If you're just learning to play it does not matter. Pick a cool looking CHEAPCHEAPCHEAP one. And then spend your real money when you've figured out what kind of musician you are.
Hi, this is coming from someone who has played guitar since he was 10 and has taught many people to play. Its all my opinion ultimately, but I’ve tried to be as objective as I can.
Are there differences between the different types of guitars? Yes. Are there reasons that people in different genres use different types of electric guitar? Yes. But if you are a beginner, none of that is too important.
If you know for certain that there is a particular guitar player and sound that you want to emulate, you can go for it and get the exact guitar they use, but if not, don't worry about it. You can, and people do, play all genres on all types of guitars. People play metal on telecasters, and people play jazz with solid body active pickup guitars.
I will say that i would avoid active pickups for now. Not because they are to advanced, or just for metal, or something like that, but rather because you generally, or maybe always will need a 9v battery to power them, which are expensive, and you don't want to overcomplicate things in the beginning
If you are a beginner, the number one question when choosing a guitar should be, is it comfortable/does it feel good to play? Not every type of guitar will feel good or click with every person, and not every, for example Stratocaster will be exactly the same, so it is important that you try them out before buying. That may be tricky given the ongoing apocalypse, but thats the best way to do it.
After that, find something that you really like the look of, so that when you see it, you really want to pick it up and play.
Also, If you are serious about learning to play, I would recommend getting something a little nicer than the absolute cheapest. Epiphones are quite good if you like Gibson guitars ( I think their es335 hollow body rip of is nice) or Mexican fenders are also great choices. Personally, i also love my Danelectro, another affordable guitar brand.
Best of luck!
This is a great reply and I just want to vouch for Epiphone. If you don't like the size of the ES-335, try the ES-339. Best guitar I have ever owned and it cost over 3X less than my expensive Gibson Les Paul that was mostly a waste of money. After wasting over 12 years of trying to play Les Pauls and Strats, I have no idea why I never tried the 339 sooner. It weighs significantly less than a Les Paul, and even has a better sound (more balanced instead of being blaringly loud at full volume like the LP is). Being a semi-hollow body, you can definitely hear a difference when switching string types on it and the versatility of the ES guitars cannot be understated, they truly can handle every type of music.
We have reached a point in guitar manufacturing where cheaper guitars made in China and other countries are just as good as the super expensive USA built guitars. I've had some great Squiers made out of China, and a Mexican built Fender Strat that was a solid gigging instrument, but my ES-339 being my best guitar was a China build.
Just wanted to point out too for anyone who is into classic rock, Epiphone's AlNiCo Classic Pro pickups are the best bang for your buck pickup set for trying to achieve that PAF humbucker sound. They came in my 339 and I was seriously blown away by how good they sound. They are light years better than the USA made Gibson pickups in my Gibson Les Paul and far better than the pickups Epiphone was using just 5 years ago. With a good clean amp, they instantly get that sweet 60s Eric Clapton Bluesbreaker/Cream tone and the Allman Brothers sound.
electric guitars are a whole rabbit hole of cottage capitalism (I say this as someone who has played electric for 15 odd years now and has to fight the urge to get new pedals)
that being said, the best thing about electric guitars is that you don't have to worry about much else besides "basic pickup configurations" for the beginning
find some artists you like, buy a cheap version of their guitar (squier and epiphone make solid intro models), and focus on your technique
then when you feel like you want to stretch more, you can just mod the cheap model you have unt it sounds the way you want
basically start simple, don't fret about all of the endgame/top tier options when you're just starting out
same, really hard to resist the urge to save up and get a pedal that does a delay in a slightly different way than the other delays and reverbs my current gear is capable of.
ooh but this one has variable waveform and a ring mod, and built in eq dip switches
honestly that's not a terrible way to do things if you can't easily test it out before you buy it
it's so hard to know for certain how a pedal with play with other ones, not to mention how all the variation that comes with placement in your signal chain
the knobs youtube channel has been really good at demonstrating different things you can do with a delay, and it gives me an interesting problem to solve trying to get the sound of one expensive pedal using 2 or 3 cheap ones.
100% agree with this, the best part about guitar pedals is that they're designed to be used modularly, so you can swap each one out and try different things rather than having to settle for one specific sound.
