I think I need to buy a guitar

Cafe Society
1

I’ve got to kids, a wife and an iMac. To anybody else this might not seem an obvious combination, but from where I’m sitting, we’ve been having a good time messing about with Garage Band. I’ve played a bit of guitar years ago, enough to strum along behind the vocals for my kids. I currently don’t have a guitar.

Any suggestions about what cheap guitar I ought to pick up? Pawn shop? Liquidators? I’m thinking it would make sense to get one that can jack into the iMac so I can lay down a backing track and let the kids sing along, as well as just playing with them - I’d hate to have my guitar playing screw up an otherwise perfect take.

Oh wise and powerful mods, please feel free to exile my thread where-ever you see fit.

2

Acoustic or electric?

Go over to Soviet Canuckistan Guitar Center, and play everything you can get your hands on. Then go the Soviet Canuckistan Craig’s List and see what you can bargain.

Seriously… where the heck do you live? If you live in American Canuckistan, Costco sometimes has cheap guitars, I’m told some don’t suck. Guitar Center has starter guitars that are somewhere between serviceable and gawdawful, but what do you want for $119?

What kind of guitar did you used to play when you played? Do you have enough memory/perspective to pick up an instrument and know if it’s decent?

3

Soviet Canuckistan is what Pat Buchanan used to call Canada. I live in Vancouver. I used to play acoustic, and I can probably make a fair guess regarding a decent guitar by playing it.

I’m looking for two kinds of information -

  1. any hints regarding using iMac and getting a guitar, like “oh, totally get an acoustic / electric, as you can jack it into the computer, it sounds way better” or “get an acoustic and a cheap mike from this company, it gives you that full rich sound”

and

  1. "don’t forget to go to the pawnshop/liquidators/costco/ joe’s guitar/ kijiji / estate sales/ back of truck / unguarded windows and look for a Fender 666, Martin Pi, Yamaha destroyer, or whatever, cause if you see one, they’re usually a great deal. "

Thanks.

4

Hello, neighbour! :slight_smile:

I strummed chords on an acoustic guitar for a while, and I’ve just recently decided to learn how to play electric. The acoustic is a Takamine C-128 classical guitar I bought 25 years ago. People who can actually play say it sounds great.

In my madness I’ve bought a '93 Fender Telecaster, built a Telecaster out of 2008 American Fender parts, a Squier (by Fender – And yes, they spell it that way) Telecaster, and an Epiphone Les Paul. Here are my electric guitar newbie impressions:

Fenders are expensive. If you buy a new or ‘vintage’ American one, they’re about $900 and up. Mexican-made ones are $450 or so at the local guitar shop. As a new user, they sound fine to me. More experienced players such as squeegee and Wordman are much more discerning than I; but for me the cheapest ones are fine and fun.

Even as a newbie, I can tell the Squier is not great. But they’re cheap, so you’re not risking much. I have an idea that a Squier would be fine to learn on, and that your next guitar would be more appreciated when you hear the difference. I think a Squier would be acceptable for family sing-alongs. (I’m modifying mine to sound more like a real Fender.)

Epiphone is Gibson’s ‘bargain brand’, but they were being made for decades before Gibson acquired them. (Squier is Fender’s in-house bargain brand. There’s no such thing as a pre-Fender Squier.) Several well-known musicians including John Lennon and Paul McCartney have chosen Epiphones. Mine, which I just got on Friday, sounds great. It’s heavier than the Telecasters and has a richer sound. (My FrankenCaster sounds close, with its upgraded pick-ups and 4-way switch.) The model I bought goes for about $450 new, which is about the same as a Mexican-made Fender and about three times the cost of a Squier. But you get the Gibson sound for a fraction of the price.

When I was looking at electric guitars I checked the local pawn shops. Selection was not great, brands tended to be lower-rung, and prices weren’t all that great. The one I remember is a used Squier for $150, while you can buy a new one for about $160-$190. Pawn shops in larger cities will have a better selection.

eBay has many guitars. One thing about auctions is that when there is a large selection you’ll usually pay market price, unlike a pawn shop where they often overcharge. I’ve seen some Epi Les Pauls that were damaged in shipping; heads broken off. You might pick one up and repair it with good wood glue and a clamp. You can save some money that way, but you’ll need to fix it.

I haven’t tried to connect the amp to my Mac. I assume there are adapters, but my little 15w amps don’t have Firewire or USB or anything. You could always just set up a microphone. If you are thinking of an acoustic guitar then you’d use a microphone. Or, you can get an acoustic pick-up and plug it into an amp and use the presumed adapter to connect it to the computer.

