im getting more into my music, so im thinking of getting an electric.

I am an acoustic player so i’ve never really got on with electrics but ive been playing a mates and its inspired me to get one (my old epiphone is sadly dead, this would have been fine….dammit)

Been to a couple of shops this afternoon, I’ve settled on an amp, a vox valvetronix, ive had one before, they are great.

But i tried a £2000 gibson, and a £250 epiphone, and i really struggled to see where the extra money had gone, other than slightly shinier knobs and pickups, and a better finish…. this is probably my lack of knowledge, or skill….. can anyone enlighten me? does the quality become evident the better/quicker you get, is the resonance, or sustain any better?

with an acoustic the sound quality is immediately apparent in a Taylor or a martin, vs a £150 acoustic….

surely the quality of a pickup, and a solid lump of wood can only affect sound quality v slightly?????

Budgets £500 max so i am thinking of another epiphone les paul, or something similar, ideally cheaper.

any other little known makes anyone would suggest, with decent build quality, or is it worth saving up for something boutique?

id prefer a solid non bolt on kneck for added sustain. (assuming the advice i was given is correct, ie bolt on kneck = less sustain?)

my style, (if it can be thus described) is a sustainy picky the edge, riff based style, (ringing triads etc). im not very quick at scales, and im certainly not a power chord guy.

What’ve you budgeted for amp?

£100ish?

The quality of guitars, especially cheaper ones has come on a lot. My old squire Tele was so badly put together it was laughable, but a rewire and a new bridge and i genuinely can’t tell the difference between it and a real fender of the same age. Generally speaking, more money will get you a nicer finish, better hardware/wood and a better “feel” if that means anything. Where acoustics are crafted for sound, this is generally less relevant in electrics as the pickup provides most of what is considered to be the sound. To be honest, I’d look at getting something cheaper or second hand as you may find you prefer playing acoustic in the long run, and sadly most guitars don’t seem to be holding their value (unless you get something very valuable!) The most important thing is obviously playing it before buying it, and playing one in a shop then saving £30 by buying it off the net isn’t buying the same guitar, its worth the extra money to buy the one you’ve played and liked!

Spend as much on amp as guitar. To be honest, at the lower end at least, the amp makes more of the sound than the guitar does. It’s an integral part of the instrument, not just an add-on.

When I bought I spent £200 on a guitar and something like £300 on a second hand all-valve Peavey Classic amp, which is an utterly wonderful thing. The guitar itself is just like any other as you are discovering.

Bargains aside, just get one of those Marshall ones with the valvestate bits (do they still do those?). They are brill.

One of the PRS SE series. You should be able to get something around the £300 mark. Well made guitars from a premium brand.

Hmmm this is good advice, im quite fascinated by effects, are those zoom do it all pedals any good, and which one is the one to have now?

Sustain, delay etc rather 100,s of different grunge sounds…

Ive always been intrigued by an ebow too

And i can use these with my semi acoustic

Hagstrom Viking, better built,sounding and equipped than an epi.

I’ve just finished setting one up for a customer and for a finger stylee, it’s lovely. I’d say through or set neck is better, it is to a degree a matter of taste but it wil definitely give more sustain in an otherwise identical guitar.

I’d consider anything from Hagstrom,Vintage,Hamer,Jay Turser,Tokai,Chase and Fender vinatge vibe stuff is pretty good.

Epiphone and Fender Squire stuff is ok, but you are paying a premium for the branding.

Yamaha solids keep getting reasonable reviews, but mostly from magazines they place a lot of advertising with. Cheap componentry, hardware and electronics even on the high end models though.The necks are usually ok though.

Tim you say your Epiphone is dead. What’s wrong with it? If its electrical it might not take much to fix it.

The zoom do it alls are good yes. I’ve got a digitech one I bought in the states which has thousands of grunge effects in it, but there are some truly mindbending noises in it too. Quite brilliant to mess with and pretend you’re a 60s prog rock band soloist.

Well i need a couple of new tuning pegs £30 for a set of 6, 1 new pickup and the electrics sorting £150 quoted today at lgs

And the neck is loose from a mate dropping it down the stairs….

Hagstrom Viking

What are these like for ska type stuff? Nice clean sound?

Spend as much as you can on the amp, my favourite guitar (my old silver-series Squier Tele) cost me £70 and got an extra £50 of parts thrown at it and sounds and plays fantastic- better than my Gibson SG, better than my proper Fender- but it’d still sound mince through a cheap amp. Some come with decent fx these days, I sold most of my pedalboard when i got my Vox so you can combine your budget a bit.

