are the ones you get from getting the right amp and setting it the right way. A lot of this has to do with distortion of different kinds that comes from certain tube types, pushing those tubes to their limits and then out through certain speaker sizes and types. Almost all electric guitar is played with some type of distortion and people collect and modify amps to get just the type of distortion they want.

Try sitting down to a Line6 POD or some other amp modeller some time and just flip through the different settings and you can hear an attempt to recreate the wide variety of sounds that come from specific guitar/amp combinations.
Then there are also effects, which is another whole ball of wax.

I'm getting the feeling that it's going to take as much time and attention to learn how to run the electronics, as it does to learn to play.

I think I'll stick to acoustic for a while yet.

Get an electric. Its a whole new beast. It does not require tweaking to learn to play it. Its just really fun to play.

Electrics are a lot of fun. And there are all kinds of variables, both in the guitar and the amp (and any effects boxes you might happen to find in your possession - I don't know about anybody else, but 'guitar things' have a tendency to find their way home with me whether I know I need them or not, and there's a LOT more 'things' that go along with an electric, but that's OK because it's more to play with! :-) ). Anyway, back to the subject.... I began learning on an acoustic and progressed quite nicely, then I went electric.... and my playing took off! Things were so much easier on an electric than they were on an acoustic. My fingers fairly flew over that fretboard! Somebody on another forum made the analogy that switching from acoustic to electric was like suddenly driving a Ferrari on ice. It may have just been the confidence boost brought on by doing things easily that had been difficult, but my playing has improved by leaps and bounds. I still practice on my acoustic. I think it's good for me to struggle a little bit because when I pick up one of my electrics it's because I want to play... not practice. In case you can't tell, I'm all for going electric! :-)