which guitar do you prefer schester, hovner, fender, givson, Ibanez etc??? Planing to buy one Buget 2,00,000
Answers
There is no single answer , but keeping a few things in mind may help.
Budget : I assume you seriously want to learn guitar. If so, decide what is the most you can afford. This is not a question of spending too much or too little, it is a personal choice you make. Too low a budget can get you a frustrating instrument and bad habits impossible to break over years. So spend as much as you can, without going overboard. It is like any other investment, too little and you may not get what you need, too much and you may lose more than you can stand!! At this time in India, you can do well with somewhere between 6- 10,000 if you are starting out with no skills at all. More is always welcome if you can afford it (I couldn’t, in the 80’s all I could get/ afford was around INR 1000) Anything less may be cramping your learning process. The chinese invasion is not all bad where guitars are concerned!
Playability: (this is about guitars in the segment as above). Pick a guitar with a reasonable size . Measure for your height and hand size. This is an issue only if you are very young and have small hands. Too big a fretboard will stress your fingers too much. A very heavy guitar will tire you too fast.
Technical issues: Assuming that you will play the guitar for at least a few years before stopping/ upgrading, these issues are relevant.
Body shape preferred is between three choices : a dreadnought or Jumbo, a Parlour shape (less common) with or without a Cutaway. These are the serious shapes for an Acoustic guitar if you want to look at a decent- sounding - useable on stage guitar. The cutaway shape (allowing access to the frets near the body ) is useful if you want to play the full range of notes available for melodic playing. It is usually not too relevant on pure acoustics used for accompaniment during singing, and not usually a beginner requirement. It will raise the cost.
Truss rod: this is a steel rod used to prevent the neck ( the thin part where the strings are pressed against the fretboard) from bending (warping) over time. No modern self respecting steel string acoustic guitar is found without one. Please confirm that the guitar you are looking at has one.
Guitar top : this is the surface of the guitar body that has the hole in it for the sound. There are two basic types : Solid and laminated, solid being the better( and more expensive). The solids are made of thin piece of actual wood (usually two pieces glued edge to edge) whereas laminates are basically plywood. The solids have a better sound as the laminate ( like all plywood) tend to be denser and takes more energy to vibrate, and thus the volume and duration of the sound produced is less with laminates. Still, many well made laminates can approach a cheap solid top in sound quality and they are tougher. Please avoid all painter ( as opposed to stained or polished) guitars. This badly affects the sound.
Action : this is how high the strings are above the fretboard. In the price band we are discussing, this is definitely adjustable, but for judging the quality of the guitar, this is not a major factor. However, a badly setup action can make the guitar very difficult to play ( if too high above the fretboard) or not produce a good tone and volume ( if too low). Ensure that there is a guitarist friend/ advisor with you who can check this, and if the guitar you are considering is not properly adjusted, request the shop to correct the situation, and come back later to check the guitar if required. If they wont do that, they are not worth buying from!
Sound : This is the most important subjective factor. However, fundamentally, a few things are easily checked. The sound should be loud enough, and should be bright and “open”. If not sure, try out the best acoustics they have to hear what they sound like ( be warned that this exercise may lead to your spending more money than you wanted to…) Please ensure that the strings are not rusted as that can make the guitar sound much worse than it actually is. Ensure that none of strings sounds appreciably lower in volume or dull when played. It is preferable to find a guitar player to play and listen to the sound from the audience end, firstly because that is where the guitar body is meant to send the sound, and secondly, until you learn how to play, it is not useful to play it yourself for the sound. You must try it for feel and fit.
If you look at the current market, there are many excellent guitars available, and Epiphone, Cort, Yamaha, Fender, Pluto.. (and many others) have reasonable instruments. In fact, we are spoilt for choice nowadays.