I recently had a conversation with a friend about guitars
and the cost of them, whilst trying to explain to him that the price of a
guitar often reflects its playability or the quality of the hardware/wood used,
I used the expression that “guitar money isn’t like real money”.
What I meant by this was this: If a guitar costs under £100
new its classed as a “cheap” guitar, usually the quality of these instruments
is low grade, they use cheaper materials to build the body and neck, if it is
an electric guitar they will use low end pickups.
Most cheap guitars are ideal for beginners through to
intermediate players but they tend to have issues that many long term
guitarists will pick up on such as the action, high frets or high nut, fret
buzz or inferior sounding pickups or humbuckers.
This isn’t always the case and sometimes a good quality
instrument can be bought at a reasonable price but in my experience of cheap
guitars there are very few which can boast this.
There are many quality second hand instruments available if
you look around for under £200 and some new ones for just a little more, it isn’t
always the case that the more you spend the better the guitar as it is usually
down to how the instrument sounds and plays to the player as much as the
hardware.
I own a few low range guitars of various qualities; my
samick LG dreadnaught acoustic is one of the few I have owned/played which I
(and many others who have played her) have found to be a beautiful sounding
guitar with great playability.
I also own a cheap Ibanez Gio which is probably the cheapest
of the Ibanez brand of guitars, Ibanez are a very well-known brand of
instrument played by some of the world’s greatest guitarists, Joe Satriani,
Steve Vai and more recent the fantastic Jen Majura are all champions of Ibanez
guitars.
The Gio has its limits however, the body is made from
Basswood which is light and is a material used in many cheap guitars, the
pickups are standard and work well giving some nice tones in the bridge and
neck positions, I rarely use the other positions of the selector switch myself.
It boasts a whammy bar (tremolo arm) which is about as
useful as a chocolate fire guard as once you use this the guitar goes out of
tune, not good in the middle of an epic solo and makes dive bombing and other
techniques impossible.
The tuning of this guitar is the main issue I find, and
although it has a nice fast fretboard and is easy to “Shred” on it is lacking
in the abilities of its more expensive sisters.
My latest purchase was a swap for one of my old guitars (a
De-Armond M65) and is a Cheetah electric acoustic bass, this is a very nice
looking instrument which were produced for a short time around 10 or 20 years
ago, I’m not sure of the specs but it plays nice both acoustically and through
an amplifier, there is a slight fret buzz on the higher frets but this could be
due to the age of the instrument and possibly requiring a restring.
All in all though the Cheetah, which I believe retailed
around £65 new back in its day, is quite a nice bass for the price but not
being a bass player as such there are probably issues with it that only a
seasoned bassist would notice.
Over the 25 years I have been playing guitar I have been
lucky enough to play some very beautiful (and expensive) guitars, believe me,
you can tell the difference immediately.
The first was a 1967 Fender Telecaster, this relic belonged
to a gentleman who had passed away and left his guitars to the pub where myself
and a small group of fellow musicians played together.
I hadn’t taken my own
guitar with me (at the time a very cheap 80’s single pickup Encore)and so was
offered the use of one of the instruments in the pub, the Telecaster was a dream
to play, whether it’s because it was a seasoned loved and used instrument or
something more I could not play a bum note that night and have nothing bad what
so ever to say about this particular guitar.
Next was a Gibson ES 345 (I think it was a 1978 model), again this instrument had belonged
to the same gentleman, and again I could not play a bum note on it, I didn’t
feel as comfortable playing this guitar as I had the Telecaster but there was
no denying it was a piece of history which screamed with beautiful tones as my
fingers caressed the frets.
I could not hazard a guess at the cost of these two guitars
but I would put it well into the thousands, seeing a similar ES 345 on EBay as
I write this for $3,200 which shows that the more expensive an instrument is
and in these cases the older too, the better quality it seems.
Personally I could not justify spending that amount of money
on any guitar and those are the ones I call the “expensive” range, the
mid-range instruments however are those that average between £300-£800, these
are usually made for the more serious regular player, your bands who tour and
gig regular, a recording artist or songwriter would justify spending this
amount on a guitar quite easily.
I have seen some stunning instruments in this price range
from some of the world’s most renowned manufacturers, Gibson, Fender, Ibanez,
Epiphone and other companies such as Dean, Schecter and ESP.
It all boils down to what’s in your wallet and your own
personal preferences, I tend to go for what I can afford and compensate for any
issues whereas if I had the money I would go for a mid-range instrument which
can fulfill my requirements without holding my playing back like the Gio does.
However to return to the comment at the beginning of this
blog post “guitar money isn’t like real money” it is easy (from a guitarists
point of view) to see that cheap isn’t the same as cheap when referring to
other commodities and items we would buy such as shoes or electrical goods.
