What was your first guitar?

[Phil O'Keefe]

I thought it might be interesting to see what everyone started out on. Please tell us about your very first guitar - and I mean absolute first - no matter how junky or good.

 

And then if you'd like, please tell us about your first "good" or "decent" guitar.

 

I used to borrow the band director's Yamaha nylon string acoustic occasionally when I was a high school freshman. That's where I first started learning guitar. MY very first guitar was a department store special that I got for Christmas when I was 8 or so. Nothing really came of it - I was still trying to figure out if I was supposed to hold it left or right-handed when my younger sister thought it would make a great "pretend boat" and sat on the top, crushing it.

 

After that, my next guitar was a quartet of junky no-name (at least that I can recall) guitars my Dad bought me from a buddy of his. Two cheap nylon string acoustics, one cheap steel string, and a knock-off semi-hollowbody electric. All were barely playable at all, and didn't last long.

 

Next was a borrowed J-45 that a family friend loaned me, which was replaced by an Applause acoustic that my mom bought me for Christmas when I was 15-16, and that was replaced with an Ovation within a year or so. From there, it's never stopped...

 

[Axisplayer]

My brother played guitar and was a bit older than me so I really wanted to learn how. My parents took me to a teacher when I was 6 years old and agreed that if I worked for a month and showed promise, they would have to buy me a decent guitar, not the piece of junk Rick my brother had loaned to me (his first guitar.) The teacher was a Guild dealer so Dad bought me a a new 1959 Guild M-65 Freshman 3/4 scale. It was single P90 pickup on a cherry red body. (imagine a small, single pup Guild Bluesbird.) I played it for about 4-5 years and when I was 10, my brother headed to college so he gave me his 1960 ES-335 with PAFs. I played that for about five years. During the Viet Nam war I bought a 1967 Ovation Balladeer, the second year they were in business, so I could play demonstrations. I can't count how many rallies, sit-ins, and SDS protests I played with it. It has a lifetime warranty which they stopped after the third year. I still have it because it has so many memories.. After that it was a slew of early sixties Strats, a Burns, Rick 6/12 convertible, Rick 620, Les Paul Deluxe, and it never stopped. I have never really owned a low end guitar and I consider myself fortunate to have had supportive parents. I remember when I got my first 100 watt Marshall in the 60's, my parents let me keep it in my bedroom and learn Hendrix, feedback and all. I guess I have owned somewhere around 100 guitars over the years, and probably as many amps. As a kid we could buy a Gibson Melody Maker from our friends for $25 or a Fender blonde brownface/blackface Bassman or Bandmaster for $50. Where did those days and all that equipment go??? I should kick myself.

 

The picture is a 1964, but it looked just like this one.

 

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[Les Paul Lover]

My 1st guitar, by sheer luck, was my 1st decent guitar.

I was 15, had saved up cash to buy a moped (The thing to do in rural France if you wanna be cool) but wasn't allowed to. So with money to burn, a punk friend of a friend offered me a slightly beat up blue guitar for not much, which I decided to buy.

 

And so here's my Aria Pro II RS X80, MIJ 1983:

 

 

It's got a few chunks of poly missing, but it's an amazing guitar, superbly made. It was the top of their RS line back then, and it shows. It has on board boost and distortion, split coil switch for both buckers, and in out of phase switch.

 

I didn't know how lucky I got, and as a foolish teenager, in search for better tone, I replaced the pick ups with di marzio paf pro and X2N. It changed the guitar in the right direction for me, but didn't improve it.

 

 

15 years later, with the internet being better, I finally learnt what my guitar was, and understood just how lucky I was to get it.

I also understood that what would have helped improve its tone would have been a better amp....... The original pick ups were Di Marzio Super Distortion......

[gardo]

I don't have a pic of mine ,but as near as I can recall it was like this one. I found it on the clearance rack at the G C.Murphy department store.with a couple of broken strings for $25 back in 1974... I didn't have an amp but my stereo had an input for mic/guitar. It was pretty bad but it was start

[Chordite]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]n32007703[/ATTACH]

 

First was a B&M Spanish classical

But first "electric guitar" (announced in a Tubular bells manner) was a s/h Peavey Falcon series 1 (made in USA) £145 a very worthy strat copy.

 

[Mikeo]

My first guitar was some steel string acoustic that kind of looked like a classic guitar. I traded it for some junk, at a summer neighborhood tag we had. The bottom part of the top was starting to pull up slightly and I glued it back down.

 

That fall I started taking lessons from a local guy in town, who had to be in his 70's. He played everything from guitar to drums, piano and accordion. He told me his family was in Vaudeville acts for decades, and he at one time work the trapeze. Along the way he learned everything, but ended up working in a cotton mill factories, where his thumb was cut off. I remember him using a pretty big pick.