Those are my newbie impressions anyway.

5

[hijack]

I feel as though I’m reading what I went through years ago.
I had stopped playing to get married and raise my kids while I worked in a factory.
When my kids were 6 - 8 they saw pictures of me playing, and asked me to play for them. Off to Guiter Center to buy a Fender Squier Affinity for $99. I never realized how much I missed playing. Good times.
It gave me enough of a jump start to go back to Bass (my formal training) and through a series of twists and turns, led me to where I am now. No more factory job, and I get to play lots of music full time, meet lots of people, and travel. And when our schedules permit, my kids (grown) still travel with me.

The point is, even if you buy a cheap guitar, no matter if it’s electric or accoustic, have fun with your kids and play. It’s extremely rewarding - to you and your family.

[/hijack]

6

Re: acoustic vs electric. Get the one that sounds like you want a guitar to sound like, and/or sounds like the guitars you like in music you listen to or would like to play along with. Personally, I play electric, but YMMV.

I know close to nothing about Garage Band, but I guess you want to get some guitar sound into it and play along, right? If you have an electric guitar, you can buy a cheap interface like this one. Your guitar plugs into one end, the other end plugs into your computer, and sound goes into the iMac. The line6 interface+software lets you process the tone to sound like different guitar sounds (e.g. “metal”, “country” etc). There are other, cheaper interfaces that do little or no audio processing, and you must use outboard gear to improve/change your guitar tone, or find software on the Mac to improve your tone. Once you’ve done all this, you’re basically using the iMac as a guitar amp, which may or may not be the way you want to go.

There are cheap amps like this one that have a “record out”, so you can take the output from the amp, and just plug it into the iMac. This is nice because you don’t need the computer to just play the guitar if the mood moves you. My son has that amp, and its okay, nothing special. It does have some DSP on it, so you can get reverb and flanging. The dirty tone is somewhat dreadful, but YMMV.

If you have Guitar Centers up there, they’re the Walmart of guitars, and have driven most other music stores out of business. They have a decent selection and pretty good pricing usually, but their business model involves having fake promotions (“everything must go!” *all PA floor monitors 5% off), and used car sales tactics (“I’ll go ask my manager”). You can also look at Musician’s Friend, the online version of Guitar Center, to get a feel for what’s available at what price.

Fender, Gibson/Epiphone, and Ibanez all make “starter” kids – they come with a cheap guitar, a small amp, and some cheap paraphernalia like a strap. The guitar will probably be from bad to serviceable; if you can try these in the store, play several, the quality can be all over the map. The amp will be small and not loud, and the clean tone will be OK, and the distorted tone kinda awful.

7

I’ll second squeegee’s recommendation to look into the GuitarPort. It will pipe directly into GarageBand and give you a wide range of tones that will sound better than the straight unprocessed guitar tone.

Also, consider this: No matter how expensive the guitar, it will almost certainly be improved and made easier to play by letting a good luthier do a thorough set up. They’ll adjust the neck relief, string height, intonation, correct and buzzing frets and so on. It can be a night and day difference, especially on a cheaper guitar that maybe didn’t get a lot of hands-on attention before it left the factory. I just spent way too much on an acoustic as a birthday present to myself, and even though it was handmade and presumably perfect when it left the shop, the stresses of shipping, temperature and humidity changes and whatever else have changed the action subtly enough that a little adjustment is required.

8

Genereal advice.

  1. Don’t buy a Squier. You will be throwing your money away on what is basically a toy guitar.

  2. Don’t buy a guitar you haven’t personally played

  3. Yamaha makes a surprisingly good guitar in both electric and acoustic models. Epiphone also generally makes a good electric guitar. You can get many a classic Gibson guitar in an Epi version for a fraction of the cost, and they usually play well. As always, see point number 2.

  4. If you are playing with Garage Band, an electric is probably the way to go. I have done direct line in to garage band and I have done mic’d amp into garage band. If you have the setup for it, the mic’d amp is a better way to go IMHO. BUT direct line in isn’t all that bad.

  5. Check out Guitar Center if you have one near you. Mom an pop shops are probably better if you are looking for quality and knowledge in a salesperson, but if you are looking for price and variety you can’t really beat GC. Remeber, buying a guitar from them is like buying a car. YOU CAN NEGOTIATE! Don’t buy full retail.

