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I pointed out the Bullet because itās a hard tail no trem to worry about and the pickups are the same as the Affinity, you donāt get better pickups and tuners until you go further up the range. The best of the Bullet series is the Mustang but the Strat and the Telecaster are nowhere near as bad as they used to be, for the price range weāre looking at Harley Benton is the best by far but you donāt get the choice of trying them out.
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For grunge a Squier Bullet Mustang is the best choice in your price bracket with the Katana mini, you would definitely not be disappointed, but you really do need to go try some and go with an open mind plus a bit of flexibility with your budget.
Good point.
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I always thought of a Les Paul of being my dream guitar but I found it heavy when I got one and eventually sold it. You can definitely do a lot worse than a Yamaha Pacifica or a Squier Telecaster. If you can find a bit more money to spend on an amp then do so because thereās a lot of small, cheap amps and many of them will be really disappointing
So it seems. They used to have a terrible reputation, but these days they seem pretty good.
Cheers,
Keith
I just bought one of these Eastcoast L1 (les Paul type) as my first guitar . and absolutely love it Seems lovely quality and no rough bits. For Ā£200 canāt go wrong
Confession - i bought one of those electric starter packs (Fender) mainly because i read so much that it might be easier for a beginner and i was struggling a bit with my acoustic. BUT i was so confused/overwhelmed/intimidated by the amp - no clue what all different knobs did , then there were other things on guitar you could change - it was just too much!! LOL So i returned it. But what that did - was simply give me more appreciation for my acoustic. I apologized profusely to him and have a renewed focus and love for the little guy. So thats MY short story of the electric guitar.
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I think itās certainly true that even with a beginner setup you can get lost in a world of settings and dials searching for a sound that you want to hear, and particularly with a cheap amp, it simply might not be possible to get the sound youāre hoping to hear. With my acoustic guitar I pick it up, maybe tune it, then play. With my electric guitar I can easily waste half of my practice time just turning dials!
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That was exactly the issue!! my friend said āexperiment. have fun with itā - and my thought was āi am struggling to strumā¦i donāt have time to play with an amp!ā lol
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The thing is, you donāt need to play with it (much). You could probably sit down and figure out how to get 3 different reasonable tones (say, clean, crunch and distorted) in 1 hour. Note down the settings (or store them in memory, if your amp does that) and just punch in the one you need, when you need it. Itās really not that hard.
If you want to replicate some specific tone you heard, then thatās different, that might take longer. Or forever! But, if you are āstruggling to strumā, replicating a specific tone isnāt important.
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no.21 in the list, Yamaha Pacifica 112v, great guitars.
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+1
On my boss katana I have 3 presets that I keep on there: An acoustic (clean), an AC/DC (Crunch), and a Metallica (distorted) sound.
Iāve found that most songs sound pretty good in one of those presets. Itās when I actually start recording a specific song that I start playing around and look for a sound that matches the song.
Right now, Iām practicing sunshine of your love by cream with the AC/DC sound for example. After I get it good enough to record Iāll try and find a tone that matches even better. I have to say that it sounds pretty good with this crunch tone too though.
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I havenāt touched the knobs on either of my amps (Fender Champion 20 and Fender Acoustisonic 40) in years. I spent a little time dialing in a sound I liked on both, then left them alone. When playing the electric guitar, Iāll use the pickup selector to change the tone for different songs.
I donāt see why anyone would be messing with the amp settings every time they sit down to practice.
Wow this is such a dismissive comment! How about they play a wide variety of different songs from different genres? Even as a fairly recent beginner, Iām playing songs from Neil Young, CCR, Johnny Cash, Nirvana etc which definitely warrant exploring what my amp can do
You could learn to play the Neil Young and Nirvana songs with a basic crunch tone and the Johnny Cash and CCR with a clean tone, if you wanted. And like @alexisduprey above, once you get competent in playing those songs, then you could invest some time in refining the tone, if you wanted.
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I didnāt mean to be dismissive. I play lots of different songs from different genres as well. I just donāt concern myself with trying to achieve the same tone as the guitarists on the recording for each song. Iām working on playing them well with the tone I have dialed in (not that Iāve accomplished playing them well, either!)
You know: smooth, correct chord changes; currently working on being able to do small lead fills at appropriate times and then transitioning back to rhythm. Iām concerned with whether what Iām doing works, not if my tone is the same. Iām guess Iām not good enough to concern myself with sounding like the recording artists, and I donāt want to spend a bunch of my practice time fiddling with the amp to change the way my guitar sounds for every song. I just want to be playing.
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Sorry, but I agree with @markr31 here. Note that he said āevery time they sit down to practiceā.
He wasnāt dismissing that there are occasions where one should explore their amp settings, or that some may want to.
Nor is he suggesting that you shouldnāt touch your amp at all.
But, once you have your amp set up, you shouldnāt need to spend more than 30 seconds to a minute messing with your amp before starting on a typical practice session. Most of that will be selecting a channel/patch and tweaking the volume or gain.
If, as a beginner, you are spending much more time than this every time you turn on your amp to do some practice, then I would question your time management.
By āpracticeā, here I am referring to technique practice such as scales, strumming patterns, chord changes, etc. which, as a beginner, you should be doing. You might chose to switch between channels/patches for some of these (e.g. you might want to practice scales with higher gain than for strumming) but none of these require that you ādial in a toneā. If you donāt have a quick way to set your amp up for this sort of practice then you are, IMO, doing something wrong.
And, as has been pointed out, even for songs it should be possible to have a set of 3 or 4 main patches that you can easily select for song practice which cover a wide range of genres.
Iām not saying you shouldnāt learn and explore your amp, but it shouldnāt be a distraction from practice.
Cheers,
Keith
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Absolutely and thatās why I would usually suggest something like an Orange crush 20 or 35 RT, nothing much to mess with but some great easily done tones.
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I was watching this video (The Best "Beginner Guitar" is... - YouTube)
and he mentions how anything below around 250 for an electric guitar is not worth it and that 400-600 is the golden range.
Well a) this is in the united states where price values are lower compared to Canada and 2) this was 3 years ago. So my question is do I truly have to spend more than 450$ (probably more since i am in canada and 3 years have passed) to fee like I got a guitar that was āworth itā?