EMGs are NOT versatile. They are notorious for being completely sterile in terms of sound. Good for metal/hard distortion, shit for everything else.
It may just be because I'm not a fan of Fender, but lower end ESP/LTD and lower end Ibanez are generally better quality than lower end Fender.
Agile (From Rondo Music) makes decent low quality, and for high quality, I find that Carvin is extremely hard to top. Their craftsmanship is amazing. I played my friend's model which was around $900, and it had a sexy neck, great pickups, and it stayed in tune even with tremolo abuse.
With Fender's recent raise in price for American made Strats, the incentive to get one is so much lower.
For higher end Ibanez, the Prestige and Wizard necks are so sexy. Thin, low action, and smooth.
wow, ok, im assuming this is a guide to contest for the sc2 key? if it is, then lol, not enough info man. Guitars, equipment, techniques are too deep and this scratchs the surface. Now if it's not, then I would like to add a few things to help the guide.
I mainly play electric, touched a few acoustics.
For beginners, unless you took AP music theory or a music class, learn ur notes, chords, progressions. It's good to have good fundamentals and will save you a lot of trouble later. Don't need to practice ur chords like learning for a test, but play them clean and see how they fit into ur songs. Although it's much more fun to start off and trying to play a song you like, do warmups and technique practices, you will hear yourself getting better and clearer.
you WILL need a metronome, be it a physical one or something you get on your computer. slowly build up to rhythm and make sure you notes are clear. Again, this is good fundamentals and makes learning hard songs easier later.
Beginner Tabs: you CAN find good tabs for very popular songs to start out with. Stairway, most popular, and several other songs. The more popular the more accurate. Eventually you should learn to tab by ear, but that comes later.
Beginner Equipment: It really depends on how committed you are to actually playing this thing. A lot of people give up instruments, not only guitar, a short while after they've started. I've dropped guitar once b4 and picked it back up. A better ( and therefore more expensive) amp will make you sound better by default: louder. But with the "better" amp comes more learning of settings, equipment, and adjustments. So be prepared. Usually the cheap starting combos they have are not terrible and workable. You can use them to get used to the feel of it, then move on to a les paul or something.
Lessons: once you move past the "beginner" phase, perhaps you would like to start on more advanced techniques, alternated picking, sweep, harmonics, arpegios, tremelos, legatos, and what not. If you would like to put some cash down for a real life physical lesson, great, move on. But if you're cheap like me, videos and hours of practice will have to suffice. there are MANY half-assed introductory lessons online, and you have to kind of assemble them like autobots and piece them together. Videos from the likes of john petrucci, the satch man, and other soloist will help you understand the techniques.
If you want more information you can search yourself or ask someone, but I think it good for beginners to understand the mountains of techniques that face them when they pick up this instrument. Before actually going to play your favorite song, learn some basic techniques and play the boring basic songs, or else you will sound like crap and quit.
On June 10 2009 00:28 konadora wrote: Super dumb noob question: Do you need an amp to play electric guitar?
Also, are there any difference in difficulty in picking up electric guitar instead of acoustic? Are pedals necessary? (I want to play Fuwa Fuwa Time and many other songs too, but lack of money and will.. ;___; )
Edit: Btw, awesome guide, always wanted to pick up electric guitar. Now I know how many years I need to save.
For a setup like this, how much do you think it will cost?
Woah, that looks like a '78 Les Paul. If so, those are great guitars. Pretty penny though, range from 3k+! Nice Video though.
I enjoyed your guide (I play guitar as well) but I only have one problem in what you say people should learn depending on what type of guitar they buy. The way you have mapped it out is that anything to do with rhythm guitar is under the acoustic section and anything for lead guitar is under the electric section. ANY guitar player needs to know how to play open and barre chords, regardless whether they want to just learn solos all day. Sure, for the casual player who picks it up once a week may be fine, but when someone wants to move on from just memorizing solos with bad technique to advancing their playing they will have to get to open and barre chords one way or another. Also, just knowing open chords allow you to play hundreds, if not thousands of songs.
Anyways, just my two cents. If this has already been brought up in the comments I am sorry for bringing it up again.
Nice guide motivates me to improve my guitar skills a bit more
To anyone whos considering getting an e-guitar and an amp: If you're one of those people who leave their PC turned on all the time, you might wanna consider not getting an amp for E-guitar but instead the line6 pod studio gx/ux-1: Basically you connect that thing to your pc/notebook via USB, and it gives you I think 25 different amp models and whole bunch of effects: It's not gonna sound as good as a 900$/+ amp but I'd argue that with decent speakers it sounds easily as good as an amp of the same price, plus it has 100 times more variety since you dont have just 1 amp but many models, and the effects are very good as well.
And you can't only play with it but also record with it (theoretically thats the main purpose of it) . I always record my stuff with it, even though I have an amp standing here that costs about 2000$. (Of course my beautiful Orange Amp sounds a lot better but I don't have a mic that's good enough to make recording sound better than with my ux) And the price is only 90€ (so Id guess about 120$?) for the gx and 120€ for the ux-1, with which you can also connect a mic to record your voice or to record your acoustic guitar. Oh also it has 5 bass amp models.
So yeah I really really recommend this thing, unless you can't stand the thought of having to use your computer in order to make music. (Of course having an amp and the pod studio would be better).
Sorry if I sound a lot like a salesman but I garantuee you, I'm not involved with line6 ;D I just love that thing especially when you consider how cheap it is.
If someone wants sound samples I could upload some of my recordings.
Oh and give the OP a break, I personally thought it was obvious he only meant acoustic guitar was gonna give you results faster, not that it is easier to master.
7mk: Yeah I support this, I have a ux1 myself aswell as an "real" amp and the ux1 or similar hardware is definately viable for playing at home and it's quite fun to mess around with all the effects you can have without selling your body on the street in order to buy all the shitty boss-pedals. Also makes it quite easy to start record stuff indeed!
I think a lot of people have been getting confused, so let me clarify again, this is a guide for buying a guitar, not playing one. I've editted the OP to make it more clear
If you want to actually learn chords/etc., either check out Skyze's guide in this same forum, or use www.justinguitar.com (really great site)
because it looked gorgeous and I figured it'd probably be better to get something expensive and never have to change again, but if I could turn back time maybe I should've gone for the 310 + Show Spoiler +
This is because the 310 actually had a really good sound when I played it and I was delighted by it. But in the end 'logic' won out, and I went with the 410. After playing it for a few weeks I am starting to miss the sound of the 310. Oh well, I mean, I'm content with my 410. But just because it's a higher end model doesn't mean that it'll be as good, and maybe 1 out of 10 310s will sound better than 9 out of 10 410s, as all guitars will have their individual qualities.
EPT
