Is this a decent first electric guitar?

[Joe700]

Thanks for all the advice and comments.

The next question is, what amp to get? As I said, my lad has a couple in his room if I ever need to play loud one day, but something for the lounge would be nice. No requirement for it to be properly loud, and really something that sounds good at lower volumes would be preferable, for the neighbours sake as much as anything.

I’m not especially enamoured by the tiny battery powered amps. So far I’m considering the Blackstar Debut 15, the Vox Pathfinder 10 and the Orange Crush 12 - all around the £80-100 mark. Ideally I’d stick to that but could go higher if it was worth it. I think I would like something relatively simple and can’t really be bothered with apps and tons of settings to fiddle with. Just decent build quality and a good sound.

[Majik]

I’ve not used the Pathfinder 10 but I have a Pathfinder 15R and that’s decent.

I’m staying with my Brother-in-law at the moment, and he has an Orange Crush 12 which I have played with a bit. At the moment, I’m not entirely sure with it.

What style of music do you like? The Pathfinder and Orange are decent enough at overdriven tones, although I would give the Orange the edge on overdriven tones.

For clean and mild crunch, I would say the Pathfinder is a bit better.

If you want higher gain stuff, you will probably need a distortion pedal to put in front of it.

Another one to consider, especially if you want some metal tones, is the Boss Katana Mini. They are very easy to use, and you can do everything you can on the Orange or Vox without using an app plus you can use it for Bluetooth streaming (e.g. for backing tracks), and have higher-gain metal tones included.

As simplicity of use is important to you, these are the controls on the various units for comparison:
Orange Crush 12:

Vox Pathfinder 10:

Blackstar Debut 15e:

Boss Katana Mini:

As you can see, they are all fairly similar.

The Katana mini would be the most flexible (and portable), but the Vox and Orange (and,probably, the Blackstar) would give you a fuller sound (because of their speaker) and will go louder (although not really enough for anything other than home practice).

I’ve never used the Blackstar though, so I can’t give an opinion on that, other than that Blackstar stuff is usually OK.

Cheers,

Keith

[Joe700]

Thanks Keith,

I am much more interested in clean tones, and not overly bothered by dirty/crunchy tones - although I’m sure it’ll be fun to play around with.

I will have a look at the Katana Mini as well, thanks.