my advice on choosing an electric guitar
Nov 08 '01
The Bottom Line You make the music...any guitar is just a tool!
I have played guitar since 1976 and the one BIG lesson I learned is that it is the player who makes the music, not the guitar. And for electric guitarists, the sound comes from the player, the guitar, the effects, and the amp...and of all those factors, I believe the guitar is the least important of those factors...but I didn't say "not important" so read on.
That being said, it is still important to try an electric guitar before you go out on the internet and buy it because you like the way it looks or because your favorite rockstar plays that model.
Do you prefer the feel of a rosewood fretboard, maple, or how about mahogany? Do you like a lightweight guitar or do you like the solid and heavy feel of a Gibson Les Paul? Does the color or shape of the guitar mean anything to you? Do you like thin frets or heavy frets? Do the volume and tone knobs get in the way of your playing? Do you like a locking trem or a fixed bridge guitar? There are certainly a lot of choices for today's aspiring guitarist!
I personally prefer used Gibson guitars, Epiphone guitars, mid-level Ibanez guitars, and Fender guitars...and all for the same reason. They are affordable and usually do not cost two to three thousand dollars like a Paul Reed Smith, a Tom Anderson, or a Pensa Suhr. I have owned sixty different guitars over the years and I never once felt the need to shell out two or three grand. As for an acoustic guitar though, that is a different matter!
If you have the money, go ahead and get that Tom Anderson handmade superstrat guitar with the custom graphics finish and the fancy EMG pickups but if you are not a good player, it will not make that much of a difference. You will however, have every electric guitarist in a ten mile radius lining up at your front door.
As a general rule, if I want a fast guitar and sound like Joe Satriani or Steve Vai, I find almost any Ibanez will do with their thin satin necks and fat frets which is good for speed picking and note bending. For a thinner surf or country tone, I prefer a Fender guitar like a Telecaster or Stratocaster. And for a clean jazz tone or a heavy rock distorted tone, I prefer the Gibsons or Epiphones.
Now that is not all written in stone since thin surf tones could be found in a Gibson by playing the two humbukcers together on a clean setting and depending on how you set your amp and effects, a single-coil equipped Fender could get a heavy tone. And fast fingers have been known to grace non-Ibanez guitars in the world of the shred set like Yngwie Malmsteen and his Fender strat or Zakk Wylde and his banged up Gibson Les Paul Custom.
Once you find a guitar you like for the style of music that you play, make sure it feels as good standing up as it does sitting down...this is something I forgot to do with some neck heavy instruments I have bought in the past and it made standing and playing a little harder to do. But now that I am older and prefer sitting when I play and not running around like Angus Young of AC/DC, that is not such a big factor.
The last thing one should worry about is where the guitar is made. At one time, electric guitars made in the US were the only ones of any quality. But that has changed since the 1970s when Yamaha and Ibanez made quality guitars that challenged Fender and Gibson. Now good guitars are also made in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Mexico, and other countries. And do not worry about what the guitar says on the headstock. An imprinted, endorsed signature of a rock star on the headstock, while cool, does not mean that guitar is always better than the stock model.
If you are an Yngwie Malmsteen fan and you find that the ordinary Fender strat suits your playing style better than that "Yngwie Malmsteen" signature Fender strat sitting next to it at your local music store, by all means buy the ordinary strat and save yourself five hundred dollars and get an amp!
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