It really was impressive. The CNC part of the process is to only shape the body and neck parts. Everything else is done by hand, including getting the neck joint sanded to prefection so the joints fit perfectly. The only line made overseas is the SE line and every guitar is shipped to the Maryland plant/HQ and is inspected thoroughly before shipping off to dealers. Any flaws they find are corrected by hand before shipping. Apparently Paul Reed Smith himself went and trained the workers at the plant in Korea to teach them how he wanted his guitars built. PRS himself was interesting to listen to (he spoke to our group for about 30 minutes prior to the tour), extremely affable, and overal a down to earth normal guy that seems to care for every one of his employees.
Not to be nosy but pick or no pick? I have pretty much stop using a pick most of the time playing acoustic. It feels like I have a lot more versatility using my fingers. Not that I have mastered a fingerpicking technique by any means. I like playing electric without a pick but some things I can do better with one, like alternative picking. Any comments on what y'all do?
I use a pick a lot. I'm not all that good at the finger picking stuff but that is probably because I don't practice it that much either. For that blues jam it took me a while to get it to sound smooth, usually really heavy on the top string and either miss or barley catch the second. Just took time. I can play that blues riff with fingers but any other pattern is a monkey fucking a football.
I'm not really fingerpicking but strumming using the backs of my fingers on the downstroke the front on the upstroke. Nothing I ever saw or was taught but it seems to sound good. Sometimes after a few drinks just playing around you can come up with some stuff you didn'r realize you could do. Did you learn that jam from a video?
No, from a teacher and then just worked on it adding fills here and there. As for using fingers the way you talked about no, it's hot garbage to me. I have one little deal I can do that way and it's a simple 1-6-2-5 in C where I sort of pluck C,Am,Dm,G and it sounds really cool when you add some hammer ons here and there. Pretty sure it's also the chords to "Oh Donna"
Glad this did not devolve into a nose picking thread. Lol. I think flat picking to fingerstyle is kind of a natural progression in player development. Strumming and playing single notes with a pick is easier in terms of dexterity but as that dexterity increases, so does the appetite to play more complex melodies. There are some good fingerstyle resources out there - including classical acoustic guitar techniques. Gibson's "Learn and Master" DVD series are pretty good and you can probably find these on Youtube: https://www.learnandmaster.com/spotlight-series/fingerstyle-guitar/ My next guitar learning purchase will likely be one of the "Guitar From Scratch" books: http://www.skepticalguitarist.com/index.html. Note that there is a fingerstyle book as well: http://www.skepticalguitarist.com/fingerstyle/fingerstyle.htm.
