Find out what you need to round out your guitar toolkit and keep everything sounding and looking great.

Just like any builder, artist or chef, there is a basic set of tools that a guitarist needs to be successful.

Of course, the first thing to get is a guitar and an amplifier (if you’re playing an electric model). It’s easy enough to start playing there, and really, that’s the fun part about starting a new hobby, choosing from a slew of amazing instruments to find the one that speaks to you.

But to fully round out your rig, you should consider a few pieces of gear that can have you playing like a pro in no time, not to mention some additional accessories to properly maintain your guitar.

Below is a list of essential tools to note:

Guitar Tuner

With the Fender Tune app, tuning your guitar has never been easier, which is a good thing because playing a guitar that is out of whack won’t do you any favors.

Fender Tune allows you to tune both automatically and by ear, with simple instructions and tips to help you along the way. What’s more, the new Tune Player Pack supercharges the tuner with even greater visual precision with exact cents and more flexibility with hertz reference. The Player Pack also features 65 drum beats (from six different genres) and a built-in metronome to improve your timing, feel and rhythm, over 2,000 scales that will open up new possibilities on your fingerboard and a library of thousands of chords represented in multiple shape variations.

Fender also offers a variety of digital tuners that you can clip on the headstock.

Guitar Strap

If you want to play the guitar standing up, you’ll need a strap. It’s key in stabilizing your guitar against your body and will prevent your arms from aching.

Straps come in a variety of materials and designs, so what you choose is up to you. Just go into the decision with comfort on the top of your mind. Two inches in width is a good starting point, and maybe look for something with padding that will ease the strain on your neck and shoulder.

Extra Strings

Your guitar most likely came with a set of strings, but sooner than later, one of those is going to break due to wear and corrosion, age, or tension.

So picking up a few extra packs will ensure that you won’t have to wait for an Amazon delivery or go to your local music retailer when that occurs. The ability to change a string on the go will help you avoid any delay in your practice schedule.

Generally, electric guitars will take nickel strings (versatily, clear and articulate) or stainles steel strings (bright and less prone to wear), while acoustic guitars want to have 80/20 bronze strings (bright and metallic) or phosphor bronze strings (dark and mellow). Also, start with a lighter gauge that will produce less tension, making them easier for beginners to work with.

Guitar Picks

Seeing a massive assortment of picks in different shapes, sizes, materials and thicknesses can be overwhelming, especially for such a tiny item. You might want to try out a number of options before settling on what works best for your playing style.

Typically, thicker, stiffer picks offer more control, where thinner picks work well for strumming.

Capo

As your skills as a guitarist progress beyond basic chords, a capo can assist you in playing songs in different keys while still using first-position open-string chord forms. You can place it on any fret and play more advanced songs while still using familiar chord shapes. Learn all about capos here.

Case / Gig Bag

If you want to protect your guitar, a case or a gig bag should join your collection. Not only will it keep it safe from dirt and scratches, it will also just make it easier to carry around.

A soft gig bag are mostly inexpensive and offer excellent mobility, while a hard case gives you the best defense against the elements (including the human element), even if they are pricier.

Guitar Cable

If you are going to play through an amp, you can’t just beam your tone through the speakers (yet). So grab a cable of moderate length and reinforced ends to ensure the best connection.

It’s worth noting that some cables have straight connection plugs and some have L-shaped connectors. If your guitar’s output jack is recessed into the body, as with a Stratocaster, a straight plug will fit best. If it is on the face of the guitar’s body or on the lower end, like with Telecaster, an L-shaped plug might fit better, even though you can still use a straight plug in those cases.

Guitar Stand

Don’t open yourself to the chance that you or someone else could absent-mindedly step on your guitar by casually setting it down on the floor or leaning it against a table. A guitar stand will keep it stored safely and can even tastefully display your prized six-stringed possession. A stand is also beneficial to have on stage, as it allows you to easily access other instruments.

Guitar Humidifier

For acoustic players (or an electric player living in very dry conditions), a humidifier can combat the effects of fluctuating weather. Guitars are made of wood, which “breathes” as temperatures and humidity change, not just when moving them from a hot car to a cold room, but also within the confines of your home. That can lead to cracking and warping, fret sprout, fret buzz and more headaches.

Guitar case humidifiers sit in the actual guitar case to keep the case regulated. Room humidifiers are good for those that have multiple guitars to safeguard. And soundhole humidifiers either cover the soundhole or are composed of a rubber tube that sits between the strings and runs down into the guitar. Both types of the latter are basically an enclosed saturated sponge that moisturizes the wood without dripping water on it (you only need to re-wet these every week or two).

Guitar Cleaners

You want to keep your gutiar looking fresh, so it is smart to have a few cleaning accessories close by, like a microfiber cloth and polish to increase the luster and longevitiy of the finish. View a list of do’s and don’ts when it comes to cleaning your guitar here.

