Post by ratscabies on Nov 25, 2020 0:43:33 GMT -4
Do some soul searching first. What kind of stuff do you want to play? Acoustic or electric? What’s the budget? How adverse to pain are you?
Back when I worked music retail, you needed to spend at least $300 to get a decent guitar. Less than that, you often ended up with a real piece of crap, some so bad that they were built wrong and wouldn’t play in tune no matter how hard you practiced.
Nowadays, you can get a new guitar for $100, and with a little technical work to set it up, it can be a nice instrument.
A steel string acoustic is a self contained system, but also is physically harder to play (heavy gauge strings, and steel strings hurt until you have callouses. Seagull is a good brand that has inexpensive guitars that sound very nice.
A nylon string classical guitar is easiest to learn on, because the strings are much easier on the fingers. The fretboard is wider, and flat, compared to a steel string, so it can be weird going back and forth. You can’t really go wrong with a Yamaha here, and they offer guitars that range from $100 to many thousands. Close your eyes, and I bet you can’t tell the difference if they are played by a half decent player. I have a nylon string guitar made in China and sold under the name “Guitar Works”. It came (brand new, via eBay) as a kit with a gig bag case, & some picks (?), and I think with shipping, I paid $80. I love it.
I was interested once in a Yamaha G130A from the 1970s. It was about $250 on eBay, but ultimately passed. I showed a buddy the listing and he bought it. It is a nice guitar, and the back and sides are made of zebrawood, which is gorgeous, and not a usual choice for a guitar. But my Guitar Works sounds better when recording. As Wrecking Crew guitar master Tommy Tedesco said, “I ain’t heard one yet sound better than my el-cheapo guitar!”
Electric is a different can of worms. All the callous fun of steel strings, but usually in a lighter gauge, so easier to play than an acoustic. But you need accesories: a cord, an amp of some kind, and it is SO EASY to spend money chasing tone. I started playing electric in 6th grade. Tens of thousands of dollars later, when I was in my forties, I was in my recording studio playing a cheap, entry level Squier Telecaster and it sounded the same as a $2500 full-on Fender version. I realized *I* was more important than the gear. Wisdom!
An amp nowadays can be very nicely simulated in software on your laptop, and played through bluetooth earbuds. Hell, Amplitube or Guitar Rig (full versions) are only about $400, and contain a literal truckload of amps, speaker cabinets and effects units that you can mix and match in unlimited ways. Heck, I just realized that Garage Band, a stripped down recording program that I have ignored until last week (I AM a recording pro with a full studio in my basement! Why should I play with such a simple program?) is a very nice 8-track studio program that includes drum and keyboard loops that you can string together to create backing tracks, and has a very nice selection of amp simulations in it. And it’s FREE from the Apple app store. I just installed it on a 2012 iMac a friend gave me, scraped up a cord that goes from the guitar jack to the wee input in the back of the iMac, created a simple 4/4 drum loop from the included drum sounds, and 15 minutes later was wanking a 45 minute guitar solo over Livin’ After Midnight-balls deluxe with nary a Marshall stack in sight!
(And all done with that $199 Squier Tele!)
My Squier-sound epiphany has led me to actually PREFER cheap guitars that I *will* into functionality. The guitar I grab 3-4 times a day right now is a Strat knockoff that Traffic’s dad brought home from a yard sale for $10. To be fair, I spent another $80 or so getting a pick guard and better pickups to make it look like David Gilmour’s black Strat that the owner of the Indianapolis Colts paid $30-million for the week I got this guitar. And the neck (on mine, not Gilmour’s!) was so warped you couldn’t play it, so I asked my boss (who built from scratch 3 of the guitars we use in the Beatle show) to fix it. He called to say he was afraid to force the wrench on the neck adjustment, because he was convinced it would break. I said, “Mark, it’s a $10 guitar. Who gives a fuck if you break it?”
I love that guitar now.
All that said, don’t be afraid of Craigslist or Goodwill. I have bought so many horns for MissP and Traffic from the Goodwill auction site, we can barely sit at the dining room table!
But even better? Guitar Center might really be going out of business this time, so deals are definitely on the horizon. My bandmate that just retired from Audio Technica told me GC hasn’t paid AT for stuff they ordered in months. That didn’t happen the first couple times They filed for bankruptcy after Bain Capital got involved in ownership....
PM me if you have questions. The next Beatle gig on the calendar isn’t until March now, so I got time to talk gear!
