Inspired by John’s comment on Ghost’s post this week:
I don’t think a Tele is the best option for a person trying to learn, for this reason — the classic Tele is a single-coil with a fairly unforgiving tone. They are real crisp and don’t do much to alleviate the steep learning curve.
I thought I’d post about some of the guitars I played when I was first learning to play.
Now, first of all, I think it might be better to learn on a less forgiving instrument, because it forces you to learn the right way to do things. So I think maybe the best first guitar might be an old clunky acoustic. I borrowed one from a friend for a few years and it was good to me; I wrote a lot of Jonx songs on it early on.
Along that line, a lot of people seem to have their first guitar experience on a classical, probably because their parents have them lying around. Erstwhile NAPper Annie Lin (Annie, where are you? 
) played what I believe what was her parents’ classical all through college before buying a pretty but somewhat unstable acoustic-electric with a purple sparkle finish.
However, the first guitar I ever played was a Squier strat, in that gross, inexplicably popular pale yellow finish:
“Vintage White” my butt. This has got to be one of the ugliest basic guitar finishes I’ve seen. Fuck these things. Squier strats always sounded like shit too.
I borrowed this guitar too, from the guitar player in my first band after he bought an Epiphone LP copy. I didn’t have an amp at the time, so I basically had to lean in very close to the guitar to hear what I was doing.
It was easier after my brother Colin lent me his Danelectro U-2 reissue:
I had actually tipped my parents off that they ought to buy this guitar for his 16th birthday, since at the time he was playing a borrowed flying V copy- probably the worst possible guitar for bedroom noodling due to its shape.
The Danelectro reissues were the best beginner guitars out there for my money. They feel great and have a nice balanced sound with a lot more character than a Squier, with design that’s almost as classic as Fender and a lot less ubiquitous. They were also dirt cheap. I think you could buy a brand-new one for $225, and if you were lucky, you could eBay one for under $200.
And, importantly for my purposes, the ’90s Danelectros were hollow, so they ring a lot more than a cheap Fender- easier to hear without an amp. Unfortunately, that means they’re also quite a bit less hardy, as I discovered when someone pinched this guitar from me at Francisco’s: at some point someone found it upstairs, but it had apparently been stepped on or something, because the body was all smashed in.
I believe Colin had bought himself a sweet white Tele a couple of years before that and didn’t ask me to replace the Dano, so instead I bought myself one in Blue Suede:
After THAT one got ripped off at a gig (at the Orange Show! Unbelievable.), my friend Viki and my girlfriend at the time banded together and bought me a replacement, in Blueburst:
Pictures do not do this finish justice. It’s just beautiful. I think Viki had a Blackburst which looked almost as good. Man I love these guitars.
At that point I’d been playing guitar for about 5 years, but I was very much still a beginner. I still am, really, so I feel justified in including this acoustic electric that Angela gave me a couple of years ago for our anniversary:
It’s an Ibanez PF-15ECE. Quite a solid instrument for the price- sounds pretty good and stays in tune surprisingly well. It even has a built-in tuner. You can’t tell this from the picture, but there’s an attractive faux-pearl inlay around the sound hole as well.
I look forward to hearing about everyone else’s beginner guitars in the comments. And finally, I hope nobody thinks it’s lost on me that I borrowed or received as a gift just about every guitar I mentioned in this post. Thanks, everyone.
I had always heard those Dan Electros won’t stay in tune for shit, but since I don’t have one, I can’t say. I do like the finish on the one you have, it’s real purty like. I’m kinda eh about the Fender “Vintage White” finish as well. It sort of looks more like vintage barf.
You make a good point about giving a learner an unforgiving guitar. But from my point of view, the average new guitarist is pretty fucking lazy, and it takes very little to put them off track. That’s why a tube practice amp and an Ibanez TS9 stomp box pushed me forward so fast it was like a time machine. The guitar I learned on? A Gibson 1963-ish Melody Maker/Les Paul Jr. Would be worth money if it hadn’t been abused so heavily over the years. You don’t even want to know. I still have it, it still works, but it’s in rough shape. Still has the old-school Magic 102 and Cousteau Society stickers, though. Damn thing is blessed. Michael Moorcock could get a whole series out of that thing.
Oddly enough, one of the heaviest sounding guitars I’ve ever played is Drew from PG’s Tele. That thing has the same crap finish, but it also has humbuckers and they they sound fantastic. I love that damn thing.
Nice post.
So what you’re saying is, it would be bad if lazy people were discouraged from taking up guitar?
Speaking as someone who knows fuckall about guitars, the Melody Maker is a great guitar. Really distinctive sound. One of my friends in high school had one that was all scratched up. Got stolen on tour, of course. I felt really bad for him. Now they go for $1600 on eBay.
My Dano refused to hold a tune so I took it to Rockin’ Robin and asked for some new tuning machines. Bart looked at it for about one second and with a scoff told me it would probably hold a tune fine if I’d learn how to fucking wind a string. And goddamn if he wasn’t right. That’s right: Bart did something helpful! But he was kind of a dick about it so it’s OK.
I think my point there was that Danelectro reissues probably do hold a tune if you put the strings on correctly. Vintage Danos and Silvertones, though, are notorious for intonation problems. It’s possible that the existing reputation combined with the target market of the instruments resulted in an undeserved reputation for tuning problems. Or I could be totally wrong.
I had one of those Dano reissues (basically identical to the blue one shown), and I never had a problem with the tuning, but then again, when dealing with non-locking (i.e. oldschool) tuners, I always overwind the strings, so maybe that’s why.
