My Guitar Essentials Guide

Guitar Hardware

This page is a list of products that I've purchased over almost 2 decades of playing guitar. Believe me when I say that as a guitarist, you really don't need much. Stuff is pushed in your face as something you desperately need and you'll never reach the heights of Eddie Van Halen, Joe Satriani, or Steve Vai without them. The truth is, they were learning on junky guitars and playing on junky equipment, the passion is what pushed them to keep playing. Sometimes passions manifest in different ways, as the years passed I found myself wanting to really take care of my guitars while also making them my own pieces. Part of the fun is the project of installing a new piece of hardware, and that experience itself is well worth it. The benefit of having the results of the modified guitar simply makes it even better! So here is a list of some of my favorite, most used items over the last (nearly) couple decades! 

An image of a black Jim Dunlop Straplok Flushmount Strap Retainer

Straplok® Flush Mount Strap Retainer

From Jim Dunlop, I found these recessed locking tuners around 2018. They are a full self installation, but if you have a few guitars being able to switch straps at the click of a button is seriously great. They're also rock solid, I've never once had these even come close to feeling like they'll pop out as I'm playing. No more rubber circles on your strap heads, just sweet slick metal! There is a variety of colors, making is easy to match your hardware to your guitar. I have a few sets of black and nickel, but they also have gold and brass!

An image of silver Fender Locking tuners

Fender Locking Tuners for Stratocasters

From Fender, these locking tuners for stratocasters are hard to live without. If you've looked around my site, you may have seen my first guitar I got when I was 10 - just a standard starter Squier Affinity Strat. Over a decade later, I started modding it, installing these locking tuners, as well as adding the recessed strap lock and a killswitch. Over the years I've collected a couple of other Stratocasters that I haven't modified and there is always just a little bit of tuning required. Of course, this comes down to each guitar being different, but time and time again I come back to old faithful with the locking tuners, they are perfectly in tune. It makes jumping right in with a fresh idea just that much easier!

An image of a black Iron Age Guitar Signal Killswitch

Iron Age Guitar Kill Switch

You can see the one that I got here at Iron Age Accessories, but I originally ordered here on Amazon. It looks like they've stopped selling, but there are plenty of other options too for 16mm Kill Switches (which is what I have, I would recommend) as well as 10mm Kill Switches which are great for smaller guitars, or pickguards & guitar bodies that are pre-routed for this size. Overall, you can't go wrong! I really like momentary switches as they allow you to create a tremolo effect - there are version that switch it off until you switch it back on, but that can be accomplished with the volume knob & switch.

An image of Fender Tex-Mex Stratocaster pickup set in box

Fender Tex-Mex Strat Pickups

I had recently been gifted another Squier Affinity Stratocaster and I took the opportunity to start making significant changes. If I recall, these pickups were the first modification I made to my first guitar! 

Guitar Maintenance

An image of an unbranded guitar resting on the D'addario Guitar Neck Rest

D'Addario Guitar Headstand

I use this style of neck rest for my maintenance sessions because it's small and sturdy. A lot of the time the foam blocks come up, which I'm sure are great, but I don't have a lot of space and being able to tuck this away in a bag is much nicer. I use this for when I'm polishing the frets and cleaning the fretboard, changing strings, and when doing inner body work (like when I had to carve out some wood to make space for installing the Killswitch!)

An image of D'addario Pro-Winder

D'Addario Pro-Winder

This is such a time saver that having one is not even a question. If you have a single guitar, you can probably get away with not having one (though seriously, it cuts the time by at least 2/3rds), but with as many as I've acquired over the years I think I would go insane and have a severe case of carpel tunnel from winding. When your strings are dead, all you need is a simple snip and restring and about 25-40 seconds of winding. The alternative is unwinding the entirety of a string, pulling it out, rewinding the entirety of a new one. Far too much!

An image of MusicNomad ONE in front of a shiny guitar neck

MusicNomad Guitar ONE Cleaner

I have more guitars than limbs and I've had a single bottle for 4 years now, I don't think I'm even close to half-way. This is a great cleaner for guitar bodies, I give a couple sprays on the body and a single spray on a microfiber cloth, and initial wipe down and then I buff it.

An image of MusicNomad Fret Polish between two sets of frets, to the left rusted stained frets and to the right is very clean and shiny ones.

MusicNomad Guitar Fret Polish

A lot of the guitars that I've acquired, like my first one, are quite a few years old, some of them older than I am. The frets themselves are in good condition wear wise, but there was definitely grime and maybe some rust for a couple of them. What's crazy is I only used this polish with a microfiber cloth and each fret looked brand new -- it takes some work, maybe about 5 to 10 minutes per fret. But boy does it work well! Unlike the ONE Cleaner that lasts forever, I bought this in 2022 and I'm a little over 2/3rds of the way through the bottle... but that is well over 320 frets in total, so honestly that's not too bad! 

An image of green Ernie Ball Regular Slinky strings (10-46)

Ernie Ball 10-46 Regular Slinky Strings

I primarily use 2 sets of strings, I like the slightly thicker gauge strings for guitars with smaller fretboards, ones that tend to bend less, and for the acoustic & semi-acoustic guitars. Don't forget the Les Paul's! 

An image of pink Ernie Ball Super Slinky Strings (9-42)

Ernie Ball 9-42 Regular Slinky Strings

The other set of strings that I use are the thinner gauge strings for guitars with wider fretboards, ones that tend to bend more, and for the Stratocasters!