 

I also has a set of pitch pipes to tune the thing.

 

 

His shop also sold records and sheet music.

 

He certainly wasn't getting rich running this small shop.

 

After a while I bought an other acoustic from him that was a knock off of a Gibson Hummingbird. The company was called Kent and it was made in Japan. Some where along the way, I bought this Les Paul knock off, and mom drove me 20 miles to buy a Musicman 210 65 watt combo so I could plug in. Before that I took my dads Health Kit amp and plugged in to that.

 

Mostly what I learned from the lessons I had was how to site read guitar music.

 

I actually failed a college class once, and ended up taking 21 credit to make up the difference. I took private lessons for college credit. The first day I walked in and the instructor asked me if I could site read. I said, I wasn't the best and he laid the sheet music to a simple song. He next words were, I guess we can move on to something else. The got me into finger picking stuff.

 

FF. Since I was a kid with out a real job, back in those days, when I turned 18 my dads uncle asked me if I wanted a job with the construction company he has worked with for decades. I stared there and saw more money in a week, that I probably saw in a lifetime. Since I never really had a real job, I saw the construction supervisor, when he wanted me back? He laughed and said be here M-F 8 am to 4:30. My job on construction for these 2 summer, was mix brown scratch plaster, and white finish plaster all day. They actually wanted me to continue to work with them, but I attended college as an EE and physics student.

 

Where my story really begins is here

 

At the end of that first summer, with gobs of money in my bank acoustic. I figured before I pissed it all way on something dumb, I'd probably buy something I really want. There was a another guy in town that sold Gibson, Fender, Rickenbacker, Ampeg and Marshall stuff out of his 2 car garage, and I ordered a Gibson SG Standard to plug in to that music man amp I had bought earlier.

 

I still have the Gibson SG, which I have looked up, and it was made in Nashville, not in the MI plant that the Heritage guitars are made in. I came in a first gen chainsaw case.

 

Later that fall I bought a 4 year old 3 tone sunburst Fender Strat with maple neck, form a local guy in town, we settled on 300 dollars. I still have that one too, and it's in not bad shape for 41 years old. I had it re-fretted a long time ago.

 

I got laid off once in my life for 2-3 months, but I have this mentality that I should save money for stuff and gear I want. I still tuck away about 100 bucks a week for yearly gear purchases. Since my first Gibson SG purchase, I purchased about 1 gear a year, and get something I really want. At the end of the year, I might buy a guitar or amp that I fancy, or some other piece of gear I'd like to own.

 

My wife's working roots mentality is even worse than mine.

 

After 32 years of working for the same company, I really hate my job. Not that I hate the job, I dislike the newer people that run the department. They are not bright, and it's no longer fun interact with this group on a daily basis. They spend much of the day emailing each other back and forth on stuff that needs to get done. The sad thing is I am about 10 feet across the hallway. They will rant and rav about how hard they work and what a {censored}ty job I do on a daily basis. I guess it's like this almost every where you go now.

 

 

sorry for the rant.

 

My wife and I are in the process of buy our first rental property, so we can eventually call it quits to the 9-5 BS. If it works out I may buy more. We need an income beyond our 401k's, pensions and SS.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mikesr1963]

I was 35 when I picked up a guitar to learn. We didn't have a lot of money at the time so my wife was speaking to her grandmother one evening and mentioned it. She didn't say anything then but in her attic of this country farm house she had a Old Kraftsman Guitar that she played back in the 50's and 60's. Nothing fancy just a basic guitar that had been stored in an old uninsulated attic in Virginia for 35 years. The action is high and the frets are worn and for probably a year or more I practiced and played on that using eMedia Guitar Method. I refinished it some years later and keep thinking fondly of my grandmother-in-law.

 

 

Now, some 20 years later I don't have any expensive guitars but I have small collection of guitars that play amazing, IMO, with each one fitted for me specifically. About a year after that I started coming here and other forums, probably in 2001 or 2002 under another name; I can't even remember what it was. Anyway, it was difficult to find out legit info about guitars and how to work on them. So around the same time I found a copy of the Guitar Player Repair Guide by Dan Erlewine at a local bookstore and have been working on guitars ever since. I've read everything I can get my hands on and have taken notes as well and have created several processes for my personal use along the way. With that, I believe every guitar I have is one of the best. For me anyway and it something I've really enjoyed.

[thatsbunk]

My first guitar (1974 Yamaha FG-110). Still have it.

 

 

I don't really have anything high end (the most expensive piece of equipment I currently own is a Princeton Reverb amp), but the guitar i've been playing the most the last year or so is my MIM Fender Jaguar (probably have about $700 into it total with bigsby, locking tuners & pickups;

 

[Phil O'Keefe]

My 1st guitar, by sheer luck, was my 1st decent guitar.

