My wife, who loves me very much, is thinking about buying me a nice electric guitar to replace the crummy cheapo I have that’s falling apart. But I’m pretty overwhelmed by the prospect. Our budget is $1000, but I’d be pleased to spend less if I could get something that will make me happy.
First off, I’m sort of beginner/intermediate in skill. I’m good at chords, not so hot at knowing the fretboard. Also, I have a pretty basic amp, a Line 6 Spyder IV.
I know sound preference comes into play. My favorite music is super heavy doom metal. I intend to down-tune the guitar a couple of notes. But I’d also like to be able to get a decent clean sound. My current guitar is ok at low power chords but when I play individual notes on the upper strings it sounds like mud.
I’m leaning toward Gibson Les Paul. If I go there, is it worth getting the Studio vs. the less-expensive Special? And what do you think about Epiphone?
Should I consider another make instead? I know a little about the Fender Stratocaster (cleaner, not as heavy), but that’s about it.
Wow - absolutely no clue. I don’t know enough about Doom Metal tones and rigs. I would assume you’d want a metal-focused build - EMG pickups, a locking trem(?), set up to handle heavier-guage strings for down-tuning?
If that is the case, why not check out shredders like Ibanez?
When you are looking to play cleaner, will you tune up the guitar? I would assume that a down-tuned guitar wouldn’t do clean tones all that well…
Without knowing a price point, it’s hard to make recommendations, but I can seriously endorse Schecter guitars. For a decent price ($600-900) you can get a versatile, well-constructed and well-designed guitar. I have an Elite, but I can also recommend the Blackjack and Hellraiser guitars as well. I was going to buy a Hellraiser last year, but I bought a drum kit instead.
I can also recommend BC Rich guitars, especially for doom. My Warbeast is down-tuned to CFBbEbGC and it sounds AWESOME. It’s not quite as easy to play as other guitars, but it sounds terrific for what I’m doing.
TheFender Strat Guitar Artist Signature Seriesis really good and many of them are priced around $850 to $1000. That prices them in between the cheaper Squires and the higher dollar American Standard.
All fine guitars, but none of these are gonna be useful for metal, especially doom (big Pallbearer fan here). WordMan and **Snowboarder Bo **are on the right track here. The amp choice will be important too, as the ultra distorted sound needed here is super amp-dependent. And I wouldn’t go Les Paul either, unless you plan to replace the pickups right off the bat.
I’m not familiar with the names of many of the Fender Artists. Thought maybe at least one of them is a Metal player. If so then that would be a good choice.
The OP could look through the fender artist listings and see if any of the names are familiar.
For example Jimmie Vaughan is a blues guy and his artist series guitar has a good blues sound. I’d be surprised if Fender didn’t include at least one metal artist.
No doubt there are plenty of metal dudes tearing it up on Fenders, but I doubt anyone playing doom, especially the chordal parts, is on that list. You need exponential heaviness for that. As a guy with a Strat and a Tele, I know I cannot travel to that land.
Agree mostly, but I clicked around on some Les Paul Specials the OP might be interested in, and some of them come with humbuckers with ceramic magnets, definitely a metal mainstay for use with scooped tone. Example here.
The key word is ‘ceramic’, which is code for ‘scooped metal players’, if the OP thinks that describes him.
I know other LP Specials and LPs come with Alnico pickups, more suited to a player like me than the OP, but I also know that the Gibson Les Paul Classic Plus (not to be confused with the Gibson Les Paul Custom Classic, a very different instrument) also had ceramic pickups that the OP might enjoy for what he’s trying to do and would do well with metal-style.
I might also add that I currently have the original ceramic humbuckers from a brand new Les Paul Classic Plus that I bought last year. Gibson 496R and 500T models. I replaced them with Seymour Duncan Alnico PAFs in my LP Classic Plus, and I love those, but have hung onto the originals. Last I checked they were worth a decent (but hardly breathtaking) price on Ebay but I’d give them up to a fellow doper for something reasonable. PM me if interested.
A real Les Paul is a double layer guitar, maple over mahogany. That combination has a really good natural sound and really good sustain.
The Epiphone version is a solid single piece of cheaper wood from Asia and lacks the rich tones of the maple/mahogany Les Paul and the sustain isn’t as good.
