Do You Enjoy Play Your Electric Acoustically?

[Deadpan]

I generally play unplugged every day. It inspires me to mix finger picking, arpeggios and even some pentatonic riffing. Styles I wouldn't play with distortion or even possibly, a clean amp.

Anyone else?

 

[Eagle]

Yes all the time. Particularly learning scales ,arpeggios, patterns that I want good muscle memory for. You can polish the nuances plugged in but get the grunt part done unplugged.

 

[Alex Kenivel]

Yeah I do it often, but I like to plug in whenever I can. I like to hear the strings acoustically, it helps me determine when I need to change strings.

Playing unplugged is great for learning and practicing without the distractions of plugging into all kinds of tone generating devices

 

[JasonE]

I play more unplugged these days than I do plugged in.

 

[SKU]

With all the digitalz, a-it-r, various pedals and other devices, plugins, processing these days I find that playing unplugged reminds me that the guitar is an instrument and that it is a guitar first and foremost and not a guitar-like tone generator.

 

[DrewJD82]

Yeah, that’s usually the foreplay before I turn something on.

 

[Blix]

Never, my Axe is on 24/7 and I have a plugged in guitar right beside me at all times.
I used to practise unplugged all the time when I was younger though.

 

[PLX]

 

[V|J]

That’s how I’ve practised/played for over 90% of my life.

Even when plugged in, I like to stay very dry-ish because beautiful sounds kinda distract me.

On the downside, my palm muting has suffered because of that.
High gain riffing is fine but soloing with high gain is a challenge. Same solos on a cleaner sound are much easier for me to manage.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

Playing electric guitar unplugged too much at all leads to bad habits/technique for me. I voted "Sometimes to practice" but even with that...yes, its nice to get a fingering down without the speaker telling you how bad you sound in the early stages of working something up, but its also a good feedback loop telling you what you're actually screwing up/whether you actually have the fingering down or not.

 

[la szum]

Never. Literally. I didn't waste all this $$$ on cool shit to plug into only to not plug into it. WTF??!!

 

[la szum]

Playing electric guitar unplugged too much at all leads to bad habits/technique for me. I voted "Sometimes to practice" but even with that...yes, its nice to get a fingering down without the speaker telling you how bad you sound in the early stages of working something up, but its also a good feedback loop telling you what you're actually screwing up/whether you actually have the fingering down or not.

Yup. I am all about playing amps and pedals and fx as much as the guitar. They are all elements of
an entire continuum for me.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

Yup. I am all about playing amps and pedals and fx as much as the guitar. They are all elements of
an entire continuum for me.

Yeah, I can see a benefit to occasionally keeping the wet effects off to make sure you're not covering up mistakes. But not much -- its equally important to spend plenty of time playing through a delay if your end goal is to play well through a delay because...there are things you do, ways you end phrases, how you cut off notes, that should be done one way when playing with delay and another way when playing without.

 

[the-trooper]

Never. Literally. I didn't waste all this $$$ on cool shit to plug into only to not plug into it. WTF??!!

It's not about enjoyment. Guitar is just, there. Pick it up. Set it down. Done!
All that other shit requires electricity, and plugging in, and uncovering, and turning on, and off, and covering, and coiling cables...

Sometimes if I have something to practice I'll turn on metronome on the phone while watching TV and practice away. So by the end of the movie I, you know, neither watched the movie nor actually practiced anything

 

[la szum]

It's not about enjoyment. Guitar is just, there. Pick it up. Set it down. Done!
All that other shit requires electricity, and plugging in, and uncovering, and turning on, and off, and covering, and coiling cables...

1,000 of generations of humans died shitting in the woods and on craggy peaks just so we could
have all of this stuff dude.

Show some love and appreciation, Man!

 

[la szum]

Yeah, I can see a benefit to occasionally keeping the wet effects off to make sure you're not covering up mistakes. But not much -- its equally important to spend plenty of time playing through a delay if your end goal is to play well through a delay because...there are things you do, ways you end phrases, how you cut off notes, that should be done one way when playing with delay and another way when playing without.

Yup. The bloom of an amp. The immediacy of the attack. The slow decay and dying of a note.
The expressive possibilities are nearly infinite.

It's all the sensitivity inherent in the subtle interactions of the entire ecosystem that gets be
all jazzed and juiced.

I also feel like I am still learning to appreciate it more, let alone navigate it more skillfully.

 

[the-trooper]

1,000 of generations of humans died shitting in the woods and on craggy peaks just so we could
have all of this stuff dude.

Show some love and appreciation, Man!

Pfff screw them! You think 1000 generations from now will show us respect with their free, wireless electricity, FTL travel and modeling modules on chips that plug directly into their neural interface (soon)?

 

[Moondog Wily]

My PRS McCarty 594 HBII sounds delightful acoustically, but I only play it as such when I am warming up the strings/fingers and getting ready to play. I have thought about how I could best capture that acoustic tone it has, but have done nothing about attempting to do so. My other electrics I plug in as soon as I touch them as acoustically they do very little for me.

 

[Texsunburst59]

I have some very good quality acoustics ,so there’s no need to play an electric unplugged.

 

[V|J]

My PRS McCarty 594 HBII sounds delightful acoustically, but I only play it as such when I am warming up the strings/fingers and getting ready to play. I have thought about how I could best capture that acoustic tone it has, but have done nothing about attempting to do so. My other electrics I plug in as soon as I touch them as acoustically they do very little for me.

The PRS hollow bodies are magic.. they sound beautiful acoustically and are compact too.
ES 335s and 339s sound thin to me, especially the treble strings.

I’ve only tried the SE version though.