If you have a teacher or a friend that has plenty of playing experience under his belt, ask them to go with you when you buy your guitar. Before you do that, look through the guitar and instrument magazines. Read the reviews and check the prices in the advertisements. Get a feel for what you can or can't afford. Don't decide on a make or style yet because the shop you choose may not stock that brand or model and sadly, not all guitars - even those from the same company - are always properly set up. The advice I give to all my students either before they start lessons or when they need a new guitar is price, preparation and purchase. Price: Spend what you can afford - and no more Looking through the magazines will give an accurate guide to prices. You must decide on a top limit before you step inside a guitar shop and stick to it. The temptation to overspend is huge. Don't forget to include the price of a solid case into the total. From personal experience I know that a rock solid case is a real investment. I play a Washburn Monterey and on one particularly dangerous and icy day I slipped, shot upwards and landed with all my weight on my guitar case. Of the two of us the guitar was the irreplaceable one, and you'll be pleased to know that it was undamaged and still plays beautifully. I had the bruises for months. Preparation: The choice can be overwhelming Before leaving home do your homework because once in the shop you are likely to be dazzled by the sparkling array of colour and shape that fills the walls. This is one of the benefits of having an inflexible price range. Most of the guitars will be too expensive or too cheap. Narrowing the choice of guitars down to a manageable number increases the chance of getting the best buy. Another good thing to do before visiting a music shop is to phone a few friends and try their guitars - just for size. Ask them about the strengths and weaknesses of the guitar they play. If you are a complete beginner, hold the guitar to get a 'hands on' feel for the instrument. This gives you some idea of what to expect when you go to buy. The future. How do you see your future as a guitarist? Not very clear I should imagine. The posters of rock stars on your bedroom wall seem a far off reality. Let's concentrate on the present. Maybe you can't play at all or by now your progress is just beginning to blossom. The message here is keep in time with your progress. A new guitar should be a wonderful boost to a budding guitarist while the wrong guitar can be a disaster. You will see I never encourage buying an electric guitar right from the start although it is one of our ultimate aims. We need natural sounds to get our ears trained and listening. As a teacher I sometimes arrive at a student's first lesson to find they have a Fender Stratocaster running through a Marshall 100 watt amp and a huge collection of effect pedals. This worries me because it smacks of them buying their way to stardom. And come Christmas how do you improve on the set up to show the musical and technical advances that the lessons have made? Pay a good price and leave room for improvement - that's the motto. We checked the magazines for prices. Now look through them again for those guitars which suit our present need. OK let's go to the shop. We have our price range and a clear image of the guitar we need. Purchase: In the shop or Online Tell the salesperson or Customer Service the top limit and work to it. Don't be tempted to save money by looking at cheaper guitars - you get more or less get what you pay for. If there is a second-hand model for sale, check it out. Make sure that it is well used and not in pristine condition: if it's been played long and hard by another player you should get good value for your money. All second-hand guitars must be given a thorough check up before buying, ask the owner of the shop to go through the same set-up procedure as the would for a new guitar i.e. the neck must be straight and not warped in any way and that the action is low and playable. If you can physically test the guitar and it is an electric or semi-electric model run it through an amp and test all switches and pick ups. An Electric, Acoustic or an Acoustic/Electric? A lot of people ask for my advice on buying a guitar and are quite suprised when I suggest an acoustic rather than electric. If your first guitar is going to be electric then you need an amplifier, this causes more problems! The smaller amp, often sold with starter packs (10 / 15 watt) might sound deafening in the confines of your bedroom but once you get beyond those four walls your playing will be quickly drowned out. So an amp in the 40 / 50 watt range is a minimum once the great outdoors calls to you which if bought at the same time as your new guitar is going to push the price sky high. Amplifiers are not cheap! The cost of amplification will put a big dent into your cash flow. So let's compromise and go for a hybrid an electric-acoustic guitar. The advantages are enormous. There is no need to buy an amp when you first get the guitar as the sound will easily fill out your practice area, the money saved will increase what you can spend on the guitar. Later, when the need for volume becomes a necessity, you can buy a good quality amplifier. An electric-acoustic is portable, practical and playable and is what I always recommend. Set-up Whatever guitar you go for, the way the action is set up is all important. The action is the distance between the fingerboard and the strings along its whole length. If it's too high it will be difficult to play - especially later on when you're trying to play barre chords on the higher frets. If it's too low you'll hear irritating buzzing noises when you play loud. If you find a guitar that you like but the action is suspect it can probably be fixed on the premises. Ask the shop to put it right before you buy. If you're a beginner you will have weak fingertips and you won't be able to judge how a string responds when pressed. The shop assistant can make any guitar sound good by bypassing its weak areas This is why having someone with you who knows what they are doing is so very important. Find the Right Store Whether Online or "Brick and Mortar" If your town has more than one shop, go into them all. Comparison shop with your favorite search engine. Find the most helpful associates; find the one that is interested in your progress. Ask an employee for help and advice. If they ignore you or leave you to you own devices walk out or hang up and find a better store. If they say, "We sell a lot of these to beginners," ask to see something better as you'll only be a beginner for a short time. If you're buying a guitar as a surprise for someone, follow the same rules. Your intentions may be good but you could be setting their future back by decades if the guitar you buy is an over priced, fluorescent green, exciting piece of junk. By Len Collins Edited by Phil Margera |
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