Also Boss pedals are pretty good if you can get them used/cheap, since they buffer your signal
That’s why you should just spend 30 dollars on a decent recorder
Yes! My grandpa gave me a couple of sick wooden recorders and I love them. I still suck at recorder but I love them.
wooden ones are typically more expensive. I'd practice more, but I am afraid of sounding bad and my parents are working from home since quarantine 😩
i'd love to jam out on a recorder but it'd bug the shit out of my neighbors, thin walls and all
Literally how I feel whenever I want to get into anything I start having some interest in.
It's worth pointing out that -- 60 Hz hum canceling aside -- you can always beef up a single coil to sound like a humbucker with the right EQ or boost pedal. You can not un-fart a woofy humbucker with pedals alone. (Coil splitting/tapping is another story, but I doubt OP wants to bust out a soldering iron just yet.) In the end, it's all a matter of taste and how much you want to tinker, but I wouldn't categorically rule out single coils.
Hit a pawn shop and see if anything tickles your fancy. The first one just needs to look cool enough that you'll keep picking it up after you realize what you've gotten yourself into. Worry more about how it sounds while unplugged. Play each fret, on the fret, and listen for buzzing/rattling. Look at curviture of the neck from the side, and straightness from the head stock down. When people try to make their own truss rod adjustments, they tend to be impatient and overcorrect, which can screw up the action. You want the relief (distance from neck to string) to be uniform all the way down.
Passive for your first. Get a Strat with a humbucker in the bridge and single coils mid and neck and you've got a decent jack of all trades.
It's probably a buyers market for used musical gear considering nobody is playing shows in a pandemic.
Since other chapos have covered buying guitars I’ll give ya some advice on learning to play.
Start by learning open chord shapes. E, A, and the (more difficult) B chord will let you play the 12 bar blues, which is basically the foundation for rock music. You said you want to play punk so definitely learn power chords, which are SUPER easy and used all the time in punk and other loud genres.
Once you’re comfortable with the basic chord shapes, learn barre chords, which let you move the same shapes up and down the neck to play any chord you want. If you don’t know any music theory, I really recommend learning at least the basics of interval notation, which (imo) makes it a lot easier to recognize the patterns in music and navigate the fretboard.
Here’s a good link that goes into more detail. Basically, you assign the “key” of the song the value of 1, so let’s say a song is in the key of E then you would say the E chord is the 1. (Typically they use Roman numerals so it would be the I chord). If the next chord is an A, that would be considered a IV chord, because going from E to A you would go E, F, G, A, or 1, 2, 3, 4.
This is super useful because songs will often have the same chord structure but be in different keys. For instance, a typical I-IV-V blues song in the key of E would use the chords E, A, and B - but let’s say you’re jamming in the key of G and you want to use this progression. By knowing the intervals you can set G as the I and then count up to figure out that C is the IV and D the V.
Getting a bit more advanced, every chord is made up of specific intervals, so once you get familiar with how each interval “feels” you can kind of just make up your own chords and solo around the fretboard. Like, an E major chord consists of the 1-3-5 notes E, G#, and B. To make a minor chord, you flatten the 3rd and would play G instead of G#. But if you’re soloing and you want to play an E minor riff, you might have easy access to a few different G notes depending on where you are on the neck, e.g. playing an open G string, the 5th fret on the D string, or the 3rd fret on an E string. If you just memorize chord shapes (which I did for years) you’d never know this, but once you know intervals you can figure all this out for ANY chord as long as you know at least one note and it’s interval value.
I've been surprised by how well built those $99 starter kits have gotten. I wouldn't recommend the Saturday Night Special when it comes to violins, but cheap electric guitars are better than you'd expect. Less complicated acoustics to fuck up, I suppose.
Yeah you can basically put a guitar neck on a block of wood and make a half decent electric guitar lol
Me buying a bass: The black one looks nice.
6 years laters I still dont know any of the terms you described, but it still looks nice
I used to have the lamest bass ever when I was in high school, it had a cartoonish skull and crossbones on it lmao. When I started playing in a band (I usually played guitar but some songs we had 2 basses) I taped a hand drawn picture of a unicorn over it. It was a nice contrast to my classy looking epiphone sheraton
Nice. I love seing the self made designs that musicians put on their instruments when I go to local shows. I currently have some axolotl and an eye stickers on my bass
Yeah I miss my instruments. I sold them years ago for rent money :/
