I've decided that i need to be able to play the guiter like Mr John Frusciante. Any pointers? Which guitar for learning? Can I do it online or should I find a good teacher?
Cheers muso's

Take lots of drugs?

Best online teacher is here & it's free or you can pay by donation.
Yamaha Pacifica is very reasonable & gets really good reviews

Pacifica is a good shout. Squiers are also very good. The cheaper Epiphones tend to be poor so best avoided.

First of all, start playing 10 years ago, that'll give you a good start 😉

Pacifica 112 is the best beginner guitar ever, fact, they're cheap and they're good… You can do anything with a Pacifica. The 012's not great and the price difference isn't enough to justify it.

Some of the current Squiers are OK too, the Affinities are pretty poor but the Standards are decent, though a bit too expensive. Most of the special edition Standards offer something worth paying more for- nice pickups usually.

If you want to pay more, then of course you can but £200 gets you a perfectly decent guitar. My favourite (my old Squier Tele) cost me £50 😉

Pacifica's regularly get great reviews. You wouldn't go wrong with one of them. If you didn't like it you could definitely manage to sell it on easy enough.

However to do it properly you'd want one of these :-p

A snip at £1200

I second that justinguitar link he's a very good teacher, start with open major chords.

Also start playing songs you like and stick with it, cus if you play crap beginners songs it'll bore you to tears.

I've been playing for two years i started when i was 39, and i'm just starting to get it, don't underestimate it.

Have fun!!

Dont buy a pacifica, they are really shit…god only knows how they get decent reviews, but the one I had brand new for thirty quid, and I still felt cheated, the hardware is poor and badly fitted and aligned, the neck is at best mediocre, the finish on the body was pitted and uneven, the tuners were ok, the electronics were very cheap and poorly soldered and the whole thing needed me to rewire it within a few weeks and that was about it. really don't get one,it was really uninspiring to play so I got rid of mine after about three months…….. Fender tele Squires are lovely if you get a well set up one or have it set up properly (I charge thirty to forty quid for a setup (action, pickup height and pole piece adjustment, intonation, dressing the frets) etc which is about the going rate), but that can be rare. Epiphones are kind of ok but massively over priced considering the quality of the hardware, finish, materials….

Take somebody with you who can play, then buy whatever the hell you like the look and feel of regardless of the name and get it set up properly. that's just my opinion anyway…….

i used to have a pacifica and regret getting rid of it it was a lovely little guitar. but i'd definitely consider learning on an acoustic and once you're ok on that you'll find the transition to electric easy.

I would advise getting lessons, it's entirely possible to learn on your own with books or online tutorials, but a good teacher will accelerate the process.
If you're anywhere near Aberdeen, I'm a guitar teacher. First lesson is free.
There are some pretty simple RHCP songs you could pick up quite quickly and this would be a good place to start.
You will find most decent guitar shops will have an extensive range of cheap electric guitars. If you can take someone along who knows their onions it will help.
Good luck

i'd sooner go for something like a fender but second hand that way if it turns out to be just a phase you can sell it on for pretty much what you bought it for. a lot of people buy guitars then decide its not for them so you get some mint ones going 'cheap'. and if you like it you can keep it and have a good guitar but it depends if youve got the cash to invest.
have you considered an acoustic?

as for lessons it depends how you learn as some people can learn fine out of books. but with something skill based like guitar it helps to have someone point out what youre doing wrong. maybe have 5 'real' lessons then take it from there online?

When I was 9, I got heavily into badmington. I bothered my folks to buy me a state-of-the-art alluminium raquet and eventually they gave in and bought me an ancient wooden, heavy racquet from a charity shop.

It was sh1te and I played with it for a whole year, during which time I saved up the paper round cash and BAM! Got mesel' a decent raquet. The difference was amazing – the year spent playing with the charity shop effort had built up all the necessary muscles and given me superhuman powers.

So yes, get an acoustic guitar with action 1" high, play it for a year, and when you get a Kramer Nightswan, you'll instantly be Mr Malmsteen.

Or just spend some money on a decent guitar and enjoy it…

Jahwomble: "Dont buy a pacifica, they are really shit.."

There's about 20 different Pacifica models, the bottom end one (012) is poor but the rest aren't. The top end ones are better than a modern USA Fender. I'm assuming you had the pish one 🙂

quite possibly but it was still really, really pish, even for half price it was still pish, and a lot of the pricier yams I get my hands on are still fairly pants out of the box(well I say box, it's actually a plastic bag they ship to stores in)and need a lot of setup. oh and it was a 112j, for a starter instrument, they're kind of ,but they reach the limits of their playability pretty quick and they hang and feel really cheaply, ……you can do a lot better for the money. i reckon anyway, mind you….it might just be that I was comparing it to the guitars I already own, and it just didn't match up to them 🙂

I would really take someone who knows about guitars with you. Because whatever guitar it is, it'll need to be played to make sure intonation and setup of the guitar is ok. There's nothing more annoying than a guitar that wont stay in tune or is in tune on part of the neck then out further up. A pacifica would generally be fine as would a squier.It's pretty easy to start teaching yourself as well.

I've got an old accoustic guitar sat at home which sounds horrible, even when it's in tune. It was my dad's when he was a kid so that makes it 40+ years old! Probably worthless, but sentimentaly I'd rather spend some money and have it sounding OK rather than putting the cash towards a new guitar.

Is it worth droping it off with a decent guitar shop (the local one has custom guitars in the window built by their luther so presubably he knows his onions) and asking them to make it better? Or is it more than likely irepairable and not worth doing any more than fileing and glueing the frets down and tightening the neck up???

With an acoustic, there's really very little you can do with it other than restring and have the action reset, and even then it'll probably make very little difference, sorry……almost every factor in how an acoustic plays and sounds is down to how it's built unfortunately, though re-stringing could make a very minor difference.:)

plumber – Member
Take lots of drugs?

and sing about pussy's being glued to buildings which are on fire

hmmmm, might do the frets myself one evening and if there's not much else that he can do then it shouldn't be too expensive, and I guess if it trully is shagged then he'll be able to tell me.