I Am Buying A Guitar And Need Advice?
Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at
4:36 pm
What is a good guitar for playing rock and metal?
Tagged with: Advice • Buying • Guitar • Need
Filed under:
Q&A
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
Get up from the computer, go down to your local guitar store (one with a knowledgeable sales staff) put about fifteen to twenty guitars in your hands (not all at once) and try them. You are asking the wrong question. The question you should be asking is:
What is the best guitar for my arm length, finger length, body frame, and ultimate goals (that’s where the rock and metal comes in)
When you ask the salesperson this, you will be shown to the solid body electric guitars. You will see the names:
Yamaha
Ibanez
Fender
ESP
Gibson
Epiphone (subsidiary of Gibson)
and many others. Take a friend along who already plays. He or she will show you how to:
1. Sight a neck to make sure it’s perfectly straight.
2. check for string height,
3. Check for things like a sloppy whammy bar, sloppy finish, etc
4. Check for noise in the switches and controls (especially for ground hum)
You will see flying V’s, cutaways, double cutaways, strats and strat copies, Les Pauls and Les Paul copies, semi hollow 335s and 335 copies, and even specialty guitars. One of the favorite things for guitar shops to show you are the back to school specials. they usually have a strat copy or Paul copy with a small amplifier, cord, tuner, a couple of picks, an instruction manual and a DVD to get your started. For the most part, these are a pretty good deal as long as the guitar and amp are decent. Yamaha, Ibanez, and Fender all have a pretty good set. There is another set that they feature in the warehouse stores, that isn’t nearly as nice.
Pick the one that you can’t live without, take it home and start your love affair. Hope this helps.
Your not giving enough information, first of all do you already play, or are you going to learn, it makes a difference in my answer. If your just starting and know nothing about playing guitar I would just buy a Yamaha acoustic electric, and a little amp, I’ve told I don’t know how many students this same thing and they all want that loud electric guitar because they were going to play rock, and then they were sorry, because they wanted to play at night or while sitting on their bed, and this didn’t work out well because no one wanted to hear them play when they didn’t know how to yet, nobody wants to hear someone practicing. The last girl this happened to finally went and got acoustic electric, this way she could sit on her bed and play, or play at night and it didn’t bother anyone, but still sounded good, electric doesn’t sound well unplugged. Your not going to learn to play over night, it take months just to get the callouses that you need to be able to play without pain. So my advice to you would be to get this Yamaha, and see what happens, you may not even like playing or have the talent to play, not everybody does, and some people don’t have the patience it takes to learn, they think you can just pick up the guitar and in a few months be banging out rock, well it doesn’t happen that way, unless your a genius. This guitar I’m talking about is about $250.00, on sale you can even get it for less, I know that girl that I talked about did, you could also get just an acoustic for a lot less. Get the clerk to help you to pick out a method and cord book, make sure that they have the Cd in the back, this is so you can make sure your doing things correctly. While your learning the funtimentals of music learn a few cords, practice them on a daily basis, you could play a lot of songs with just a few cords, this way you won’t get bored while your leaning and it will be good for your fingers and hand, they need to be trained so that you can learn to change cords smoothly and without hesitation. If you can afford it a teacher is always the best way to go. Well good luck !!!!!
Check out some of these sites:http://wwwjamplay.com/http://www.billbrutal.com/lesson1.htmlhttp://www.cyberfret.com/chords/beginninhttp://www.guitarpeople.com/index2.asp
stringdancer.com (this is a free electric tuner)
You simply cannot go wrong with any of the classics: Gibson Les Paul, Fender Stratocaster, etc. But there are many excellent guitars on the market from the most surprising sources. Musician’s friend has a whole slew of good guitars for under $200, and Guitar Centers should have them as well, since they are owned by the same parent company. Samicks are generally solid and reliable–many other manufacturers contract out to Samick for their less expensive models. Sometime your local dealers will surprise you, too.
When you’ve been playing for a few years, you will probably want to upgrade almost no matter what you start with, so don’t feel as though you’re getting married to the darned thing. Don’t agonize over this. Go out and get one so you can start playing!
fender
your name’s brian ey well mine’s bryan and yes i play
the guitar also and hey 2mathes are better than 1 right?
yes you definatily need advice and practice
Wow – lots of answers – one thing to add: Fender Strats come in an HSS version – it has a humbucker and 2 single coils so you get the best of both worlds. The HSS is the same price.
fender stratocaster… the one and only…
YO ANDRE!!! I was playing guitar since 1960′s. I build custom vacuum tube amps now, the transistor ones suck air…The name, ‘Stratocaster,’ was intended to evoke images of new jet-aircraft technology (such as the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress), and to express Fender’s modernistic design philosophy. In designing the Stratocaster’s body, a significant area of the back of the guitar, and the area where the strumming arm rests, were beveled to accommodate the player’s chest and arm. The upper bouts featured two cutaways, for easier access to the higher frets. The new ‘Custom Contour Body’ and ‘Synchronized Tremolo’ bridge made the Stratocaster a revolutionary design.
The headstock shape of the Stratocaster is a Fender trademark.The guitar also featured more complex electronics than the Telecaster: three single coil pickups, each with staggered magnetic poles; a three-way selector switch (five-way since 1977); one volume knob, and two tone controls. A three single-coil pickup design was an innovation already in use by Gibson in their ES-5 model since 1949. However, Fender’s pickups were much more compact.
BTW, Jimi Hendrix played a Strato, I am sure he was a putz in your eyes (I am sure you can do better) and (sorry to say) VERY uninformed… I did hear him play it in person, I still can not believe what I heard…
BTW2… ‘distortion pedal’? *nobody* who plays electric guitar calls it that… where did you hear that?
there’s a lot
fender……..
Well Cconsaul pretty much said it all, dude but I’ll add my 2 cents in
People that are saying Fender are (sorry to say) VERY uninformed. Fender Stratocaster uses single coil pickups
which have less response and power than a humbucker does making them a poor choice for crunchy distortion and sensitive fretwork involved in metal (tons of pull-offs, hammer-ons, and tapping). You will enjoy the output of something with humbuckers if that’s the style you like.
Some good brands are:
-Ibanez (a favorite of mine)
-Gibson (VERY expensive but excellent quality)
-Schecter
-Epiphone
-B.C. Rich
-Dean
-Washburn
Like Cconsaul said, look out for a straight neck with strings close to the neck (play it to make sure it doesn’t buzz though) and plug it in to a low/medium quality amp (expensive amps can make anything sound good sometimes lol). If you want to play rock, I would also suggest purchasing a Boss DS-1 Distortion pedal…very good, crunchy distortion that’s crisp and not muddy at all.
And if later on down the line you are wanting to chance pickups, I would suggest either DiMarzio’s or EMG’s =D
OK well if you are going more towards metal, b.c. rich guitars are the guitars for you. They have a bunch of different styles to choose from, and a there is a wide variety of the shapes of the guitars.
If you are going for some good ol’ rock n’ roll i would agree on the gibson as being a fine choice. Although if you are just starting to play the guitar you shouldn’t buy a real expensive one at first because if in the long run its just gonna collect dust, well then you just wasted your money.
the cool thing about music is that its all about what you want your image to be, so pick a guitar you like!
good luck
any guitar will do fine. just make sure you get an electric guitar that you think looks good.
I feel that if you just want to rock out getting a good amp is the way to go. if you have a good amp then you can rock very hard. I’ve got a sweet crate amp and knockoff of a gibson guitar.
If you still are lokin for a good guitar then,Gibson’s are pretty good if you want to go expensive.