5 Overrated Gear Trends | Real Guitar Talk

Here is a brief summary of the transcript: The transcript discusses overrated guitar gear trends. The key points are: - Small tube amps became very popular, but you can get good tones without them through attenuators, pedals, or digital modeling. - True bypass vs buffered bypass doesn't matter as long as the final tone is good. - Locking tuners are often marketed as necessary for tuning stability, but aren't needed if you know how to properly wind the strings. - Upgraded electronic components like CTS pots and Orange Drop capacitors are better than cheap components but not a huge tonal improvement. - Acoustic-electric hybrid guitars like the Taylor T5 can get cool tones but require two amps and most players end up just using one mode or the other rather than taking full advantage of the versatility. The main point is that while these gear items can be cool, most of them are unnecessary trends and you don't really need them to get great tone. Tone ultimately comes down to the player's hands and ears more than specific gear.

Overrated gear trends. Hey, everyone, I'm Jack Fawcett. Welcome to real guitar talk, tackling some issues that I think pertain to guitar players nowadays that I don't see spoken about very openly today, I want to talk about gear trends. Now, the important thing to remember when I'm talking about trends is that a lot of these, I don't think that the products or, you know, kind of the angle or whatever is necessarily bad of what they're trying to sell. What I don't like about it is the trend. Trends kind of going around, like, you know, oh, you need to have this, or you can't do that, or your gear is only good if it's like this. That's the thing that I tend to have a problem with. In fact, some of the gear that I'm going to mention on this list I actually like and use again. It's all about that kind of marketing trend. And when it's a fad, and to really sell that point for number five, the first one we're going to dive in with. See, I figured this would be a perfect way to kind of emphasize what I'm talking about here. Small tube amps. Because many of you know, I love small tube amps. I have done loads of videos with small tube amps, and I believe, based on some comments, that many of you have bought small tube amps. Based on what I've said, this was also the first gear trend I ever saw happen in real time. And it was back when epiphone released the valve Junior amp, which was a really cool amp. I had a valve junior. I had the head in the little one. It was a 112 combo. I'm sorry, 112 cabinet. And after Epiphone came out with a valve junior, all of a sudden all the companies had to either come out with or reissue a small, low watt tube amp that they had in their past, or they just went everywhere. The same kind of thing happened with the orange tiny terror. And then you saw all the amp companies come out with the lunchbox size amps. You know, like you had Vox come out with the night train, and then Mesa boogie came out with one, and a bunch of other companies came out with these sort of little mini heads. And the thing about small tube amps is they started back in the early days, they started really as student practice amps, but they happened to sound really good because they were, you know, all hand wired tube and things, and players started using them for recording because it was much easier to control the volume. So they became associated with legendary tones on a lot of records. We don't really necessarily need that nowadays. Now, again, I like small tube amps. I use them, I have fun with them. But again, they're not something that I actually need. And if push came to shove, if I could really get my hands on one amp, they're not the first thing that I would buy. And there was that trend again of kind of like, all of a sudden, everybody was, like, pretending like they never knew it before. You know, just like, oh, you need this so you can get the wide open drive tones at a manageable volume. There's so many ways you can do that nowadays. You can use an attenuator, you can use pedals, you can use any sort of digital modeling technology, whether an amp or software. And that's what people tend to use in the studio more nowadays, rather than these small amps that you can crank. I really like them. Just that trend always kind of irked me of, like, you really don't need it. It's just kind of cool and fun. Number four. All right. I know some people are going to get a little bit worked up about this true bypass. Buffered bypass. What's the difference? Does it matter when it comes to pedals and it comes to your signal chain, there is one steadfast rule, which is if the tone coming out of your amplifier is good, then it really doesn't matter what you have. And I remember being at guitar center once, and I was with a friend of mine, and he asked somebody, he asked the store clerk, I think, do I really need true bypass? And I said, you really don't need it. And then there was another guy, another guitar player nearby, who started launching into a tirade about why you really do need true bypass. And it was great because I had to. I got a real life Jim Halpert moment. Like, I could kind of look at him over his shoulder. Like, there are situations where one might be better than the other, and a lot of people swear by one or the other. But again, I go back to the steadfast rule. If the tone coming out of your amplifier is good, then it really doesn't matter. And you've seen the memes. You know, the people at Woodstock tried to have a good time despite the fact that Hendrix's pedals weren't true bypass. What matters is the tone coming out of your amp. And however you get there is fine. Number three, this