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Johnny Marr and John Squire are two of the best guitarists of the last 30 years (according to nme, anyway). A lot of their stuff is pretty technical, in particular a lot of Johnny Marr stuff I’ve learnt to play uses very obscure chord voicings etc. So maybe aim a bit lower for starters unless you want a big challenge.
I don’t think I can see past a Classic Vibe Squier for a newbie (in Tele or Strat flavour).
I can’t really put a finger on why, but I love my Tele the most. My Strat is lighter, comfier and more versatile. It’s a bit like that Clarkson meme. “This is brilliant. But I want that one.”
Getting away from the gear and into the music for a minute. I’m really impressed with the amount of stuff Larkin Poe have been throwing up on YouTube lately.
Gotta love the Lovells.
I don’t think I can see past a Classic Vibe Squier for a newbie (in Tele or Strat flavour).
Im a massive Strat fan so that’s a plus one from me.
I’ve played a few nice Epiphones in the past so I’m sure there are some great shorter scale Gibson clones out there.
A good beginner guitar for a very low budget is a Squier Bullet (Mustang or Start).
My only guitar is a Squier Bullet and the quality is amazing for £100. The neck is great, bridge, pickups and machine heads are all fine.
Plug in a Blackstar Amplug (that I got for £20) and I am happily playing away for £120.
I have had more expensive guitars and basses over the years but the Bullet plays as well as any of them. You need to know the basics of adjusting bridge, truss rod, pickup height to taste etc,. but that is true for any guitar I have ever bought.
No advice on getting to emulate Johnny Marr but I would put aside a few hundred hours for practising.
*few thousand hours 👍
Aspirations much! "Not even Johnny Marr can play guitar like Johnny Marr" - at least on recording with multiple parts, etc.
As total novice (bass but now also fiddling with a vv cheap Strat copy) from my very limited reading and experience....
I took my Squier Mustang bass into the LGS (Ripley Guitars in Surrey FWIW) to sort out the set up and it's made a heck of a difference. The LGS guy was very complimentary about the playability and sound of my classic vibe model (£300-odd at the start of lockdown) and taking that and recommendations above you can clearly get pretty good quality at around that mark, and as others have said it looks nice (both on the wall and makes me want to pick it up and play it)
Also reading around, Thomann's in house brand (Harley Benton) get pretty good reviews....got my eye on a Les Paul or Sheraton copy actually as my N+1 - worth a look?
I'm a total novice with electric guitar too although I have been playing an acoustic for about 3 years (so still very much a beginner).
Have had an ES 335 DOT copy for a while but never really gelled with it and have been watching Squier Classic Vibe tele's go for over my self imposed budget of £250.
Time will tell but I'm hoping this is as good as it looks.
It's a 91 Korean built Squier. I negotiated what I'm hoping is a fair price bang on my budget. Hopefully it'll be here at the weekend 😎
Looks pretty nice. Good work!
Thanks again guys, great advice.
On the trying to play like Marr thang, it's more of someone I recognise as being a fantastic player playing the sort of stiff I enjoy listening too. If I could get somewhere remotly close too something resembling his playing, that'd be the pinnacle, not that I'm expecting to!
I'd be more than happy to be able to do a recognisable Dylan, Beatles or Oasis number a few months down the road!
The most important thing I've learned over the past few years is that your hands don't lie.
Guitars are like walking boots. The wrong ones might be fine for a few miles, but find the ones that fit you and you can forget about price, brand, country of origin etc and just get on with getting on.
And there might not be any fixed logic to it - my two favourites are a 7.25 radius, skinny fretted Tele and a flat as a pankake Ibanez RG550.
Similarly, I love fat necked Faith and Kate Moss thin necked LAG acoustics.
Tried loads of Strats and still find them hard to play, but purely because of the sound and feel I'm learning to love a modern C 9.5 radius.
'Gibsons' don't suit me but the best seem to be made by Gordon Smith, Vintage or Ibanez.