ETA: This is not exactly like the one I got-the name is different, and it’s a different color, but it’s probably this year’s version.
Back when I worked music retail, you needed to spend at least $300 to get a decent guitar. Less than that, you often ended up with a real piece of crap, some so bad that they were built wrong and wouldn’t play in tune no matter how hard you practiced.
Nowadays, you can get a new guitar for $100, and with a little technical work to set it up, it can be a nice instrument.
A steel string acoustic is a self contained system, but also is physically harder to play (heavy gauge strings, and steel strings hurt until you have callouses. Seagull is a good brand that has inexpensive guitars that sound very nice.
A nylon string classical guitar is easiest to learn on, because the strings are much easier on the fingers. The fretboard is wider, and flat, compared to a steel string, so it can be weird going back and forth. You can’t really go wrong with a Yamaha here, and they offer guitars that range from $100 to many thousands. Close your eyes, and I bet you can’t tell the difference if they are played by a half decent player. I have a nylon string guitar made in China and sold under the name “Guitar Works”. It came (brand new, via eBay) as a kit with a gig bag case, & some picks (?), and I think with shipping, I paid $80. I love it.
I was interested once in a Yamaha G130A from the 1970s. It was about $250 on eBay, but ultimately passed. I showed a buddy the listing and he bought it. It is a nice guitar, and the back and sides are made of zebrawood, which is gorgeous, and not a usual choice for a guitar. But my Guitar Works sounds better when recording. As Wrecking Crew guitar master Tommy Tedesco said, “I ain’t heard one yet sound better than my el-cheapo guitar!”
Electric is a different can of worms. All the callous fun of steel strings, but usually in a lighter gauge, so easier to play than an acoustic. But you need accesories: a cord, an amp of some kind, and it is SO EASY to spend money chasing tone. I started playing electric in 6th grade. Tens of thousands of dollars later, when I was in my forties, I was in my recording studio playing a cheap, entry level Squier Telecaster and it sounded the same as a $2500 full-on Fender version. I realized *I* was more important than the gear. Wisdom!
An amp nowadays can be very nicely simulated in software on your laptop, and played through bluetooth earbuds. Hell, Amplitube or Guitar Rig (full versions) are only about $400, and contain a literal truckload of amps, speaker cabinets and effects units that you can mix and match in unlimited ways. Heck, I just realized that Garage Band, a stripped down recording program that I have ignored until last week (I AM a recording pro with a full studio in my basement! Why should I play with such a simple program?) is a very nice 8-track studio program that includes drum and keyboard loops that you can string together to create backing tracks, and has a very nice selection of amp simulations in it. And it’s FREE from the Apple app store. I just installed it on a 2012 iMac a friend gave me, scraped up a cord that goes from the guitar jack to the wee input in the back of the iMac, created a simple 4/4 drum loop from the included drum sounds, and 15 minutes later was wanking a 45 minute guitar solo over Livin’ After Midnight-balls deluxe with nary a Marshall stack in sight!
(And all done with that $199 Squier Tele!)
My Squier-sound epiphany has led me to actually PREFER cheap guitars that I *will* into functionality. The guitar I grab 3-4 times a day right now is a Strat knockoff that Traffic’s dad brought home from a yard sale for $10. To be fair, I spent another $80 or so getting a pick guard and better pickups to make it look like David Gilmour’s black Strat that the owner of the Indianapolis Colts paid $30-million for the week I got this guitar. And the neck (on mine, not Gilmour’s!) was so warped you couldn’t play it, so I asked my boss (who built from scratch 3 of the guitars we use in the Beatle show) to fix it. He called to say he was afraid to force the wrench on the neck adjustment, because he was convinced it would break. I said, “Mark, it’s a $10 guitar. Who gives a fuck if you break it?”
I love that guitar now.
All that said, don’t be afraid of Craigslist or Goodwill. I have bought so many horns for MissP and Traffic from the Goodwill auction site, we can barely sit at the dining room table!
But even better? Guitar Center might really be going out of business this time, so deals are definitely on the horizon. My bandmate that just retired from Audio Technica told me GC hasn’t paid AT for stuff they ordered in months. That didn’t happen the first couple times They filed for bankruptcy after Bain Capital got involved in ownership....
PM me if you have questions. The next Beatle gig on the calendar isn’t until March now, so I got time to talk gear!
ETA: This is not exactly like the one I got-the name is different, and it’s a different color, but it’s probably this year’s version.