I was 15, had saved up cash to buy a moped (The thing to do in rural France if you wanna be cool) but wasn't allowed to. So with money to burn, a punk friend of a friend offered me a slightly beat up blue guitar for not much, which I decided to buy.

 

And so here's my Aria Pro II RS X80, MIJ 1983:

 

 

Very cool.

 

When I was 15 I had a Motobécane moped, which as I'm sure you know is a French product, but that was in the mid 1970s. It looked just like this one:

 

 

 

 

I also did the "save up and buy a guitar" thing as a teenager too... except that was a Gibson Les Paul Firebrand with chainsaw case... I also bought a Fender Champ at the same time. That was later in my teen years when I was working part time at a music store. I wish I had pics of my first guitars, but alas, I do not. That Les Paul was probably one of the first ones I have pics of. They're around here somewhere... but I'd have to dig them out and scan them.

[Axisplayer]

Nice fiddle. Don't see them much. Glad you still have it. You got lucky.

[badpenguin]

My first guitar, was a red white and blue Buck Owens acoustic. I learned my cowboy chords on it, and figured out I could shoot arrows from it. ( I was 14 at the time?) Yeah, that bad.

My first "real" guitar is harder, because I wasn't sure what "real" was back then. I believe it was a 66 Gibson Melody Maker SG, that had already been modified with humbuckers. God, I still miss that one. That was followed by a Guild M75 Bluesbird, a 68 Coral Firefly, a 69 or so Coral Longhorn 12 string, and, if I remember correctly a 50's Supro single pickup Paulish guitar, with pink Mother of toilet seat finish. Then the memories get too muddled together.

Bass is a LOT easier. Mid 60's Gibson EB3L, Ovation Viper bass, Fender Jazz American Deluxe, (Kept that for a week, before deciding I HATED it.) A Hayman, and a Kramer DMZ6000 that I played non stop for 20 odd years.

[Grant Harding]

I got an El Dega brand steel string acoustic when I was about 12, then a used Fender Mustang at 14.

 

We were living in the tropics at that point and my parents bought the Mustang on a trip back to Canada. With the guitar, they also bought a brand new Boss pedal board, loaded with a flanger, compressor, chorus, digital delay, EQ, and heavy metal distortion. I was blown away! This was like 1982!

[Bucksstudent]

An Amada made in Romania. I sold it for $300 years ago, but it was a weird guitar. Didn't have a truss rod and the action was super high.

 

Then my mom bought me a Mexican Strat for Christmas 2004, and that's when my playing took off. I filled notebooks with riffs, and even tried recording a lot of them. By the time I hit high school, I had two Gibsons, an Eastwood Saturn 63, the Strat, a Slammer bass, and that stupid acoustic. But I used that thing for slide on recordings later on.

[Axisplayer]

Had some nice guitars there. The Longhorn, Melody Maker and especially the M-75. Mine was the M-65 Freshman shown above, and I really wanted the M-75 (which I knew as The Aristocrat, not a Bluesbird, but they are close.)

[DeepEnd]

My first guitar was a POS no-name $19.99 steel string acoustic from Montgomery Ward. My first halfway decent guitar was an Alvarez 5020 steel string slot head like this one:

 

 

As most of you know, my first electric was a Fernandes Strat copy that couldn't be intonated correctly. Of the three, I still have that no-name first guitar. The others are long gone.

[DonK]

My first guitar was technically a rented Epiphone acoustic I got in 1971. I went into my local shop, a place called Zavarella's in Arlington, VA - Danny Gatton was a regular there as he was a good friend of the owner's son, Phil Zavarella - to buy a Fender Mustang ($140 at the time). The elder Zavarella told me the Mustang was a piece of crap, and asked me how long I'd been playing. I told him I was just starting, so he walked over to the wall, pulled the Epi off the wall and said, "here, take this...$15 a month and you'll get a credit for the first six months rent you pay against anything in the shop; come back in six months if you decide to stick with it."

 

Six months later I was back, raring to go, and said, "I'm here to return this Epi and buy that Mustang. Should be $50 right, since I get a $90 credit for the Epi rental." He said, "the Mustang is just as much a piece of crap now as it was when you first came in six months ago; this is what you want..." as he pulled a brand new Tele, white w/ white pickguard, and maple neck, from where it was hanging overhead. I said, "man, that's $185, I'm gonna owe you another $95, and I don't have that much." He said, "if it means taking less money for the Tele vs. you walking out of here with a piece of crap Mustang, I'm going to take a hit and let you have the Tele for $165, so you owe me $75." I jumped on it. So that brand-new '71 Tele was the first guitar I owned. I've never forgotten my debt to him for steering me right.

