Which guitar do you practice/play the most?

[kris]

I have 6 different guitars at home and sometimes I don't know which one to practice on.
Does anyone have any helpful advice...?

[JCat]

Yes I do,
It's a major pitfall because eventually you'll end up spending more time adjusting guitars than playing them. Because no two guitars are identical and we need to stay focused to internalize muscle memory.
But as no setup will last a lifetime, neck and bridge needs periodic readjustment, strings must be replaced, frets wear etc, we have to be familiar with different guitars. Playing just one individual guitar would be inhibiting. You need to be familiar with a backup guitar. After many years of practicing on different guitars you'll feel at home with long scales and short scales, fat necks and slim necks, tall frets and low frets etc and never be restricted. And this is why we need to play different guitars from time to time. So, here's my advice:

Play no more than 3 guitars at the time, keep these in top shape, but forget about the others. Then after a period of 6 months or so, rotate the set to another group of 3 guitars. If you have a # one, it can stay in the new set, just remember time will come when it's due for service...

[vintagelove]

90 Greco LP. It just plays amazing (set up for bebop, TI flats). It just flies.

[Greywolf]

Being a luthier and multi-instumentalist I'm fortunate to have many instruments in the home and shop, what gets played is largely dependent on what type of music I'm playing . The consistent favorites are my Heritage H575 custom, PRS Santana West Street, Taylor K26CE , Weber Metolious Mandolin , or my old bell brass Dobro . Congas and Keyboard rotate through as well.

To some extent I envy those one guitar folks

[James W]

My olive green Fender Mustang. I'd play my Godin 5th Avenue Kingpin more but I still need to lower the action on it.

There was a time when I promised myself I'd play my steel-string acoustic more often, but it means more work for my fretting hand and generally the temptation of playing my Mustang is too great!

[lawson-stone]

Number 1 for me is the L5ces. I didn't wait and long all these years, spend all that money, to leave that guitar hanging on the wall. I play it all the time. Number 2 is the ES175, which is like the moon to the L5 sun. I love both, they both stay set up very consistently, very stable, intonation is perfect, and for a "middling" player like me, every time I get something right, these guitars reward me.

I also passionately love my Gibson ES165 and its duplicate, the Epiphone Zephyr Regent.

[mr. beaumont]

If I have a gig coming up, I practice on whatever guitar ill be using.

If I don't, I almost always reach for my Martin 000.

But lately my rhythm guitar kick has had me playing my old Kay.

[rsclosson]

Mostly one of my Manouche guitars; most currently my Dell'Arte.

[docsteve]

Lately, I retired a 335 copy to the rehearsal room so I don't have to carry it any more. Fiddling around with it was taking up too much time and while it is great to play with the band, by itself it doesn't sound so good.

As of now, I have three guitars at the ready: a Telecaster, a Flamenca, and a Martin flattop. I play the Tele and the Flamenca most of the time. I tuned the Martin to Tim Lerch's "Cluster Tuning" (tm) so I have a reason to play it at all. (There really should be a thread on this BTW.)

So my advice to Kris: pack away some of the guitars until you find a niche that they do better than your main ones.

[John A.]

Most of the time I play unplugged at home because I don't have a separate music room where I can plug in an amp without bothering the rest of the family. For this, I'd guess it's split about evenly among my archtop, my flattop, and my semi-hollow (which is unusually loud for a semi). When I have a chance to plug in, my strat replaces my flattop in the rotation. But none of this is systematic. It's more along the lines of I keep some stuff in the living room and some in the bedroom, so wherever my wife is hanging out determines what I'll play. Or it's late night so I'll play the strat or the semi unplugged. I hate playing through headphones, and only use them for recording (my "studio" is a laptop with no dedicated monitors).

[jameslovestal]

A Martin JC16 from the 90s most days, and a Gibson 175 from the 80s when playing with others in the weekly jam sessions.

[sgosnell]

It changes from time to time, but mostly my Wu 16", followed by the Benedetto Bambino Deluxe. I have a 17" and an 18" Wu, but they're bigger than I prefer these days. The Benedetto plays the best because the neck is narrower, but the 16" Wu just sounds so good, either acoustic or amped. I pull out others from time to time, just to remember them, but they don't stay out long. My only criteria for which I play is which one inspires me at the moment, and that's usually the Wu. My only regret about that one is the neck width. I ordered and received 45mm at the nut, but I didn't think that spec through as well as I should have. The rest is great, though, so even though the neck isn't quite perfect, I keep on playing it.

[Greywolf]

The "Aerie" gets a lot of rotation

[JazzPadd]

This is a great question, thanks.

Although I do stray and play the field, I always seem to return to the Johnny Smith, especially for straight ahead jazz. Sometimes, if the stray was longer, I think, “Why don’t I play this always?”

The answer is based on what I play. When I was a work-a-day musician I rotated among a few, as others have also noted, and that depended on the gig. Strat, ES-335, and a flattop seemed to get most jobs done. But then I gave up gigging and playing for the better part of two decades.

Now guitar is just for fun, and that fun, for me at least, is jam sessions, especially their social dimension. Each of the five or so places I play at has a different vibe, different genres, different social experience. That came to mean playing different guitars.