If you are playing doom metal, the sound is going to be so distorted that the subtleties of the guitar’s natural tones isn’t going to be distinguishable at all. You will however notice the sustain. You’ll want a good, solid, heavy guitar, because if you aren’t using the maple/mahogany trick that Les Pauls use, sheer weight will give you a decent sustain, and most heavy hardwoods have reasonably rich tonal qualities. Solid mahogany is good. The cheaper, lighter guitars aren’t going to do so well with the deeper tones. They’ll sound tinny and their sustain will be crap. Not a good choice if you want to pound out the doom.
If you are going to go with a tremolo, you are going to want something with a locking tremolo. This costs a bit more so they don’t put it on the cheaper guitars. So not only will you pay more for the tremolo itself but you’ll pay more for the guitar it’s attached to. Without a locking nut the guitar will go out of tune very quickly if you use the tremolo. This will be especially true if you tune the guitar down a bit.
Don’t get a flying V. A lot of people like that look for doom metal but the tiny body sounds like crap. The body isn’t big enough for decent tone or sustain. The same is true for a lot of the hacked up body styles with lots of cutouts. They look cool but they’ve hacked away so much wood that the sound suffers for it.
If you don’t already have one, set aside some money in your budget for a digital effects processor. Not only will this take the place of your distortion box and other pedals, but it will also allow you to emulate various amplifiers to really shape the sound in a lot of custom ways. I picked up a used one pretty cheap at the local music store around here. Try one out while you are guitar shopping.
Pallbearer!! Favorite current band. I’m seeing them in a month.
Thanks for the input everyone, especially on pickups which I don’t know much about. I may not be able to justify spending for some of this stuff, frankly I’m just not that good.
How about this. Since I’ll be distorting it most of the time, and I’m not good enough to push the guitar to its limits, maybe a decent Epiphone + ceramic (?) pickups? Crazy/stupid?
I’m a formerly scooped distortion sound player (not technically proficient enough for most to call “metal”). I’m going to say it almost doesn’t matter what guitar you are playing when you are using that sound. Buy the guitar with an ear for your clean sound and buy the (or set the current) amp for your clean sound. Buy pedals/effects processors with an ear for your distorted sound.
When it comes to pickups, ceramics are cheaper than alnico, so you’re almost guaranteed to get them unless you move to more expensive guitars. With that much signal processing, the only drawback of single coil pickups is that they will feedback easier, and you’re likely to either need a quick foot with the distortion pedal (my solution), or a noise gate to control it.
My real-life example of this is when I was playing a LP-jr copy w/2 single coils through an Ampeg VT-22. The VT-22 does not distort. Even with the gain dimed, it was just clean and loud. Pop a SuperFuzz between them and I had people, particularly thrash metal guys, complimenting my distortion sound. Put the same pedal in front of a amp that’s overdriving, and it’s a muddy mess. This isn’t the only way to get this kind of sound, but tube amps that produce a sound like it on their own are usually more than your guitar budget.
Given the above, I think that you can get away with just about any guitar that fits your hands and leaves enough in the budget for you to shop distortion units. The only reason I’d suggest the Schecters over a LP styled guitar would be that the Shecter usually has a longer scale, making it more useful for de-tuning.
My main advice would be to get something with a thin neck. In my experience that makes a huge difference in how playable it it.
I’ve got an Ibanez RG that I paid $437 for about 20 years ago, and it’s easy to play. I had a cheap Peavy stratocaster copy before, and the neck was like a baseball bat that had been sawn in half. I love my Ibanez RG, but if I were going to buy another guitar, I would look seriously at the newer RGs and the other Ibanez models (like the S and Mikro). I’d probably look at the Jacksons and ESPs too.
I would reposition this: if you have a clear preference for a type of neck profile, make sure the guitar meets that need - don’t try to adjust to it. I happen to love really big necks - tried a bunch of profiles to reach that conclusion. Different strokes.
Good luck with your search. Regardless of the guitar, look into EMG pickups - to my knowledge they are a standard for metal…
just checking out some pics of Pallbearer, it looks like they use Les Paul, SG, and even Strat and Telecaster. There are other guitars in the pics, but I don’t recognize the more generic styles.
I think a Les Paul might be the best of these, for rhythm.
In a video of them live, I see an Orange amp. Beautiful amps, but pricey. I just checked out a demo of the amp you have, and it seems to be capable of doing the job just fine.
I’m a fan of USA Hamer guitars. I have a Studio Archtop. It’s a Les Paul in almost every respect except name. Mahogany body with maple cap, same scale length, two humbuckers, tune-o-magic style bridge and the quality is top notch. The good news is that the resale value is (inexplicably) very low so used ones can be had at a very reasonable price. I’d link but I’m on my tablet. When I get back to my PC I’ll see what I can do.