Shredding on a Tele

God is gracious and good. Even in the midst of the wrist injury in my picking hand, He continually provides ways for me to continue playing the guitar, and even improve on my technique to be a player who can play more cleanly. I've only recently realized that my left hand is far stronger than I had previously taken notice of. 

Its legato passages are fluid but defined. When I mute the strings with my wrist, I get a very distinct "chunk" sound out of the muted notes as I make my way across the fretboard. I've also managed to learn how to effectively mute unwanted strings during those long lead lines with my left hand, something I was very bad at doing for the longest time.

Not exactly shred, but it's approaching speeds I could play before in my John Petrucci days.

God is so good. Much thanksgiving is due.

While God works in helping me shape my technique, He's also helping me improve upon my existing setup. After playing with a well-setup low-action guitar, I was really inspired to get a similar feel. I starting watching those who play Teles and can play really fast on it (Andy Timmons, Ritchie Kotzen, even Keith Urban). It just seemed that they had the strength of gorillas to be able to have such volume and articulation.

The thought hit me; what if their guitar action was low? I used to adjust the string height on my Yamahas like crazy just to get that sweet John Petrucci spot, and only avoided it on my Strat and Tele because I figured it would degrade the tone. Besides, wasn't it tonal blasphemy to have a Tele with low action and strung with 9's?

I threw convention out the window. Half an hour's worth of tweaking and retuning yielded some very satisfying results.

As you can tell, there's a fair bit of string posts exposed. They used to be flush with the saddle, meaning that the action was a lot higher. Here are some observations:

1. The exposed string posts can cut your hand. Yes, now I know why some of my shredder friends don't like Teles. I palm-mute quite a lot, and my hand has to rest where the string posts are. Thankfully, I'm a light picker now with a light touch, so the pressure exerted by the string posts isn't strong enough for me to spill blood.
2. The strings are closer to the pickups. My bridge pickup immediately sounded a lot hotter, allowing me to play faster passages and retain definition and articulation. The effect isn't as pronounced on the neck pickup.
3. I can get away with legato passages far more cleanly. Oh yes. Bring on the long passages. I used to be so afraid of them playing on a Tele, but I think I've regained some confidence back.
   

I shall quote a website about lowering the action on your guitar:

"It'll feel so good you'll play it instead of eating/bathing/sleeping. There won't be anything left of you but bad posture and enough hair to comb over your face."

Further reading:
Hotrod Your Guitar
Setting string action on a Telecaster (eHow)

Posted in: Guitars,Howto,Performing