Top 10 Guitar Gadgets
Everyone loves a good gadget. something that is fun to use yet is practical and serves a purpose.
When you are passionate about a particular pursuit or leisure activity such playing the guitar, it’s always great to get your hands on cool, related gadgets that can enhance your experience.
As massive gadget geeks ourselves, we know there are some great guitar gadgets out there on the market, so in this post we are going to detail Beginners Electric Guitars’ top 10 favourite guitar gadgets. They make ideal Christmas presents.
1. Vox amPlug – BEST GUITAR GADGET!
Some guitar amplifiers are big and bulky and heavy and therefore are not very portable at all. Even some smaller practice amps are not that practical if say, you want to play your guitar in the garden or at the park. And that’s before you’ve even considered power issues!
Vox have come up with a solution to this by producing the Vox amPlug Guitar Headphone Amp series which are completely portbale and take all of the associated hassles out of playing your electric guitar in locations where taking an amplifier with you just isn’t an option.
They’re also great for those times when you want to jam but perhaps don’t want to disturb your family or neighbours.
The unit is small, measuring 8 x 2 x 5 inches and weighing in at 1Lb. It takes 2 x AAA batteries but the sound the produce is just fantastic.
The Vox amPlug
Vox Amplug Joe Satriani Headphone Amp
Other than looking great, all of the the products within the Vox amPlug Guitar Headphone Amp series have some great features going for them including
- Plugs directly into your guitar
- Excellent build quality
- Aux inputs which allow you to attach and jam along to your CD or MP3 player
- 100% analog circuitry which accurately simulates the tones of the famed AC30 amps.
They cost a little more than the average guitar accessory, but my are they worth money. So there you have it, the Vox amPlug Guitar Headphone Amp series. A fantastic Christmas gift for the guitarist in your life!
2. Deluxe Guitar Tool
Because the guitar comprises many different mechanical elements you really need several different tools in your toolbox in order to be able to maintain it.
To make this more convenient, you might want to look into purchasing a guitar multi-tool. This great, professional quality example by Farley features an industrial strength carbide steel cutting blade, 
The guitar tool also comes with a really neat nylon carrying bag so you can keep the tool in a gig bag or guitar case without fear of its hard steel scrathcing your guitar.
Deluxe Guitar Tool: It’s the Swiss Army knife for the guitar player
3. Allparts Bullet Guitar Jack Tightener
This is easily one of the best products we have ever featured at beginners electric guitar. Loose guitar jacks use to be one of the most difficult to remedy problems you could ever face as a guitarist, now they are easily fixed using the Bullet Guitar Jack tool. Taking your guitar to a workshop to fix a loose guitar jack can be quite costly. 
For much less than the price of a workshop fix you can buy this Bullet tool, fix the problem yourslef and be able to tighten your guitar jack if it ever comes undone again. The beauty of it is that you can also use the tool to loosen the jack should you ever wish to access your guitar’s pickup assembly or other electronics.
Definitely a Beginners Electric Guitar favourite!
4. Planet Waves Renew String Cleaning System
Planet Waves make some absolutely fantastic guitar related products. All of which are of good quality, reasonably priced and wonderfully practical. This string cleaner is one such product.
When we play the guitar we are inadvertently covering the strings with grime, dirt, grease and sweat from our fingers which makes them corrode over time. Once they begin to corrode, strings tend not to sound so good. They become dull and worn which affects their tone and ability to stay in tune, so you find yourself having to replace them frequently.
You can prolong the life of your guitar strings by cleaning them periodically, though ideally straight after playing. This string cleaner is one such tool that allows you to do just that.
It is incredibly simple and easy to use and comes with replacement blades and a string cleaining solution to effectively remove all the contaminents that will reduce their life.
5. Ernie Ball PowerPeg Battery Powered String Winder
Any product that takes the burden out of performing monotonous tasks is a good product in our opinion.
Even the most passionate guitarist will tell you that changing guitar strings is one such boring task. A necesseray and importnat task, but boring nonetheless.
Winding on the new strings is a task that can take quite a long time, expecially when you mutliply this by all six strings.
Enter the PowerPeg String Winder
Because of its great design and functionality, the PowerPeg is a must have tool for guitar techs who need to replace strings and tune up guitars quickly and efficiently and it can be used on guitars with a variety of sizes and shapes of tuning peg, including that of bass guitars.