My favourite so far was a £90 secondhand Vintage and I wouldn't swap it for any of the real Gibsons I've played.
Every single one out of the 50 or so I've played has had issues with neck allignment or pathetic fretboard finishing.
I think with the learning thing people expect to be able to play a passable version of whatever in a few months where they don't realize that the people they are attempting to cover are exceptional talents in the main who have been playing for a long long time.
I have been playing guitar for 36 years, I can in the main pick up a new song and play it convincingly in a week or less - often in an hour, but I have put in the time to get there, I never practise songs I practice general techniques and they are normally the route to picking up songs quickly, also an understanding of theory is crucially in knowing what is likely to come next
There are few people that I cant do and at the top of that tree is Johnny Marr. He is very none traditional and super driven to be different when he was young
Good luck
I never practise songs I practice general techniques
I do the opposite. Rarely work on technique and usually practice songs. Mainly because it takes me ages to learn the lyrics and then sing them while doing sometimes complex strumming patterns. I learned the guitar part to play along with "Qué demonios hago yo aqui" by los Zigarros in a few hours, fills, solo, the lot. The chorus is easy enough to sing but the verses in time to the strumming pattern are taking a long time. It's going to take months at the current rate of a few words memorised a day... .
I’d be more than happy to be able to do a recognisable Dylan, Beatles or Oasis number a few months down the road!
This is how I practice most, Tele, Mustang modelling amp, the original to play over then a backing track if there's one on Youtube. I start with just strumming along and when I'm comfortable with that start learning the fills and solos.
If you do want to learn Don't Look Back in Anger you'll have to tune your guitar about 40 cents up to play with the original because it's speeded up. The backing track is normal tuning.
A man in his happy place! Win 👍🏼
If I didn’t already have a purple sparkle Fender Tele-shaped guitar...
That is lovely!
Set the intonation on your new to you guitar, Simon. It’s visibly a country mile out.
It will be off to my lovely local guitar shop chap (Rick @ Marvel Guitars) for strings and a setup when I get a chance. Yes, I could do it myself but I like to support lovely people in nice little shops 🙂
@simondbarnes I usually do most of my strings and tweaks myself, but I must admit that Matt, my local guy does it sooo much better than I do. He’s even fixed a couple of my bodges that didn’t go well. Worth paying a pro 😊
Oooh! Amazon Basics guitar pedals...
Whilst I may be joking about the above! I bought one of these wireless guitar systems and it has been pretty darn good. My mate gigs with one on her electric violin.
Thanks for the encouragement, Simon. Posting vids here is a bit like busking, most people just walk past but now and then one or two pause and take an interest.
Your post has big holes in Eddie, I assume something should be there but isn't.
Golly, I could see them earlier...
The first was a link to Amazon Basics now doing effects pedals, the second was to the £30 Amnoon 2.4GHz wireless system.
Want!
Feelgood guitars?
nice bit of sparkle. And I’m a sucker for a matching headstock (I really should have bought a Surf Green matchy match Strat (and/or Tele) when they did them a few years ago.
i could see that Amazon link BTW, just took a while to materialise
I have the £30 amoon wireless guitar gizmo. Works pretty well over a few metres, batteries last a couple of hours of playing. Cant complain at that price. Also bought their basic looper pedal for something like £25 - pretty decent as well
Decided to learn a few songs by other folk (never normally do that, prefer to play my own music)
Learned Twos Up by ACDC, kickstart my heart by the Crue, Last Days of May by BOC and Dead Alone by In Flames
Quite enjoyable to see how other folk play/write
Decided to learn a few songs by other folk
That's pretty much all I do. However, I usually end up kind of learning how to play the intro, get frustrated by it not sounding amazing and then move onto another song and repeat forever 🙂
That’s pretty much all I do. However, I usually end up kind of learning how to play the intro, get frustrated by it not sounding amazing and then move onto another song and repeat forever
+1 😪
I seem to have an attention span of about 15 minutes for learning a song. I really need to sort that out otherwise I'm always going to be shit! I tried to be Mike McCready in Mad Season this morning but sound nothing like him 🙂
I seem to have an attention span of about 15 minutes for learning a song.