Last night, for example, I tuned up and brought out a Yamaha SG-5A nicknamed the “Flying Samurai.” The session was mixed genre, so blues, bossa, funk, jazz (mostly standards). I played it on “You, the night and the music,” “Blue Monk,” and “Black Nile.” On my tea break, the other guitarist, a pro player, did “I remember you” and “Billie’s Bounce” on it. He was effusive. Even the pianist tried it out. So it also became a conversation piece, and ended up ticking some of my fun boxes.

Last weekend at another venue was an entirely different crowd, more standards and with several vocalists. For those sessions, I return to the Johnny Smith, or sometimes the Westville Aruba with a CC type rail pickup. But at the blues venue jam sessions I use a Keith Richards “Sonny” Tele and a Greco AP-1000 Dan Armstrong lucite copy, with only a rail humbucker at the bridge. While for acoustic open mic type places, it’s often the Taylor 712 or a Cordoba nylon string.

For practicing, that’s often tune based rather than chops based. Since my playing is bound up with this jam session scene, for me that means knowing tunes well enough to participate. Yes, some chops may be sacrificed, but it’s more about the fun experiences than developing chops.

Travel matters, too. In February the Mrs. and I visited her family abroad, so I played only a travel guitar, the kind with removable neck that fits in a carry-on bag, and a Katana mini. After about a month on that, I ended up using it on the first jam session back home. With retirement looming, and corona subsiding, the travel guitar may get played more.

So maybe variety is the appeal for me, and inconsistency, too, at least at this point in my life.

As far as which guitar I play the most, I haven’t tallied the hours, but the Johnny Smith is certainly a strong contender. It’s set up nicely, especially after I switched to the TI Jazz Swing flat 12s, and plays like butter. And it still plucks my heart strings, acoustically and amped.

[tbeltrans]

Gibson Citation (6 string) or Jimmy Foster (7 string), both archtops.

Tony

[Dave70]

I always keep a Squier mini and an old Tatay nylon string on the stand by my desk, so those two are probably played the most these days.

Every once in a while I get out a bunch I haven't used lately and play them in turn.

Like Mr. B said, if I have a gig I'll practice on the instrument I'll be using more.

[Lionelsax]

A cheap 7 string solid body guitar.

[339 in june]

Depends on a lot of things, mood ....
Used to be my Gibson ES-125, then my Eastman AR503CE, now it's my Comins GCS1-ES
I usually practice at home unplugged.

[deacon Mark]

I usually play acoustic floaters so I don't plug in much. I have a number of guitars that I rotate but if truth be known these days, I play the 49 Dangelico New Yorker the most. After almost 40 years with it I just find nothing better. At one time I played my 18 inch Hollenbeck the most during the 2000-2010 but not as much now. Oh, and I picked up a Heritage Ghost Build New Yorker that was unplayed really since 1993. So since last September that has been the main guitar played. The sound has changed considerably since I got it as was not played. Much wider open and loud and I actually have proof of this with a decibel meter and in comparing it to my other guitars at first, and now 8 months later.

[Paulie2]

Typically at home I am practicing unplugged so I grab my carved archtop. I have found that the only thing that really messes with me by switching between guitars is the nut width. I ended up selling everything that was not 1-11/16", including a 60's Gibson with the skinny 1-9/16"and an archtop with 1-3/4". Having this uniform lets me practice on anything and feel about the same switching over.

However - I do agree with Mr Beaumont and if I know I have a gig coming up on a tele or my 335 I will go with those to practice for a few days leading up to the gig.

[_bix_]

Tenor 4-string solid body electric exclusively, usually unplugged.

[Gilpy]

I have about 5 guitars that I play regularly. Each one has some distinctive quality that makes me reach for it when I want a certain result.

Rancourt 15" archtop: easy to play and unparalleled acoustic voice
Comins 16" Concert: super playability, and it has a cutaway
Gibson L-5s: Smaller, good for anything jazz to country to rock.
Gibson 335 with Bigsby: My #1 gig guitar. I rarely play it at home.
Martin 000-18: the best flat top.

It's not unusual for me to play 3 or 4 of them in a day. Of course you could get by with one guitar, but why?

[rpjazzguitar]

Lately it's been the Comins GCS-1 for gigs.

At home, I often play a Yamaha Pacifica 012. It's a little easier on my hands (arthritis).

I like them both. The Comins sounds better, the Yamaha feels better in the hands.

Warren Nunes taught that you should play only one guitar. I've never noticed a problem switching between guitars that feel good to play even with different scale lengths.

I gigged with the Yamaha quite a bit until one night it died. I fixed it (output wire came off the pot - stressed by twisting of the output jack, I think), but I've been nervous about taking it without a backup and, for security reasons, I never want to worry about a backup.

[pingu]

1262687[/URL]]I have 6 different guitars at home and sometimes I don't know which one to practice on.
Does anyone have any helpful advice...?

yeah ! sell 4 of them ….

[Bflat233]

For practicing and jamming my Eastman Romeo and AR371 get most of my attention. For gigs it's been the ES-175.