6. Guitar SideKick iPhone/iTouch Holder
I don’t know about you but at Beginners Electric Guitar we cannot keep away from our iPhones. Be it for recording song ideas, recording lyrics or quickly looking up guitar chords and tabs to our favourite songs, they are just so handy.
Now there is an easy way to use our iPhones whilst keeping both hands free for playing the guit
ar and it comes in the form of the Guitar SideKick iPhone/iTouch Holder.
Although we use it for our iPhones and iPods, you can actually use it for anything that will fit in its clamps, be it any other smartphone, a guitar tuner or recording device.
It works by clipping the attachement to the guitar between the nut and the tuning pegs. In this position the Sidekick does not subject your guitar to any tonal or other such variations variations. Once the attachment is in place you can then add on the clamp which will hold your device in place. Because of its great design you can also angle the clamp and rotate to find the best vieiwing position for your device.
If you make use of the great variety of guitar apps which are at your disposal these days or you want an easier way of viewing chords than using an old fashioned music stand, then the Guitar SideKick
7. Planet Waves S.O.S. Guitar Tuner
This is another fantastic item we have featured previously here.
It is a great little tuner that is real fun to use. Being a light based tuner you don’t need to plug your
guitar lead into it and its small size means that you can slip it right into your pocket for use when you really need it, unlike other tuners which are a little bigger. It is similar in shape to a guitar pick meaning that you can grip it easily.
The Planet Waves SOS Guitar Tuner
This unique, visual method of tuning is just perfect for dark and/or noisy environments such as those you might encounter backstage when tuning up before a gig. The Planet Waves SOS is a very cool and modern take on the humble guitar tuner.
8. Planet Waves VariGrip Hand Exerciser
When you first start lesrning to play the guitar one of the things you will notice almost immediately is that your hands ache after playing. This is simply becauase the muscles within them are simply not used to having to stretch to fret chords and notes.
One way to overcome this problem and strengthen the muscles is to use a hand exerciser such as the Planet Waves VariGrip. This model of hand exerciser is particularly good because unlike many conventional models, it features four individual spring loaded sections which means that you can condition your four fretting fingers independently. Better still, each of the spring loaded sections is adjustable so that you can increase or decrease the tension required to press them.
It features a well considered ergonomic design and even has simulated strings which help you to develop the hard skin on your finger tips that you need to be able to fret your gutar strings without discomfort.
All-in-all, a great guitar product!
9. Schaller Strap Locks
Guitar straps are very important to guitarists as the provide support and stability when you are playing standing up.
Not all guitar straps are as good as others however and some will let you down from time to time as they loose their strength and the holes which the strap buttons sit inside become stretched or worn. This can be very danger
ous as it means that the guitar can fall from the strap, causing damage to the instrument itself or to you, the player.
If a premium quality leather guitar strap is a little out of you budget you can still protect yourself and your instrument by investing in some good quality Schaller Strap Locks.
They are very easy to install. All you do is loosen the screws that hold in place your existing strap buttons on you guitar and replace these with the Schaller strap buttons.
Once you have done this you then need to attach the locking mechanisms to teh ends of your strap with the washer that secures it. Now, when you want to attach and remove your guitar strap you just need to pull the spring loaded central pin which will allow the locking collar to be move round to the open position, which when closed will mean that your strap stys securely attached to your guitar! Schaller Strap Locks are available in black, gold and silver to match the colour of the other hardware of your guitar.
10. Guitar Chord Stamp with Black Ink Pad
We’re not really sure if we should call this a gadget as it contains no moving parts at all and is incredibly simple, but at the same time it is very functional and comes in very useful, particularly in teaching situations.
We’re talking about the Guitar Chord Stamp. As the name suggests it is just a rubber stamp which allows you to reproduce an illustration of the guitar’s fretbopard.
What this means is that you can map out the chords to your favourite song for other people or you can map out the chords to your own songs and compositions.
Taking note of chords in this way is also a grate way to help you learn the names and shapes of papoluar and advanced chords nd also the different chord voicings that can be used to create different moods within a song.
The Guitar Chord Stamp comes in small or large sizes, both of which come with their own black ink pad, allowing yout to get stamping right away!