I started out playing bass. My first bass was a black Harmony that came from JC Penney. I “played” that bass, but never really learned to play it, because before I could it was stolen by the neighbor kid down the street who was also in my “band.” We weren’t really a band because we never really practiced and certainly never played anywhere. And breaking into my house to steal all my stuff sort of put an end to that band. Or “band.” Whatever. It turns out that there is no recourse against 12 year old burglars, even when you catch them more or less red handed.
My second bass was a red Yamaha, purchased from Evans Music City. That was a reasonably good axe that I played for a couple years, until it was stolen by a guy in my band as detailed in this previous post.
My third bass was a silver Fender Jazz Special. It served all my needs for a couple years, meaning it was the bass that I used when playing cover songs in the living room with my high school roommate. Said roommate’s guitar was the first six string I ever really played. It was a Fender Esquire reissue. When I moved to Austin, he stored his scooter on the patio of my apartment. One day, the upstairs neighbor was watering their plants, when she apparently noticed that the runoff was dripping onto the scooter. So she climbed over the fence and moved the scooter, leaving behind a nice note that she had done so. Days later, my third bass was stolen. I’m pretty sure the thief was my upstairs neighbor.
Having had such bad luck in not getting my basses stolen, I decided to switch to guitar. Since I enjoyed playing my former roommate’s Esquire so much, I bought a black Tele American Standard with the money I had scraped together. Apparently, switching to guitar did the trick because even though I’ve been burgled several times since buying the Tele, I never lost any of my guitars. I don’t think I could have bought a better first guitar. I still have it and play it quite a bit.
electric guitars are for wimps. i started on my uncle’s discarded classical which had only one low E string on it. I played it like that for about a year before i decided i should buy the rest of the strings. I played that guitar for a few years and then bought me a brand new yamaha classical which I played even in high school rock bands. I probably would’ve have bought an electric, but at that point i considered myself a drummer, so the guitar was sort of a hobbie. However, most bands wouldnt have me as a drummer, and yet i regularly found places to play with my nylon string. I must have sucked as a drummer, or possibly just tried way too hard, one band didn’t like my playing cause i couldnt do the double high hat thing from Rio and Sunday Bloody Sunday. Anyways, i distinctly remember the first time i played an electric and being amazed at how freaking easy it was, you barely had to touch the strings, and you could play one note and it would ring for about 8 bars, I loved it and proceeded to play all kinds of crappy electrics from them on, i think the first one was my roommates ibanez. between that and the Tele which was my last electric guitar, i played a string of incredibly crappy guitars. But when i was at home, it was always the nylon string guitar that i would play. Until finally one day i said, fuck it, and sold the electrics and have never touched one since. Now i play nylon string guitars thru pedal steel amps and i’ve never been happier, especially since i did some repairs to my original yamaha and have it back in circulation. I really do think guitars over time shape to their owners playing, epitomized, in my opinion, by what i described in this old post.
Great post. Love reading about old learner guitars.
oh, and the real man guitars are those super fat steel string acoustics, those will put some hair on your knuckles.
My first guitar was a shitty dreadnought steel string acoustic from a pawn shop. Even after playing it for a year, the string tension and shitty action prevented me from ever forming an F-chord. That thing definitely hurt to play. Luckily I then discovered electric guitars.
My first guitar was the Sears Silvertone that had a 30-year history of being handed down to people who wanted a first guitar. It had a broken tuning peg and it had to be tuned with a wrench (until James Love recently fixed it). This is probably why I never learned to play properly. It’s probably about time I found a new owner for it.
(Also, I gave you the Ibanez because I wanted my shitty Washburn back. I love the Washburn.)
If I were you, I’d never sell the Silvertone. Talk about a guitar with character!
I totally forgot about the Washburn. That’s exactly the sort of old clunky acoustic that I was talking about. The specific guitar was a Stetson.
I’m not going to sell the Silvertone. I’m going to keep with the tradition of giving it away to a beginner. Giving shit away has always been my preferred method of deacquisitioning.
You should hear me play. I’ve been playing for almost 23 years, but I sound like a beginner. Is that enough to warrant me getting a Silvertone guitar from you?
My first guitar was a no-name white Strat copy that I immediately put a Seymour Duncan JB humbucker into the bridge position. I still have it; it has a wild colored necktie tied around the headstock for some reason. My first “real” guitar was the blue-pearl-burst Fender Strat my parents bought for me for my high school graduation, and which I played for awhile early on in Linus before realizing that you couldn’t play in a band with three guitars if you were going to use a Strat. I just got swallowed up in all that sound. I did buy one of those Danelectros you referred to; mine was light blue with white (vinyl?) binding. I still have it, though I dug in a little too hard and wore grooves in the frets so it needs to be totally refretted to be useful, but I LOVE the tone on that thing, so someday I’ll do that. Then I bought my Epiphone Les Paul off of Arnette (aka “P-Nut”), which I’ll start using again after I change out the pickups, and finally last year I bought a Dillion Les Paul Goldtop copy with P-90s, which is a beautiful guitar. Not easy to play with that thickass baseball bat neck, but good good tone.
If I had to choose a guitar based solely on playability and feel, it’d be the Strat. That guitar just feels perfect in my hands. As far as sound goes, Les Pauls have a better sound for distortion or overdrive, but the Strat sounds best clean.
Actually, I think my Dano was the exact same blue one you pictured up there.