Category: Electric Guitars

Gibson guitars have ruled the rock and roll roost for many years. Ever since the nineteen thirties when pioneer electric guitar player, Charlie Christian took to them, Gibson guitars have always been very popular with guitar players. They have the magic combination of technical excellence and prestige and pizzazz. As pioneers in the electric guitar field, they have always made good use of every opportunity to get their guitars played by the leading guitarists. The company began in 1936 but Gibson guitars took hold of the 1960’s with both hands and gave the era a big tongue kiss. With the phenomenal growth of rock ‘n’ roll the solid body electric guitar which evolved in the fifties became the ultimate accessory for the young gentleman wishing to have loads of sex.

The era produced many famous Gibson guitar models like the Double Cutaway SG, the Firebird and the Flying V. Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Peter Green, Chet Atkins all big names of the guitar, played Gibson guitars. And one of Gibson’s triumphs - the Les Paul model was, and still is, in the hands of a boatload of guitar playing pioneers. The Les Paul model was the company’s response to public enthusiasm for the electric guitar. Les Paul was arguably the most popular electric guitar player in the world who had previously invented his own solid body electric guitar. He was signed up by the Gibson company to lend his name to their new guitar and actually made some design suggestions which may or may not have been followed up, according to who you listen to.

But the world of making great guitars was not all cheese and crackers. In the late nineteen fifties the world was obsessed with “modern” things. Space travel was on the minds of many creative people working in a multitude of areas of industrial design. So it was one morning that the Gibson Flying V awoke and attempted to take flight. Unfortunately it only survived for about one year. It slept then until the flamboyant nineteen seventies welcomed it once more to the world. Some famous guitarists, Jimi Hendrix among them, played it for a while and it found its way into the shops again, but only for a short time. The Gibson company tried to rescue the situation by introducing the Firebird, a variation on the Flying V thought up by a car designer. The result looks more like a bad drawing of an electric guitar.

Recently Gibson has added an astounding feature to the world of guitar playing. The Powertune system. It gives electric guitars the ability to tune themselves, thus making sure that the secret of many professional guitar players remains perfectly safe. Another thing that might surprise some people is the fact that Gibson has held its own quite well in the area of acoustic guitar manufacturing. There is an Arlo Guthrie guitar in the Gibson Artist Signature Series of guitars. Possibly somebody in the early seventies thought Arlo was going to be really, really big. Other artists to have Gibson acoustic guitars named for them are Elvis Presley, Sheryl Crow, Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson and Pete Townshend.

So if you find yourself wondering what makes Gibson guitars so special the answer is in the company’s ability to keep its name alive in the mind of the guitar playing public.

And here is something you might not know about Gibson guitars: they have free guitar lessons on their website.

Technorati Tags: Gibson guitars, Les Paul, Powertune, Gibson Artist Signature Series, free guitar lessons

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

You want to play electric guitar but you have a limited budget. Your first electric guitar needs to be cheap so you need to get some idea which is the best brand to buy. If you do not buy a good quality electric guitar your guitar playing learning curve is going to be that much more steep, and you are going to feel like a prize dumbbell telling people that your playing would be much better if your guitar was not such a pile of junk.

Let us set some ground rules. Do not buy a cheap electric guitar online unless the vendor is in your local area. Also, when we talk about cheap guitars we should be talking cheap brands, not old guitars of dubious quality and unknown condition. If there is a music shop or two somewhere close to where you live, they should be able to cater to your needs. There are a lot of deep mysteries connected with guitar playing but finding a cheap guitar is not one of them.

To start with, there are big brand name guitars that you may not be able to afford, and indeed it would be silly to pay a fortune for your first electric guitar, but there are copies of these famous guitars which you CAN afford. Amongst these copies of the big name guitars made by various guitar makers, are good and bad quality guitars, and you need to be familiar with the better quality makers of cheap guitars. Any guitar factory in Outer Mongolia can churn out realistic looking electric guitars but they may not be able to hold together for longer than five minutes.

So, let us first look at a few big name guitars. Fender, Gibson, Washburn. You recognize those names, right? Squier, Ibanez, Yamaha, Crafter. Do you recognize those names? They make cheap electric guitars some of which are copies of more expensive models. The basic difference between cheap guitars and expensive guitars is quality of materials. The reason you need to be aware of which cheaper brands to buy is that you do not want to go too far into the realms of cheap and nasty. Without wanting to influence you unduly, I think you could do a lot worse than buying a Squier Stratocaster for a first electric guitar. It is made by Fender, the makers of the original Strat.

Another thing you need to consider is the type of music you want to play. Once you start looking around at guitars you need to be aware of the sound. Right from the first day as a guitar player you should be listening to yourself making a sound that you are happy with.

One really cool thing you should be taking with you when you go looking to buy a cheap electric guitar is a guitar player. Even if it is one of the neighbors who bought a guitar years ago and never did anything with it, it is better than nothing. And then there’s the color. Your neighbor may be able to give you some advice on the construction of electric guitars or the benefits of this or that pickup, but only YOU can decide what color you want. When Mark Knopfler decided to buy his first guitar he knew he wanted a red one. It is an important consideration. You will not feel comfortable posing in front of the mirror with the wrong color guitar!

You will not be posing in front of the mirror? Oh . . . okay.

Technorati Tags: first electric guitar, cheap electric guitar

Do not put off learning the guitar because you can’t afford top of the range gear. First of all it is best to start to learn using a nylon string acoustic guitar. Steel strings are rough on the fingers when you are just learning how to play. So whether you get it from ebay or the local music store, you need an acoustic guitar that’s halfway decent. It doesn’t need to be expensive, just playable.
When it comes to buying an electric guitar, you can easily start off with one of the less expensive models. You can get the buzz from playing a real honest to goodness electric guitar on whatever no-frills stratocaster copy your music store has, and it will get you through your initial guitar playing experiences.
There are two bits of equipment which are part of the discipline of electric guitar playing. They are a Guitar Tuner and a metronome. You can get a free metronome at Tab Guitar Lessons
Get into the habit of tuning your guitar from time to time during practice sessions - you might be surprised how far out you can get without being aware of it! While you are first learning how to play electric guitar you probably won’t be able to do too much jamming with friends until you develop a familiarity with your instrument. So once you feel you have got the hang of a song or a riff, try it out with the metronome.

Technorati Tags: acoustic guitar, buying an electric guitar, Guitar Tuner, free metronome, tuning your guitar, learning how to play electric guitar