is one that's been kind of. It's a trend in a specific realm, and it's. Any time you have a guitar that's sort of marketed more towards like prose or session players. And it's sort of an all encompassing, all in one guitar. You know, it's supposed to give you this tone, you know, stays in tune, noise free, whatever it is that it sort of sells in all the switching for the various tones and things. They always have locking tuners and again, are like, are locking tuners bad? No, of course they're not bad. But the thing about locking tuners is I think, I don't think they're really that necessary. If you know what you're doing, winding a guitar peg, then you really don't need them. And most of the time, if you're having tuning stability issues, it's probably going to be more of an issue with the nut than it is with the actual tuning machines. The only tuning machines that don't tend to hold up are the really, really cheap ones that you find on import guitars as soon as you get up to kind of a mid level. Again, if you wind the guitar right, if you wind the string right and it's a good nut, you're not going to have any problems with tuning. And I have guitars with tremolo systems and no locking tuners and things. And, you know, again, as long as you wind that peg right, you're going to be fine. I don't really see the point of locking tuners if you know what you're doing. Number two, I remember seeing this trend come out probably around the early two thousand ten s. And I actually think YouTube might have influenced it because, because when YouTube came out and people started experimenting with more pickups because they could actually hear them in reviews, they also started experimenting with better wiring. And you had companies coming out where you could buy a more expensive wiring harness. And so then you started seeing some companies kind of advertising like, you know, almost like it's an upsell, like, you know, well, this one has cts pots and orange drop capacitors and things. And to me I'm like, okay, yeah, they're not bad. I mean, all that tells me is it's not necessarily just like a really cheap no name import one that you've got in your guitars. I don't really see cts, pots or orange drop caps as a huge improvement in the tone. Again, better than the cheap stuff, but, and you can really deep dive into like, what pots and caps are good. But basically I never really saw that as like a selling feature. Like, you know, okay, I don't know that CTS pots are any better than the Gibson brand pots that were used for a long time, or the fender brand pots, or prs. I pretty sure uses their own pots and things. And I, you know, CTS is kind of just, you know, right. Right there. There's some other ones that I think are better for not much money. I prefer Bourne's myself. But sure, I mean, whatever sells your guitars, I guess. And the number one overrated gear trend, again, this is a product that I actually think is really cool, and you can get some cool tones out of. And two times I've seen this come up like it was the greatest thing in the world that everybody needed and then died down when everyone realized they don't really need them. Acoustic electric hybrids, man, there are some really cool acoustic electric hybrids out of there that you can get some great tones out of. But the reality is that, first of all, it's always tricky because they almost always need you to run into two different rigs. They need you to run into, like, an a b switch, where you go into one acoustic rig or direct in somehow, and then into an electric amphennesse. So even though you've got one guitar, you're still using two regs. The other thing is, is that each one of them tends to do one thing better than the other. Now, for instance, I reviewed the Fender acoustasonic guitars, which are really cool guitars. They make great tones. I really think those are best, though, for acoustic players who want a high quality, plugged in acoustic tone and a lighter, kind of more gig friendly guitar. Right. Because it's lighter, it's smaller. You don't have your arm up over the shoulder quite as much. I don't really see them as necessarily the wildly versatile thing that everyone sells them as, you know. Yeah, they are versatile. They can get a lot of cool tones. But it sort of seems like players, only a select few players, I'll say only a select group of players, really use them for all they're capable of. And when push comes to shove, like, for me, I'm kind of in one mode or the other. I'm either playing acoustic guitar or I'm playing electric guitar. And if I'm playing acoustic guitar and it comes up to a lead part or something that I might, might more favor electric, I'm still fine. I'll just play it on acoustic. Or if I'm playing a song that's traditionally acoustic and I'm playing it on an electric guitar, I'll just strum some clean chords. And ultimately, again, I remember the t five, the two times I saw this trend come out. It was the Taylor t five when that was introduced, I think it was like 20 years ago. And then the Fender acoustasonic series, both really cool guitars. They can get a lot of different tones. But again, it was this sort of like, all of a sudden everybody felt like they needed one. And then the vast majority of players pretty quickly realized like, yeah, I don't really need that. Like, it's cool, but I just don't need it. Those are the five gear trends that I think are kind of unnecessary cool gear, not stuff that you actually need or actually need to kind of define your rig or the quality of your rig based on what would be gear trends that you would add to this list. Please let us know in the comments. I'm Jack Fawcett. 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