Yamaha Pacifica guitar.
Available for £75 upward on ebay 2nd hand, worth £200+. Really, tunable guitar.
The neck and body are good and solid, upgrade anything else on it easily over time.
I’m really happy with mine. It needed a service when bought, new string, neck tweaked, then strings lowered, plays brilliant now.
Alan.

” Hagstrom Viking

What are these like for ska type stuff? Nice clean sound? “

Yup, the humbuckers are fairly underwound compared to something like a PAF, so you get all the noise cancelling properties, but because they’re fairly underwound, you get a really clear ringing tone out of them, without all that loss of detail and clarity that humbuckers normally have. Very Rickenbacker 300 series with toaster pickups sort of sound. Sounds quite a lot like my telecaster thinline as well.

Oh, for Pacificas don’t go lower than a 112, the 012 is nasty.

Jahwomble was it you who i discussed a sultans of ping cd of wheres me jumper?

It might well have been it sounds familiar, whoops………… I’ve still got it on the shelf actually, If you send me your address again, I’ll definitely remember to send it this time. I get distracted easily….:)

Dancin at the disco bumper to bumper, wait a minute!

2nd the PRS SE’s love mine. *Great* tone.

Whilst we’re on the subject, I fancy one of those really small traveller guitars, but they don’t seem to make them any more.

Ta got that, will probably be a couple of days before I get to the post office though……….:)

I’m seriously considering building a cigarbox guitar for myself as a travel guitar. You can keep your lunch and some bogroll in them a well. Ace.

personally I think fender style guitars work better at the cheaper end of the market – as the designs were made for mass production (bolted on necks etc). As opposed to gibson style guitars which are glued together etc.

Top end of your budget but I got one of these recently

http://www.guitarampkeyboard.com/en/71698

Mexico built, but custom shop bits. It really is a great strat.

If it were me, i’d try for a secondhand 80’s Tokai or Squire strat. I think they are c.£500-600, and you won’t loose money if you move it on. If you get the right one, it would be good enough to never need to replace it.

There are some nice ones here….(dunno anything about the shop though)

http://www.fareastguitars.co.uk/usedguitars.htm

As I said about basses, try guitars unplugged to find out what they really sound like. If you find a cheap one that sounds great unplugged (all it takes is a stuff neck, good neck/body joint and a lively resonant body – which on an expensive one you pay for the quality control to guarantee) then buy it and put decent pickups in. I agree that you’re more likely to get a good Fender style guitar cheap than any set/thru neck thing. Most electric guitar sounds are part guitar, part amp, part speakers, and it’s not just about how the amp sounds but how it feels and interacts with your playing. But get the basic guitar tone right and it’ll make everything else fall into place much more easily.

I must admit, the thing about buying a more expensive “branded” electric, is firstly, you will if like le, keep glancing in the mirror trying to convince yourself you are Robbie Krieger (Yes, I bought an SG, all those years ago) and secondly, unlikely to feel the ned to “upgrade”, as unlike say bikes, a decent Gibson will just play better and better in 20-30 years, they don’ really date or go out of “fashion”.

Say my SG – you can see over the years little things like the edge binding turning slightly yellow, it does very very slowly grow a patina of ageing.

Also, whilst some of the cheaper guitars are fantastic to look at – imho, nothing beats a huge solid chunk of mahogany, glued to another solid chunk of mahogany, and I can see through the genuine celulose finish this. Imho, whilst say less important than an acoustic, I’d wager my SG would still outperform and or feel less “dead” unplugged, than a modern £200 instrument from Thailand, made with glued ply and painted over or given a fab veneer.

At the time I bought my SG, certainly, lower actions evt were achievable with a higher end brand than the budget imports.

But a lot of it is in your head. If you had to save hard, and were only ever going to buy 1 “really good” guitar, then the pleasure of just owning the real mccoy is something that cannot be replicated.

Although a mate who is a guitar teacher still swears by his Squire Strat he bought over 20 years abo!

Most of my guitars are US made fenders and I have a Gibson Les Paul standard

Earlier this year whilst waiting for my stuff to come back from Canada I bought a stop gap guitar

after a lot of searching and knowing exactly what I wanted I ended up with a Parker PM 20 – I can easily tell the difference between it and my others, its just not quite there

However for the difference in cost I would say that it really is an awesomely usable guitar and if this had been around when I was starting I would have been very happy with it for years

Plum

on the amp front I think the little line 6 has a lot going for it but my money would be going either to an adrenalinn III or a Tech 21 TM 30

Nothing beats a chunk of mahogany glued onto another chunk of mahogany, unless you prefer the sound from a stiff chunk of maple bolted to a resonant slab of ash – horses for courses! But what you never ever want is a neck that’s too bendy (kills lower harmonic sustain) and a body that’s over-damped (kills upper harmonic energy).