[Les Paul Lover]

8Motobecane......

 

The brand has died, but the name stayed, just like the original Hoover.

Becane is still used as a slang word for motorbike in French.

 

Glad you rode it safely!!!! Fun little moped. A lot of noise form those tiny winy 2 strokes engines..... and the smell of oil.....

[sammyreynolds01]

First guitar was a Hondo acoustic.. First electric was a Peavey Predator MIA and I still have with upgraded pickups.

[AJ6stringsting]

My mom got me a Beatle Violin shaped bass in 1977, a year later , she got me a Memphis Strat copy with just gloss over the wood, just like the Strat Ritchie Blackmore had on the Rainbow album.

Being on bass first got me ready for the guitar, plus learning Paul McCartney's bass lines got me moving and ready for six strings.

I wish I still had that bass and guitar.

[t_e_l_e]

at '90 or so i was very much into mountainbikes, i was able to work in a cool bikes store in summer, and got parts cheaper so i upgraded my bike.

just two months after the upgrades finished in late october it got stolen

 

my best friend just started out playing guitar and showed it to me, and i thought i also want to play guitar. so i begged my parents that i could get a guitar for christmas instead of a bike replacement and so i did.

 

i was shopping it myself with my friend, budget allowed only to get the cheapest classical guitar they had for less than $100

it is what it was, the cheapest guitar i could find at the time, but it served me well for my first year of playing, did a trip to italy with it and played in rome and met some cool people.

 

next summer job i was able to buy my first real guitar, a washburn wd-10 accoustic which i played the hell out of it.

 

i got an used broken aria es335 clone from the '70s, where the repair man did not fix the root cause (the top was coming lose and the made the action unplayable), it finally landed in the wast dump...

 

during my university time guitar playing was not so important and money was short, but finally i was able to afford my first real electric a CIJ 68's reissue strat, which finally was also stolen, but thx to ebay i could replace it again with the exact same model, which is my number 1...

 

now i have 11 guitars (3 accoustic 8 electric), 4 tube amps, and 20+ pedals, haven't counted them in a long time

 

[Les Paul Lover]

I did get very lucky with that one.

I had absolutely no idea what I was buying, just did it on a whim!

 

 

I played it so much!!! It will need a refret in the near future though

[catscurlyear]

70`s Kay cost me £15 that was bad and looked bad, then a Zenta sg copy which was about in the same league but looked a bit better my first good electric was a late 70`s ibanez artist it had little star inlays up the neck , i didn`t keep it that long although i always wished i had kept hold of that guitar ,i swapped it for a natural finish strat copy big mistake.

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i found this info about it

[h=1]Ibanez Artist 2613 Electric Guitar[/h] £850.00

 

This No2613 Ibanez Artist was first made in Japan in 1973 through to 1975 and featured on the front cover of the 1974 Ibanez catalog. This is a stunning solid body guitar with a contoured maple top and maple neck and fret board edged in black bounding and mother of pearl inlays also inlayed with black stars and diamonds. Fitted with the original Ibanez super high power humbucker pickups and chrome hardware. The body is beautifully bound with pearloid. This guitar has a fantastic playable neck and sounds great and looks great at 42 years of age. Also comes with Original hard case.

 

[Phil O'Keefe]

Sounds like you had cool parents!

[Phil O'Keefe]

Six months later I was back, raring to go, and said, "I'm here to return this Epi and buy that Mustang. Should be $50 right, since I get a $90 credit for the Epi rental." He said, "the Mustang is just as much a piece of crap now as it was when you first came in six months ago; this is what you want..." as he pulled a brand new Tele, white w/ white pickguard, and maple neck, from where it was hanging overhead. I said, "man, that's $185, I'm gonna owe you another $95, and I don't have that much." He said, "if it means taking less money for the Tele vs. you walking out of here with a piece of crap Mustang, I'm going to take a hit and let you have the Tele for $165, so you owe me $75." I jumped on it. So that brand-new '71 Tele was the first guitar I owned. I've never forgotten my debt to him for steering me right.

 

Great story, but I have a '71 Mustang, and I have to disagree with the shop owner - it's not a piece of crap. But then again, for a lot of players, the Tele probably is the better guitar...

[WRGKMC]

My first electric guitar was a 67 Vox Apollo I paid $50 for.

 

 

The pad on the back has snaps so you could access the battery compartment.

 

 

It had active electronics, Treble bass booster, Distortion and E Tuner.

 

 

Mine must have either been a special order or had been modified because it had a Vox Bigsby like this Chetah.

 

 

I had it for a year or two, sold it and bought a 60's Epiphone Riviera because I wanted a guitar with a bridge pickup.

The Epi was a big step up in quality over these Italian made Vox Guitars.