Electric Guitar

If you choose to go the electric route, you’ll need an amplifier as well as a guitar. An electric guitar without an amplifier is kind of like a home computer with everything except for that big rectangular box that everything else plugs into (you know, the computer). The amp IS the sound. It is more than just a speaker box for your guitar. The amplifier, more than the guitar even, defines the voice of an electric guitar rig. If you have a budget in mind for a rig, spend the least amount of it on the guitar. A $100 guitar with the right amplifier can sound apocalyptically huge. However, even a $500,000 guitar will sound fuzzy and unpleasant through the wrong amp.

The majority of electric guitars produced today can be divided into two camps: those that are ancestors of the Gibson Les Paul and those that are ancestors of the Fender Broadcaster (now called the Telecaster). Guitars made in the Gibson tradition usually are made of darker, often heavier woods than do their Fender counterparts. The electronics in Gibson style guitars are also quite different than Fender style guitars in that they send a much higher level of signal to the amplifier. The result of using darker woods (which also sound darker, usually) and higher output electronics is a guitar with a much more beefy sound. So, if a Gibson style guitar is thick and fat sounding, a Fender is bright and sweet. Neither is better than the other. They are just different. When choosing a style for yourself, consider which style of guitar is most commonly associated with your favorite artists or styles:

Common musicians/genres associated with the sound of Gibson style guitars

Jazz (Pat Matheney, Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery)

Hard Rock (Deep Purple, Guns and Roses, Stone Temple Pilots, System of a Down)

Metal (Motorhead, Metallica, Slipknot, Dragon Force, anyone who ever played with Ozzy Ozborne)

Most Woodstock era rock (Steppenwolfe, Jefferson Airplane, Ten Years After, Cream, Mike Bloomfield, The Who when Keith Moon was alive)

Common musicians/genres associated with the sound of Fender style guitars

Blues (Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Stevie Ray Vaughn)

Roots Rock (Bruce Springsteen, The Wallflowers)

A lot of Classic Rock (Buddy Holly, solo Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin)

Country (anybody who has ever had a Nashville, Tennessee address)

In short, you should choose a Gibson style guitar if you like Jazz or harder rock. Otherwise, choose a Fender style guitar.

Fender Style Guitars

If you like Fender style guitars, you should consider buying a Fender brand guitar. No one does ”Fender“ better than Fender, and they have a variety of quality instruments for every budget. Their best sellers (and probably best guitars) are the Stratocaster and Telecaster models. Many players use each, but we can basically break down the Fender category this way:

Stratocaster

Blues, Buddy Holly, Hendrix, Clapton

Telecaster

Country, Rolling Stones, Springsteen, Led Zeppelin

Both models are available at almost any price point. A new beginner Stratocaster or Telecaster can still be found for under $100, where an older American-made one can easily cross into the higher five (or six) figure range. While the beginner guitars (which are labeled as ”squire“ instead of ”Fender“) are of lower quality than their American- or Mexican-made counterparts, the difference is relatively minimal to the novice guitarist. These days, the quality of a guitar tends to increase by about 10% every time you double the price. So, a $100 guitar is 90% the quality of a $200 guitar, which is 90% of a $400 guitar, and so on. Here are recommended Fenders at several price levels, from cheapest to most expensive:

1. Squire Telecaster or Stratocaster

2. Standard (Mexican-made) Telecaster or Stratocaster

3. Mexican reissue (50’s Stratocaster, 60’s Stratocaster, etc.*) Telecaster or Stratocaster

4. U.S.-made standard Telecaster or Stratocaster (often called ”American Series“ or something similar)

5. American reissue (named for a specific year, like 1957 reissue or 1962 reissue) Telecaster or Stratocaster

6. 1980’s Japanese-made reissue Telecaster or Stratocaster

7. Fender Custom Shop or 1980’s American Made reissue Telecaster or Stratocaster

8. Vintage Fender guitar (pre – 1970)

*avoid the 70’s reissue or Fenders manufactured in the 1970s. Neither is worth the money it (magically) commands on the market.

