Are Barre Chords Easier To Play On Good Guitars?

I have to say after upgrading my beginners guitar for a nice ESP, I've found the barre chords easier to practice.

Is there no saving grace in playing on a guitar with high action? It must be easier to go from a hard-to-play guitar to one that it easier to play. Besides, if the guitar is difficult you must be more skilled to play on it so you learn faster... Maybe.

There is one thing that high action guitars are great for - playing bottleneck slide. Tune to open D or open G - you could try open E or open A, but I prefer the lower tunings - and experiment.

:D :D :D

Vic

Yeah, there are some saving graces of high action.

Slide is one, though I don't play slide. (Wish I did. Will one day...)

Others are related to personal preference. If you like to hit the strings hard, you may want the strings a little higher to keep it from buzzing. Personally, I use my main guitar for most everything- from metal to blues to acoustic style full handed strumming. (It's a solidbody electric, but I play some originally acoustic numbers alright on it.)

And when you're strumming with all five fingers, you don't want the world's lowest action, or it's gonna buzz. No matter what.

Some people say that higher action improves tone, and this is probably true for some playing styles. (It doesn't automatically improve your tone, but if you have heavy hands, like I do, clean strums with high action sound a LOT better that buzzy stuff with low.)

About bar chords, it's a lot easier to learn them on a well set up, fairly low action guitar. It takes less strength to do them, and while you're just developing the strength and technique, this makes a noticeable difference.

And after that, it doesn't. Once you have them down, you can pretty much play them on anything.

When I was first learning barre chords, I could only play them on my stratocopy. (Very low action, light strings.) But after playing heck out of them on that for a while, I found that even my "cheese grater action" acoustic worked well...hang in there. THey will come!

Best,
Ande

I have to say after upgrading my beginners guitar for a nice ESP, I've found the barre chords easier to practice.
New guitar? Nice! Congrats :mrgreen:

New guitar? Nice! Congrats :mrgreen:

Thanks - it sounds fabulous, I'm so pleased I upgraded :D