Guitar Tips - Buying A Guitar

Before you can get started with your guitar tutorials, you first need to buy a guitar! Buying your first guitar can be a real dilemma – I can still remember my first guitar, I saved up my salary for months to buy it and I didn’t want buy the wrong guitar or worse, ending up with a lemon.

So here are some quick tips for for buying a guitar:

Decide which style of guitar you would most likely end up playing. Would it be rock? Metal? Jazz or blues guitar? Or maybe you want to be an all rounder? Once you find that out, it’s time to find a guitar that will give you the type of sound you’re looking for. Remember also that effects pedals and amps etc will also modify your tone quite a bit. I will cover more on that in a later post.

Do not make a rushed decision. Talk to people who have an extensive knowledge on guitars, or have been playing for many years. You can even go to online forums and ask, most people in forums who share your same interest are helpful.

As a beginner, look for a package if available. Quite often, manufacturers might bundle up guitar tutorials or courses to go with one of their guitar models. That would be ideal and would save you a lot of money. More often than not, a guitar store will offer you such packages.

In my own experience, every time I’ve purchased a guitar, I’ve been able to bargain with the guitar store and get some sort of discount. Try to get them to drop the price for you a little bit and also include accessories in for free ( like guitar straps, picks, guitar tuners etc ). It’s good to buy an amp or sound equipment at this time too because tying all these up together will just save you tons of cash.

The most important thing for you as a beginner, is to learn to check for the straightness of the guitar neck. If it is straight, then the intonation will be consistent throughout the fretboard. NOTE: if you buy a guitar with a slightly twisted neck, there is absolutely no way you can fix it. You can only fix a bowed neck but not a twisted one.

On a final note, hold the guitar and play some stuff. If you don’t know how to play yet, don’t be embarrassed, just pluck some a few guitar strings and listen to it. Does it sound satisfactory to you? Put your hand on the neck and ask yourself, ” does my hand feel comfortable on the guitar neck?”, ” Is it too wide, or too narrow for my hands ” ?

I hope these quick tips have given you more confidence in going out there and finding yourself your FIRST guitar!
photo credit: psd

More Related posts:

1. Beginner Guitar – Guitar Fretting And Strumming Hand Positions
2. A Beginners Guide To Buying Acoustic Guitars