9

I don’t know – one of my son’s friends has a Squire “strat”, and I played it and it wasn’t all bad, I was surprised. The neck feel was okay, the sound wasn’t bad, and the tremolo actually worked okay. I admit I spent perhaps 10 minutes with the instrument, so there may have been buzzy frets or bad spots on the neck or unfixable intonation problems, etc. I do know this can be very hit or miss – the next one in the store might be complete crap, but this one seemed okay.

This. Absolutely. Prime directive.

10

Yeah, well, two of my students have bought Squier instruments (at my suggestion) because the price of the whole package was just so darn good. Both of the instruments needed rewiring within the first year of ownership. B.'s at least had the decency to go before the warranty was up, but A.'s was three months off warranty. He’s playing well enough that he’ll probably just get another instrument, but I feel bad enough that I may buy the Squier off him to have an axe to practice tech work on.

Compared to which, my MiM Tele is holding up just fine after 3 years. I no longer recommend Squiers…

Lots of good shops in Vancouver. Figure out Acoustic (Steel String? Classical? 12-string?) or electric and we can take it from there.

11

That’s the main reason I don’t like Squire’s. Even if they seem ok on first look, there seems to always be something wrong with them. I am sure that there are some out there that are good, but I grew up with my friends all playing Squire’s and I have yet too see any that didn’t end up with serious problems of some sort if they didn’t start off with problems. There are too many other good guitars out there at or near that price point to spend money on something that isn’t going be able to last you a lifetime.

12

OK, I bow to Le Ministre de l’au-delà and NAF1138’s superior knowledge of Squire’s (lack of) durability. Nix that brand. Though in my day, some kids just fixed things when they broke – a little soldering builds character. :slight_smile:

Here’s Zzound’s list of electric guitars, sorted by price. I’ve strummed a couple of the cheap Dean guitars, they seemed alright, and a couple of the Epis, ditto. I can’t speak for the rest. And since when does Behringer make guitars? I thought their shtick was low priced mixing gear and effects? ETA: ah, nevermind, I see now that the Behringer’s are USB guitars, so there’s no analog connection at all; that seems more in line with their style.

13

Well sure, but why buy a Squire that is going to break down on you for $169.95 when for only $10 more you can get an Epi that won’t. It’s just not good sense man!

ALL of the above being said, I think, if you feel comfortable looking, the real values are going to be found in the used market. But for that I would suggest a mom and pop over Guitar Center.

14

Which Epi?

15

Epi SG. I am going by the linked list.

16

Never mind. I found this page. (Les Paul Special for $169, another guitar for $99.)

This is the one I bought. It’s the Cherry Sunburst one in front. (Lower-right box to select and enlarge.) Not sure what ‘B-stock’ is; I just went to the site for the picture.

EDIT: Thanks, NAF.

17

Thanks for all the advice. The prime directive (Don’t buy a guitar you haven’t played) knocks eBay out of the game, which simplifies things. I walked by the local pawn shop today with Attacklad, and tried out a couple - they certainly weren’t bargains.

At this point I’m thinking 6 string acoustic or acoustic-electric (for the iMac/garageband connection). Since it’s primarily to help the kids get over their shyness and help them stay in tune, I’ll mostly be playing easy singing, simple cord stuff at first - woody guthrie and such.

I guess the next step is the music stores. Thanks

18

My googling leads me to believe it means a demo model, i.e. handled by customers in a store for some period, and not entirely “new”.

Good luck with the purchase, Attack from the 3rd dimension! I hope some of our guitar-babble was useful.

re: “acoustic-electric”, do some googling on “semi hollow body guitars”; that may be a fruitful approach if you’d like a hybrid (and more compact) instrument than a traditional dreadnought acoustic. Example here.

19

I went by the local guitar shop today, and played and priced a few. I certainly saw some lovely guitars. I was particularly taken by a so-called parlor guitar, in this case a Jay Turser. I liked the smaller size, I’d always felt the dreadnought was too bulky under my arm. Haven’t bought anything yet, I’m still window shopping and researching.

20

AFT3D: It sounds like you’re taking a proper approach – take your time, play some instruments, figure out which type of instrument is “speaking” to you, as corny as that sounds. Guitar shopping is fun – try everything!! Ask for that cool Martin guitar waay up there on the wall in the glass case, or that beautiful red Gibson ES-335 and plug it into a Marshall stack! Woot! Or whatever appeals to you. Experiment, that’s what music stores are for. You’ll get a handle on what you want in a few visits, one direction or another.

Having said all that, I’ll let an acoustic player comment on either parlor guitars or Jay Tursers axes, neither of which are my expertise.

Have fun!

ETA: and come back and tell us what you bought, when that happens!