Guitar Department

Over the past month, our instrument department has taken to the road and attended two Guitar Festivals and a Ukulele Festival. At the end of May, we had a very busy weekend where James and Chris were at Haydock Park Racecourse Exhibition Centre for the North West Guitar Show and Jen was at The Stoller Hall for the Manchester Guitar Festival. The North West Guitar Show The North West Guitar Show is in its 25th year and is the UK's longest-established guitar show. "The event brings together major retailers, distributors, manufacturers, luthiers, boutique specialists and even private collectors all with bargains in everything guitar related. It is a unique opportunity to buy, sell and trade new, vintage and second-hand guitars, amps, effects and accessories and to be entertained by live music from top guitarists in the 300-seater live music hall." It was a pleasure to attend as always, and to catch up with what's new and exciting in the world of guitars! Manchester Guitar Festival The Manchester Guitar...

September has well and truly arrived, bringing an end to the summer holidays and the start of a new school year! Over the next few weeks, we’ll be showcasing our top choices for instruments and products to help your young musician navigate their new musical adventures across our social media channels. We’ve gathered all of these posts (plus some top tips!) right here.Use these links to jump to the section you needDigital PianosOrchestral StringsWoodwind and BrassGuitarsPercussionGifts and Novelties  Instruments for Group LearningAn important part of the Primary School Curriculum for music lessons involves group learning of instruments, these days it’s usually recorder or ukulele. Luckily for you, we stock both!We have the Yamaha YRS20 range of descant recorders which are available in the traditional brown, pink, red, blue, and green. They are easy to play with a rich, full sound, and with their colourful look they make even routine practice fun! They include a small case to help keep them clean and are an ideal starter instrument at £11.99....

Faith Guitars produce some of the best value-for-money solid body acoustics available. The Faith Naked Venus is probably our bestselling electro-acoustic. Testimony to these wonderful instruments.But Faith Guitars are commited to more than great construction and sound. They have pledged to plant at least one tree for every guitar sold globaly from the start of 2022.Resulting from a partnership with not-for-profit, JUST ONE Tree, this action recognises the importance of an ethical and sustainable approach to instrument manufacturing.Alex Mew, Brand Director of Faith Guitars, stated \"Working in conjunction with JUST ONE Tree will allow us to make a more positive environmental impact and we\'re particularly pleased that they work closely with local communities in parts of Indonessia, not only replanting forests and mangroves, but also creating sustainable incomes too\".We strongly support this move and are delighted to provide the following Faith Guitars at a discounted price:Venus Blue Moon Burst Electro-AcousticThe Blood Moon is a fine...

Rickenbacker 660 Electric Guitars | Mapleglo and Fireglo | £2,699We\'re so excited to have these new Rickenbacker guitars in stock, particularly the Mapleglo, which we hand-picked ourselves from all those arriving in the UK to make sure we got the one with the most beautiful wood grain – but we also brought in the classic Fireglo too for traditionalists!>>> Buy Now!Guitar Set-Up and RepairsAs with all our guitars, these wonderful new Rickenbackers are eligible for a free set-up within the first year. We recommend you let the instruments settle while you play them in at home for 3-4 months and then bring them in for us to take a look at for you!Today we\'re also pleased to announce a new addition to our repair team! Danny is working in the shop on Saturdays and Wednesdays, 12 – 5pm, doing guitar set-ups and minor repairs, so if you have a guitar you need adjusting you can book an appointment to see him for an in-person assessment.Meanwhile, Glen is still available for more involved work which he\'ll be doing from his home workshop so...

A few weeks ago we shared news that Forsyths are once again stockists of these fabulous instruments, and with the arrival of new stock we thought it might be worth giving them a fuller introduction.Eastman Strings was founded in 1992 by Qian Ni, a student at Boston College of Music who initially set up Eastman as an importer of Chinese made violins, violas and cellos into the US. Whilst China was well established as a source of cheap instruments, Ni believed that for China to have a long term future in musical instrument making it would have to demonstrate an ability to make high quality instruments that were comparable to those being produced in the US and Europe: from the start Ni looked for violin makers who were Western trained in making professional grade instruments.By 1994 Ni’s business was doing well enough to provide full time employment to a team of experienced makers and to set up a workshop based in Beijing dedicated to making Eastman violins. Critical to the success of the brand was Ni’s determination to produce instruments...

If there\'s one thing every guitarist should know how to do, it\'s changing strings! It\'s one of those jobs that is easy once you have the knack, but if you haven\'t restrung a guitar before it can be an intimidating proposition. In our next few blogs we\'re going to show you how to go about it. We\'ll start with a steel string acoustic.[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"600\" caption=\"1. First of all we need to take off the old strings. You can change strings one at a time or all at once on a steel string - it really doesn't matter. We tend to do all at once so we can give the guitar a quick clean whilst the strings are off.\"][/caption][caption id=\"\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"614\" caption=\"2. If you're lucky the bridge pins will easily lift out of the bridge as soon as the string tension is reduced. Often though they can be quite a tight fit, so in this photo we're using the pin remover part of a string winder to pull them out. If they're really firmly in place you can push them out from underneath - just...

We do a lot of set ups on acoustic guitars, and a common task that we do as part of a set up is reducing the saddle height to lower the action of the guitar. The saddle might need lowering for a number of reasons: perhaps the soundboard has expanded slightly due to an increase in humidity in the ambient conditions the guitar has been stored in, or perhaps it was simply left too high at the factory to begin with. In addition to that however, as guitars age the components can start to move in relation to each other causing the neck pitch (ie the angle the neck sits in relation to the body) to be shallower than it originally was. Eventually this becomes so significant that there is no longer any room to lower the saddle further, so more drastic measures are necessary to lower the action.In the old days, the obvious solution was to get out the plane and start shaving: either the bridge was thinned in height or the fingerboard was planed at the nut end to add an extra degree or two of angle. The problem with this is shaving the bridge can impact...