Choosing your first guitar?

Wow, it’s exciting getting your hands on a new instrument, this guide shall hopefully help you along your journey. We are here to help you get the right instrument for you, that you will not only enjoy playing but be inspired to play it all the time and take your playing to the next level.

Acoustic or Electric?

 Acoustic guitars are heard and played in many music genres such as; folk, classical, country, pop and rock.

Breaking it down a bit further there are 3 main options of acoustic guitars, Classical, Acoustic and Electro-Acoustic.  

 Classical Guitars

• Classical guitars are an excellent place to start for young beginners
• Available in sizes from 1/4-4/4 size guitars
• Lighter to carry
• Nylon-stringed which is less demanding on the fingers
• Quieter
• Frequent tuning is required due to the nylon-strings
• A less expensive option

 Acoustic Guitars

• Various body shapes available to fit everyone from young beginners to adults
  • Dreadnought- has the iconic look and produces a big, loud tone perfect for strumming chords
  • Auditorium/Folk- is a slightly smaller body but produces a balanced sound across the range
  • Travel - otherwise known as 3/4 is a smaller body acoustic which for it size produces a much louder sound than its classical counterpart.
  • Parlour - smaller body but is great for folk music and finger-picking
  • Steel strings are little more demanding on the fingers

 Electro-Acoustic

• Electro-Acoustics are available in the same body shapes as acoustics
• However, they contain a pick-up which allows you to plug into an amplifier
• They are perfect for musicians who want to play with friends or go busking

 Cutaway or Non-Cutaway?

A cutaway guitar features a curved section taken out of the main body of the guitar.

Positive of cutaway: it gives better access to the upper frets

Negative of cutaway: can be a lighter and different tone due to the changed in shape.

What’s next?

All you need to do now is set your budget ideally start off on a lower budget and you’ll eventually want to work your way up in price as your progress.

Try them out?

Why not come in and speak to one of our staff, they will give you lots of options to try out and you can get a feel of each guitar and shape and make an informed decision.

What else do I need?

The staff will keep you right with all you need and any accessories you may want to add. We also have starter packs available which include lots of accessories.

 

 

 Electric Guitars

Electric guitars are one of the most popular instruments……in the world!

While we may have visions of those heavy distortion filled riffs, squealing Jimi Hendrix solos or face-melting aggressive sounds, electric guitars can be so much and can be equipped for all sorts of uses and genres.

 

Where to start:

There are 3 iconic styles the S-style (Stratocaster), T-syle (Telecaster) and Single Cut (Les Paul). These 3 styles all come with variants on the style but if they don’t take your fancy, there are more unique shapes such as the flying V’s.

 

How they work:

Like acoustic guitars, electric guitars do produce sound acoustically (sounds crazy doesn’t it?), however as electric guitars are solid and have no sound-hole the sound without amplification is very quiet and weak. So an amplifier is required with any electric guitar.

 

To work with an amplifier, electric guitars contain pickups which work similar to a microphone. The pickups contain magnets which are wrapped by a coil. When the vibration of a string reverberates through the magnet, this creates an electrical current which can be transmitted through the guitar’s circuit and sent to the amp via an instrument cable.

 

Types of pickups:

• Single coil - only use one magnet and is suited to far less distortion which gives you a clean and bright sound
• Humbuckers - are a dual-coil and perfect for distortion. They give a darker and warmer tone so are great for use in heavy rock and metal or even jazz for the warmth of their tone
• P90’s - more suited to distortion that single coils, as they are configured differently allowing for a louder tone.

 

So when choosing your electric guitar and you see symbols such as SSS or HSS these are showing the set up of the pickups and hopefully now you know a little more about the difference between them!

 

What’s next?

All you need to do now is set your budget - ideally start off on a lower budget and you’ll eventually want to work your way up in price as your progress.

Try them out?

Why not come in and speak to one of our staff, they will give you lots of options to try out and you can get a feel of each guitar and shape and make an informed decision.

What else do I need?

The staff will keep you right with all you need and any accessories you may want to add. We also have starter packs available which include lots of accessories.