Gibson Style Guitar

Should you decide that you’re more a fan of the Gibson sound, you may have to look a little harder to make a valuable purchase. The problem is that, for whatever reason, Gibson brand guitars are much higher in price than their competitors (in some cases two or three times what a Fender of similar quality would cost you). Many fans of the thicker Gibson tone will instead seek out high-quality guitars built in a similar style. These match the tone and feel but usually have a lower price tag. The problem with these guitars is that the high-quality ones (like the Tokai Love Rock) are difficult to distinguish from the low-quality ones (like almost any guitar in that style that has a bolt-on neck). It’s complicated. So, if you want to find a high-quality, low-priced guitar in this style, please call us for assistance.

Just as Fender makes economically priced instruments under a different name (Squire), Gibson produces a thriftier version of its guitars under the name ”Epiphone.“ These guitars are still quite expensive for their quality level. If you’re interested in owning a Gibson-made guitar for a more affordable price, consider finding an Epiphone manufactured in Japan (for the Japanese market and therefore ONLY available on the resale market in the U.S.). These Epiphone guitars are widely considered to be of a much higher-quality than those made for the American market, and they are still affordable.

Hollow vs. Solid

When choosing a Gibson style electric guitar, consider that they can be solid, semi-hollow, or hollow body electric guitars (the large majority of Fender guitars are solid body instruments). Solid body guitars (e.g., the Gibson SG and Les Paul) have more sustain and a darker sound (well-suited for hard and heavy rock). Hollow body guitars (e.g., the Gibson ES-175 and L5) feedback more easily when overdriven, sound richer, and have less sustain (ideally-suited for Jazz). So-called semi-hollow body guitars (e.g., the Gibson ES-335, ES-355, and ES-135) are thinner than hollow body guitars and have a solid block of wood in the center of two hollow cavities. These guitars are the one Gibson style guitar commonly associated with the Blues (largely because B.B. King’s guitar ”Lucille“ is one of these) and classic rock (although many new rock players like these guitars, too). They sustain a little more than a hollow body guitar while still maintaining some of the richness of the hollow body.

Guitar Amplifiers

Where guitars and ESPECIALLY where amps are concerned, expensive does not always mean "good." Many of the biggest retail music stores have a host of horrific sounding amps with enormous price tags. Where amp quality is concerned, one simple rule will help you get the most for your money: If you plan to spend more than $100 on the amp, only buy tube amps—ever—and buy a hand-wired one if you can find one in your price range. Yes, they still make guitar amps with tube technology. Like the old radios and TVs, they are a little more sensitive and take a moment to "warm up" before they can be used. Unlike TVs and radios, though, guitar amps are more desirable and not less so when they employ the older technology instead of the transistor based "solid state" technology. The salesmen at guitar stores will likely tell you about the new high-tech digital amps that sound "exactly" like the old tube amps and have programmability and more flexibility. It is true that those amps have more sounds from which to choose. It's just that every sound is inferior by far to the sound produced by almost any similarly priced tube amp. There are a lot of amps, too, that have names that suggest tubes like "valve-errific," "tube-tacular," or "authentic tube technology." Don't believe it. A lot of new amps use a single tube in the pre-amp section of the amplifier circuitry to claim those names, but they’re still powered by transistors. These amps are still going to sound grainy and dead in comparison to an amp with a tube-powered amp and pre-amp (a tube amp, in other words). Do not allow salesmen to talk you out of it. They may try. Many will because they don't know any better, and many others will because there's a higher mark-up (profit) on those high-tech solid state amps. In other words, the store and the salesmen get to keep more of your money if you buy an off-brand solid state amp with a ton of knobs.

Also, if you stick with Fender, you almost can't go wrong. If you buy almost any tube amp ever made by Fender, you'll be okay. Fenders get a little more complicated at higher prices (some are more worth the big price tag than others) but, in general, you can't lose with a Fender amp.