T-Nation Guitar Players' Thread

How long and how much frustration did it take you to play an F bar chord on that first piece of shit?

Why make it harder than it has to be?

not long because I practised like fuck.

I do understand your point, but I just don’t see the need for your first guitar to be anything expensive. As with all hobbies, you have no idea if it’ll really be for you and if you’ll stick with it, so get a cheap one first.

Also, Taylors are too flimsy


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Here’s something interesting that I don’t recommend. I could only afford a 20 dollar classical guitar when I started. I used it to learn the riffs for Metallica’s Kill 'Em All album and the solo for The 4 Horsemen lol.

my first ever bitchin’ electric setup was this awful little strat copy. I think it was called a Peavey Raptor. It came as a starter pack so you got the guitar and amp. The amp had a gain channel but the volume was such that it was either practically silent or deafeningly loud. No prizes for guessing where I had it set.

The best thing about it though was I had a Zoom 505 multi effects processor thing. I fucking loved that thing so fucking much. It had all the phasers, flangers etc that a 12 year old kid could want.

I had the Zoom 505 too. Blew my mind. First thing I did was play the clean part of this:

with the delay on and the eq turned up.

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I disagree with buying the high action cheapie.

Better to buy a cheap electric and tune it more often, to see if you enjoy it.
Of course, you won’t be able to use whammy bar.

You are supposed to enjoy it, not be beat down by crap instrument.

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@Yogi1 and @dt79, cheers!

Cheap under 200 USD acoustic guitar on Amazon it is!

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I’d strongly recommend that you take lessons. I see a lot of rock and contemporary music schools popping up in my part of the world where there are classes for adults so I’m sure there are a lot over there too. Get to know guys learning other instruments too. The FASTEST way to learn is to jam with other guys. Don’t take those Yamaha beginners courses where you’ll be stuck in a class full of kids learning kids songs cos it’s gonna be a really sucky experience.

IMO, an electric is the one where you want to get at least a moderately priced strat since almost everyone is comfortable with the fretboard and the tone is a matter of replacing pickups and buying different amps and effects.

Agreed that the strat format is friendly.

An acoustic (or classical) will force one to learn to actually play, without only leaning on a couple of scales blasted in legato, whammy squeals, or dialing in full gain.
But l also feel that if the music is unaccessable due to most songs being performed on electric or the fingering too difficult - the novice just quits.

I’m very happy with my Yamaha for the money. Mine is a more expensive model than the one in the link but it holds it’s tuning very well.

my current electric gear:

-GIbson Les Paul Jr
-Marshall amp (I can never remember what model it is but it’s a bitchin’ little 40w tube thing. Sounds exactly like you’d expect a valved Marshall to sound)

And my pedalboard is currently

-Dunlop Crybaby
-Friedman Brown Eye OD
-Ibanez Tube Screamer
-Electro Harmonix Small Clone
-Earthquaker Avalanche Run

Need to pick up an expression pedal so I can do some cool shit with the Avalanche Run, and some kind of A/B switcher so I can change between distortions a bit more easily

Some shredding over a Guthrie Govan track.

https://soundcloud.com/soupzzz/random-shredding-over-waves-by

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