If you’re looking to buy your first guitar, upgrade the guitar you have or add to your growing collection, you’d be very wise to do your research first to make sure you get a decent instrument that you’ll be happy with. It makes no sense at all to rush the process and wind up hating the guitar you get because you’ll never play it, be angry with yourself that you wasted the money and you might lose money on it when you go to re-sell it.
Most will tell you to go down to your local music shop and try what they have and we will get to that point but there is some fun and easy legwork you need to do before you ever set foot in a music store especially if it’s one of the one’s crawling with commissioned sales people. You’ll need to narrow down what type of guitar it is you’re looking for. The two basics types of guitars are acoustic (hollow body) and electric (solid body). After you’ve picked the basic type you also need to consider what you want the guitar to look like. While this makes absolutely no difference in what the instrument will sound like, you’re going to have it for a long time and you want to be proud of it. What the guitar looks like is an extension of your personality so don’t be ashamed to make the look of an instrument a priority.
guitar magazines can be great sources of information as they usually have monthly reviews of guitars and equipment. Be careful with these though. While most guitar magazines will give honest and unbiased reviews of instruments if you flip through the magazine you’ll also notice that the magazine has full page ads for most of the top companies. The companies pay the magazines big bucks to run those ads so obviously saying their instruments are junk in a review wouldn’t be good for business would it? The relieving this is that most companies now make entry level guitars and many levels above so a magazine is not likely going to bother reviewing guitars that are likely to be terrible.
Next you’ll want to check out the web. Go to www.google.com and type in forum:guitar and you will get a whole list of forums that are based on guitars. Of course this will cover all aspects of guitar playing, guitar lessons, and even guitar players but it will give you a starting point to find forums that contain honest user reviews.
After you’ve trolled the forums and found some reviews you should be narrowing down the choices and reading up on a few models. Before you head to the music shop to try them out, check out what your favorite guitarists are playing. Many have signature models which generally cost more but they’ve customized them based on years of experience and trial and error.
Armed with all of this knowledge you’ll be able to make a very informed purchase and buy a guitar that you’ll be happy with for years to come!
