Hi whats up.

I've been using the metal tabs site for my tablature needs for a while and just realized that the forum was full of active shredders with lots of knowledge.

I'll get to my questions later, first a little bit of background.
My dad played when he was young, and still has his 73 Sunburst Les Paul Deluxe. I have 2 guitars and 1 on the way. A 02 Gibson SG Standard with a Bill Lawrence L-500XL in the bridge that i swapped into it. Takamine 12 string acoustic. Finally i have a ESP KH-602 on its way. My amp is a Randall RG100SC and I have your general various effects to go with it. A few months ago got a Dunlop 535Q wah.

I've been playing for about 1 1/2 years now. I started out learning out how to play Megadeth, Metallica, more of the easy songs. I never really liked leads that much in the past. I mainly like to chug out riffs. But the more that I listened to Pantera the more i really started appreciating Dime's lead abilities. Other lead players I don't really care about. So my question is, what sort of things did you guys practice to get your left hand dancing all over the frets? I try to practice a little bit but it just sounds very amatuerish and uncontrolled. My palm muted riff making I think is pretty good. My lead technique is seriously lacking. I could probably use some more musical theory as well.
My dad is pretty good at improvising leads even after all those years of not playing, but he has it mainly from experience. He doesn't know how to explain or teach it to me.

Also, the lead for cowboys from hell in the tab on this site, is it correct? The part that i most like the sound of is the one at 2:52. I tried playing it, and the fastest i can get it is maybe 1/2 speed of the recording. however it sounds nothing like it.

Last question. Anybody have problems getting Artificial harmonics out of Gibsons? My SG and my dad's Les Paul are very picky about AH's. I'm pretty sure its not my technique because a while ago this kid I knew brought over his rig, and he has this crappy 150 dollar guitar, but even i could pull off awesome AH's. Then i would try the exact same thing on my SG and it was really lacking. Even with fresh strings it doesn't help. I play Daddario 10's. Maybe Daddario's don't ring out the best? Any thoughts on that?

Thanks

maybe you should get good before worrying about getting so many guitars to play shit you cant play

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About the AH's: it's probably the pickups.

And Undying_Hatred, try not to criticize everyone with every post you do. Some people actually could do with the help, you know.

I kinda doubt that it is my pickups that are not letting the AH's though. The Bill Lawrence is pretty high output and sounds awesome with NH's. Not to mention that the pickup's on the kid's guitar that had great AH response were cheap ones that came with it. Or maybe could the magnetic pull of the neck pickup be too much and causing the problem?

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take your favortie solos like the cowboys from hell one and play it slow dont worry so much about speed at first go for playing it correct once you can do that slow then play it faster make sure you can play it good/perfect at that speed then try and go for the speed on the album. as far as improvising youll learn little tricks along the way someting i catch myself doing often is taking a scale and playing it but skipping every other note then coming back to it so you would play something like 1,3,2,4,3,5, ect(1-5 being the first 5 notes of the scale) if your having trouble with speed and precision then make sure you take some time out of your playing to do some simple exercises even ones just like 1,2,3,4,5, on each string and keep going faster and faster or 1,2,1,3,1,4,1,5 then come back with 5,4,5,3,5,2,5,1(that one will help the pinky out!)

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Thanks guitar_demon.
I'll give it a shot. As for my speed and accuracy. My picking speed and accuracy is pretty good. Just need to get that left hand better. As for the pinky, i'm working on it! This one guy that I knew had this bad habit of having his pinky hide behind the neck as he played. He never ever used his pinky. I do not want to get in that habit!

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that's fucked up man. how the hell could you play without using your pinky? you could play easy stuff with just power chords and shit, but you would have no chance pulling out a decent solo.

Yeah just do some chromatic patterns to work on your pinky. Playing lead comes with time man. I suggest www.guitartricks.com to listen to easy to very techniqual playing with audio files. www.chopsfromhell.com has videos in the guest columns and those are real neat. Good luck

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I don't know, I didn't read all of your post properly.

my les paul gets harmonics pretty well with the alnico 490/498 pickups. they're not as great as if i had some active pickups in there obviously, but i'm pretty sure that it's your technique. i also have daddario 10s on and it's fine.

get john petrucci's rock discipline there are so many good exersizes in it.

I tried playing with the Les Paul again compared to my SG. And actually the Les Paul has better Artificial Harmonic response than the SG. I also noticed that the Les Paul neck is thinner than the SG neck.

I have small hands so thin neck=good!

I probably will end up getting John Petrucci's rock discipline since i've heard good things about it.

Also would you guys say that Ibanez necks are about as thin as the ESP necks? I'm just curious. I've read a lot of posts about people talking about how fast and thin their Ibanez necks are, how do you think the ESP necks fare against them.

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From my experience (several Ibanezs, one ESP) ESP are thicker, but just slightly. Ibanez-necks are too thin for me, but ESPs are just perfect.
The ESPs are also more flatbacked (crossectionwise) than Ibanezs. Like an Ibanez is pretty much a squashed half circle, while the ESP is more like two quarter circles and a stragith part in between.

I prefer ESP, but it depends on your hands and taste and what you're used to.

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