Guitar Tools

If you have designs on being a tinkerer, or you just want to keep your gutiar in working order, there are some basic items to have at your disposal. You could pick up a ready-made kit complete with a screwdriver, a hex adapter for truss rod adjustment, telescopic adjustment mirror, ruler, diagonal cutter, feeler gauges and string winder, or just amass your own kit as you see fit.

For the best price on these accessories contact Connor@NapervilleMusic.com

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The metal master gets more than just twang out of his Telecaster.

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John Baizley looks at the guitar in different ways than most, as he endeavors to make his Telecaster do things that others might not when fronting his metal band, Baroness.

As he puts it, a Telecaster is a “tool of precision and expression,” no matter what music you’re playing.

“When I began to play Telecasters, it was like the glove that fits, and I realize now the expression that that flows through me into my fingertips, and then somehow finds life on this fret board is clearer,” he said. “It is more articulate, and it is more nuanced. I can make loud parts feel loud, I can make heavy parts feel heavy, and I can make delicate, delicate parts feel incredibly delicate.”

For nearly a decade, Baizley has made his case through Baroness’ colorful and heavy hitting records, Red Album, Blue Record, Yellow & Green, and 2015’s Purple, all of which have garnered critical and commercial success, not to mention established the band on the forefront of the metal scene.

Baizley recently checked in with Fender to talk about his approach to the guitar and how it helps him communicate with the audience when he’s wearing his Tele in front of fans nearly every night.

“When Nevermind dropped, it struck me that I had a love for playing music, and I could do it.”

“It was mixed with the absolute absence of talent that I had. But with seeing and hearing those loud guitars, it seemed like everybody was having a blast. It spoke to me. When grunge was really big, and we discovered a way to get music that only we would like, and we knew nobody else would like it.”

“We didn’t know anything about instruments or effects pedals or all the expensive stuff.”

“We had to borrow our parents and our friends’ parents old gear from the ’70s when they were into rock. We’d get these just massive walls of beat-up, busted speakers and plug into everything and just see how loud you could get without many loud amps. So, it would just be a lot of these like small practice amps that we could kind of stumble across, in pawn shops and whatnot. We just figured out ways to plug into everything and make a racket.”

“There were so few of us that we would learn all of the songs that we were interested in, but everybody had to know the drums, the bass, the guitar, the vocals … “

“We had to make up a lot of the rules. If the drummer didn’t show up, you had to be the drummer. If the bass player didn’t show up, you had to be the bass player. That period of my life was all about loving the fact that we had no idea what we were doing.”

“I learned quite a bit of theory, but it wasn’t looking for it.”

“It just kind of happened onto my plate. Theory’s a tool. It’s a language. It allows us to speak fluently with other musicians in other bands and from other cultures. There’s still room to discover music on these instruments.”

“I think in the music industry, there were people saying, “Rock’s dead.'”

“I think that was just as a method to say, ‘Look, electronic is taking over. Your cute little six-string instruments are becoming more and more like toys. But I’m a huge Queen fan, and Brian May, if nothing else, taught me that you can make your guitar sound wildly different.

“It will enrich and embolden the music that you make. So, a lot of times in a recording studio or in rehearsal and oftentimes on stage, my whole objective is to make this instrument sound anything other than what it actually is.”

“Being in front of lots of people isn’t that easy for me. But when I have this guitar in front of me, it becomes far simpler.”

“I know my place in the universe, musically speaking. It’s a tool for me to emote and to communicate with people without having to verbalize it, without trying to figure out some articulate way of taking this very nebulous idea. Music a communal thing, and when we play on stage, the more energetic the crowd is, the more energetic we are, and the better the show is. This is just this bizarre instrument that allows me to say things that I would probably be very uncomfortable saying to huge crowds of people.”

“I think if you’re going to find your personality in an instrument, these are the instruments that exhibit the most personality. For me, that’s the goal.”

Coming from rural Oklahoma, the singer/songwriter is carrying the banner of rock and roll.

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JD McPherson is nothing if not determined.

Growing up in rural Oklahoma – on a cattle ranch, no less – McPherson’s interest in music was initially piqued with ’70s classic rock and punk, with much of that indoctrination coming from his older brothers.

But as he got older, McPherson dove headfirst into the even more classic sounds of ’50s rock and roll, country, soul, and Delta blues, going to great lengths to feed his passion.

“The hard part [of living far from big cities] is that if you have like this all-consuming passion and need to read as many rock magazines as you can get your hands on, you can’t actually get them,” McPherson said. “So you have to plan that out way in advance. I would call a month ahead to the Fort Smith mall in Arkansas and order CDs.

“We would make the one trip there, I would pick them up and grab rock magazines and read them, and that’s how I would plan my next CD purchase.”

That resolute mentality also guided McPherson as he began to create his own music. Instead of farming, he spent much of his childhood navigating the guitar and playing in bands before studying film at the University of Tulsa. Upon graduation, he became a high school art teacher for a couple of years before he was let go.

That news was a blessing in disguise. McPherson dug deeper into his love of retro-sounding music and began to shape his own sound, culminating his 2010 debut album, Signs and Signifiers, which was followed in 2015 by the critically acclaimed Let the Good Times Roll.