I was told to break a song into its various sections and learn from the back first so you are always working towards bits you know.
Worked for a while then I just got over it and a switch clicked in my mind..
I follow Sophie Lloyd on YouTube (who wouldn't?) and I got a lot of motivation and theory tips from her videos and theory is the bit my mind glazes over... Her "3 notes per string" video made me think a bit more before just rattling away.
Mary Spender also seems a very competent teacher.
And I'm enjoying the 'instructional' stuff from Larkin Poe of late.
I was told to break a song into its various sections and learn from the back first so you are always working towards bits you know.
Not tried that, got to be worth a go!
This year was to be the year I finally got some lessons. Covid has put paid to that (I don't want to do video lessons)
I tried to be Mike McCready in Mad Season this morning but sound nothing like him
You do, I listened to the live version because it's the first time I'd heard that song, and it's definitely the same intro. Not easy to reproduce the studio version as the man proves himself live.
That's a great thing about live music, people aren't looking for perfection, they're looking for an atmosphere, passion, life, entertainment. Some bands are very good at simplifying songs to the point they can play them faultlessly every time yet all the feel of the orignal is in there. Watch Billy Gibbons playing Sharp Dressed Man in a recent live vid, much simplified yet you still hear what you're expecting.
You do, I listened to the live version because it’s the first time I’d heard that song, and it’s definitely the same intro.
Blimey, thanks 🙂
I'm going to attempt to smash my 15 minute attention span and learn some more of the song.
yeah a tough one page not found vs page not found 🙂
What colour is your on-stage sparkly outfit? 😊
failing that, match your shoes...
Anyone looking for a nice Tele? Better sell the house:
https://www.award-session.com/fender_broadcaster.html
If you want one without worn frets, an odd nut, screws sticking way out of the saddles, an odd deck height... you could just sell a bike:
Collect the set! They're (mostly) all in here... blackguardlogs.com
However, missing from that list is the 1952 Tele owned by Ross Shafer, ex-owner of Salsa - number 1155... Which I've been lucky enough to play. OMG! What a guitar! Stock apart from a brass nut (hey, blame the 70s...) - I've got some nice pics of it somewhere, I'll dig them out...
I'm not keen on relics and that guitar is an example of why; it looks right where the Custom Shop relics look a mess.
I'd want to disinfect it before playing though. 😉
I do like blackguard blondes.
Maybe mine might look a bit aged in 40 years time...
Mind you that was taken 12 years ago...
Can I be controversial and say I really don’t like Teles and can’t understand why anyone would want one when the Strat is a better and more versatile guitar? I am saying this as a keen singlespeed rider so I can see the irony but I really can’t see what a Tele offers and over 50 odd years never have.
Oh, and the headstock is ugly too. Not fat Strat headstock ugly but bad across the range since forever.
I've got the blackguard on the previous page and junior has a couple. Mine is a con in that it's thoroughly modern. A 10"-12" compound radius neck with a sort of flattened C shape, double expanding trussrod, N3 noiseless pickups. One of junior's has a Little Thunder in the neck.
The broadcaster type pickups (overwound with thin wire and big magnets) sound great with a clean tube amp but have their issues. I've got some Crel 666 which are ace till I click a pedal at high gain or use a modeling amp on high gain settings. They squeal even when taken out of the guitar (so it's not acoustic feedback it's something electronic), same with De Marzio Twang King.
So you need two blackguards, one with original type pickups and one with lower output single coils or N3/N4/Duncan noiseless. This one sounds lovely, it's junior's 2012 Clasic Vibe through a Mustang 2. Subsequent year models don't sound the same and the latest ones have very different pickups.