I always had to use tabs in conjunction with musical notation and my ears, which I have luckily developed to be very sharp. That took a ton of practice, but it was worth it! I especially found this useful since the guitar can have up to 2 octave necks with the notes repeating themselves. An E note way up on the fretboard at the 12th or 24th fret will be notated WAY differently in musical notation vs seeing the numbers in tab. That also helped me develop my ear. Personally, I have found youtube to be, at best, useful when you can verify the guitarist really seems to know what they are doing, but there are a lot of bad tips too. I use that sparingly and go to the experts I trust. Cheers guys!