I talked with my brother tonight about my interest in an electric guitar. Ebay is still selling the ones I found for 100 dollars. We saw that they were Bridgecraft guitars, model unknown. All Bridgecraft guitar reviews on Harmony Central turned out to be very bad. Some people complained about knobs, others said that the tension in the strings actually warped the neck.
I talked about a guitar I found at my local Sam’s club running for 200 dollars. We found the Starcaster Strat Electric Guitar Pack on the Sam’s club website. The brand was seemed to be “Starcaster”, but I had found that Fender also sells something by the same name on Amazon (180, vs Sams for 200) Fender Starcaster Strat Pack Electric Guitar with Amp and Accessories. The concern was that we were not sure of the brand of the guitar, or how “cheap” it was put together. After seeing the reviews from the Bridgecraft guitars, we were a bit put off. We also found a few cheaper value packs as well such as the Silvertone SS11 Electric Guitar & Amp Package (Amazon: 170, Sams Club: 140). Again, we lack knowledge in the quality of brands and materials.
Last, we looked at Guitar Center. We found a few value packs that included a guitar, amp, bag, strings, tuner, pics, etc. The prices seemed to range from 175 to 770 dollars. We were looking at the 200 dollar ones the most, but Lucas pointed out that Laguna Ultimate Rock Electric Guitar Pack with Line 6 Spider III 15W Amp would probably be more optimal for me. Money … anything that is reasonable for starting out seems to be a bit more expensive side then I preferred. The difference with getting guitars here is that guitar center is a more credible place to buy them. In addition, we agreed to meet tomorrow and take a look at the guitars in person. He mentioned that we would be able to pick them up and get a feel for the weight and length and may form different opinions.
I am still not ready to purchase a guitar just yet. I’m waiting for the money to be available before I go into it. However, the outlook doesn’t look great. I wanted to get a really cheap guitar to play around with. I don’t plan on forming a band, performing gigs, or going anywhere with it. This is primarily for me to simply play around as a hobby in my spare time. In addition, I don’t know if I’ll lose interest after a month. I tend to get more anxiouse as I see that this is going to cost more then I had planned. Lucas mentioned that I could also go the way of renting a guitar, or putting it on a credit card. I’d prefer to avoid introducing a new monthly bill to my budget at all costs.
The cheapest route appears to be bad in any way that I look at it. Even good used guitars are very expensive. It is hard to imagine why people would pay thousands of dollars for a guitar. Why is one $7,000 where another is $300? Is it simply brand recognition?
We had talked about the game that I had found, Guitar Rising. He appeared a bit interested in it as well. The games website still says that it will not be available until 2009. Lucas appears to think that BestBuy, or other stores with computer software (including Guitar Center) should be selling software with feedback as you play. I have searched, but the closest that I could come up with was software for editing sheet music or providing videos of music lessons. He also mentioned that the On-Demand channel for Comcast had free music lesson videos for Guitars. I was curious and looked it up. Sure enough there were a ton of them, all free to watch. Awesome!
My brother also has a friend who runs a pawn shop. Unfortunately, the guy is a guitar collector as well. Anything that comes through with a good deal, he picks up for himself. However, maybe he can pass on some advice for a beginner such as myself on what to look for.