In 2017, McPherson took yet another step in his march carrying the banner of rock and roll with Undisputed Heart & Soul, an excellent third effort that draws from even more influences than the likes of Buddy Holly and Sonny Curtis that shaped his earlier work.

How one ’59 Telecaster powered the Yardbird’s final years, Led Zeppelin’s debut and one of rock’s most iconic solos.

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It’s no secret that Jimmy Page has long had a thing about dragons.

He was well known for wearing flashy black and white dragon suits and the ZOSO symbol he used to represent himself on Led Zeppelin Four comes straight from the 1972 occult text Grimoires et Rituels Magiques by Francois Ribadeau Dumas and, in specific, a chapter titled, “Dragon Rouge – The Secrets of the Scientist Artephius.” But perhaps the most interesting tale about Page slaying a dragon is the one about his “Dragon Telecaster,”

In its most recognizable form, the Dragon was a 1959 Telecaster with a stripped Ash body that Page partially painted over with darts and curls of green, orange, yellow, blue and red in a pattern that formed something of a swirling, psychedelic dragon done in a vaguely Japanese style. The beast’s flaming red horns and green head rest inside the blunt upper horn, green scales run down its neck as it breaks into a colorful abstraction that could include a cracked egg near the control panel and a tail that snakes into the upper bout from the lower.

But there’s more to the Dragon Telecaster than a splashy paint job. It was first owned by Jeff Beck’s school friend and Deltones bandmate John Owen, who bought it for 107 British pounds in 1961. The precise date of the Tele’s birth is not known, but the guitar was originally painted blonde and featured a maple neck, a slab rosewood fingerboard and a top loader bridge, which was common for Telecasters produced in 1959 and 1960. Also, Fender introduced the slab rosewood fingerboard to the Tele in mid-1959 after bowing them on Jazzmaster models the previous year.

Since Beck was the lead guitarist of the Deltones and was playing a Burns “Tri-Sonic” that he felt was harder to control during solos, he convinced Owen to trade instruments with him, which worked. Briefly. “For a while, Owens agreed to swap, though when confronted with the difficulties of controlling the Burns’ seemingly endless knob configurations each night, [he] soon asked for his Telecaster to be returned,” wrote Martin Power in Hot Wired Guitar: The Life of Jeff Beck.

It’s unclear how Beck eventually regained possession of the instrument following the dissolution of the Deltones, but he used the Tele as a backup to his go-to 1954 swamp ash Fender Esquire during his stint with the Yardbirds in 1965 and 1966. “The original white Bakelite pickguard and switch tip of the Telecaster crumbled off and Beck had it replaced with a homemade black pickguard,” wrote Jeff Strawman in Led Zeppelin Gear: All the Gear From Led Zeppelin.

In 1966, Beck gave the guitar to Page as a gift for helping him throughout his early career. In addition to recommending Beck for studio sessions and mentioning him to several London producers, Page endorsed Beck to fill the slot in the Yardbirds that opened up when Eric Clapton left the band. Originally, Clapton had recommended Page for the position, but at the time he was working as a successful session musician.

The Telecaster was undecorated when Page received it and it remained that way until February 1967 when he added eight circular mirrors to the body of the guitar. It’s possible that he got the idea from Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett who embellished his Esquire with 15 mirror-style metal discs in January 1967 to use for a recording session of the film Let’s All Make Love.

Page played his mirrored Telecaster only briefly. By mid-1967 he had grown unhappy with the look and he removed the mirrors, completely stripped the paint and repainted the instrument himself. Then he replaced the black pickguard with a transparent acrylic one and inserted a sheet of diffraction grating film, which created a spectrum of colors when hit by light.

“I really made it my own, so it was like no other Telecaster,” he said in a 2014 interview with Wondering Sound. “I felt that it was like a consecration. It’s quite a magical guitar.”

When he formed Led Zeppelin in 1968, the Dragon Telecaster became Page’s go-to instrument and he played it onstage and in the studio until 1969, wrote Brad Tolinski in Light & Shade: Conversations With Jimmy Page. The instrument was the main guitar used on Led Zeppelin and was later used to record the iconic solo for “Stairway to Heaven.”

There have been reports that Page was having problems with one of the pickups in the Dragon Tele in early ’69, and in April of that year he replaced the “magical guitar” when he purchased the Les Paul, and it’s unclear if he planned to return to the Dragon with any regularity in the future. He used it for the solo of “Stairway to Heaven” in 1970, but while he was touring America in the Dragon Tele was ruined.

“I still have it,” he told Guitar World in 1998. “But it’s a tragic story. I went on tour with [a] ’59 Les Paul that I bought from Joe Walsh, and when I got back, a friend of mine had kindly painted over my paint job. He said, ‘I’ve got a present for you.’ He thought he had done me a real favor. As you can guess, I wasn’t real happy about that. His paint job totally screwed up the sound and the wiring, so only the neck pickup worked. I salvaged the neck and put it on my brown Tele string bender that I used in the Firm [in 1985 and 1986]. As for the body, it will never be seen again!”