My first guitar

[Deadbeat Son]

...was an early 1980s MIA Fender Bullet. Our local mom & pop shop (the owners lived two houses down from me, and their sons and I were friends) had a used Bullet for $150 with case. I was 13 years old and my uncle hired me to sand the paint off of his 1956 GMC pickup. I earned $100 for the work, so I put that down on the guitar and my parents paid for the rest as a birthday gift.

 

The Bullet was an odd guitar. It had a strat-ish body with a tele headstock. Mine was (dakota?) red with a maple neck. The pickguard was metal, and curved up at the rear to act as a bridge for the saddles to attach to. The guitar had 2 sc pickups, a 3-way switch, and V/T controls.

 

Here's a link to one on ebay.

 

I sold the guitar to buy my first Charvel back in '89 or '90 or so. I'm not sure whether it's worth picking up one to add to my collection or not.

 

Anyone else have an interesting or unusual first guitar? Let's hear about it!

[Deadbeat Son]

In a fit of nostalgia/hysteria, I purchased a basic no-frills guitar today. It wasn't a Fender Bullet, but my reminiscing about it led me to my purchase.

 

No one else with a good story of a cheap/quality/unusual first guitar?

[Tone Deaf]

Back in 1981 my Dad traded a replica civil war pistol for a Hondo II SG copy and a multivox amp from some guy he had done some work for. He had $40 in the pistol. Dad meant for it to be a gift but Mom insisted I pay him the $40. It was my first NGD deals.

[notjonahbutnoah]

My first electric guitar (not bass, I started on bass) was a DeAromond 7 string, bolt on, SG type guitar. It was this ugly green-gray color, like mold, so I took it all apart and painted it purple. When I put it back together I just twisted all the wires back where they were.

 

I never got a 7th string for it. I ended up selling it for 20 bucks... I got it for free.

 

Man, that thing was a dog. I hated it.

[Deadbeat Son]

My first electric guitar (not bass, I started on bass) was a DeAromond 7 string, bolt on, SG type guitar. It was this ugly green-gray color, like mold, so I took it all apart and painted it purple. When I put it back together I just twisted all the wires back where they were. I never got a 7th string for it. I ended up selling it for 20 bucks... I got it for free. Man, that thing was a dog. I hated it.

 

I also started on bass. Due to our similar tastes in music etc, I often forget how young you actually are. The DeArmond as a first guitar totally reminds me!

[jimash]

Just like this. I had it a long time and I miss it.

It cost me $175 in 1969.

[Deadbeat Son]

^

Amazing first guitar.

[Vibroluxman]

First electric was a Washburn cheapie. It drove me bonkers until my dad showed me how to set the intonation on it. It was a decent enough superstrat style guitar. I got it for a $100. Traded it for my Fender Hwy 1 strat and the shop gave me $100 for it in trade, so i guess I did pretty good. I don't really have any love lost on it or the Randall amp I got with it. Both long gone.

[jimash]

^ Amazing first guitar.

 

It really was amazing. I had already been playing for 5 years.

Before the SG I had one of these and had to"qualify" on it to get permission for an electric.

[notjonahbutnoah]

I also started on bass. Due to our similar tastes in music etc, I often forget how young you actually are. The DeArmond as a first guitar totally reminds me!

 

Yeah, I think starting on bass is a HUGE advantage. It plasma etches rhythm into your frontal lobe so that when you switch to guitar, you can concentrate on the fretwork. Seems like when people start on guitar and try bass, they are a little awkward with it. Finding the pocket and all that.

 

Heh, yep. January 1st, 1987 is the glorious day on which I was birthed. NOFX was still selling heroin to buy gas for their van. The Ramones were rounding out their career. Every guitarist had Eddie Van Halen's balls resting on their chin. Walk Like and Egyptian was the number one song. You were... what, 10 or so?

[xrleroyx]

I was 14 and played a classical acoustic with steel strings that you could fit a cigarette pack under the action. I saved for months and months and begged for even an entry level epiphone. My dad told me to go grab a suitcase from his trunk and there was a Fender HSC in it. I pretended I didn't see it because I wasn't sure if it was for me. It's still me #1 guitar. A USA strat with VanZandt blues pickups. HEAVY mahogany body and rosewood neck. Schaller tuners. Olympic white with tortoise shell pickguard. Custom wiring so I could have all the pickups on or the bridge and neck.

 

I love it.

 

Pics when I can get off the {censored}ing couch.

[Texas Noise Factory]

Hey Deadbeat Son, cool story. I've got one of those USA Bullets. It's been modded a bit, and doesn't have the all in one bridge/pick guard assemblies. It's a cool guitar. If you are looking for a Bullet though, I'd recommend the MIJ ones, as they are an incredible bang for the buck. I've got two of the MIJ ones, and one MIA.

 

Here's a pic of my MIA Bullet.

 

[Deadbeat Son]

Hey Deadbeat Son, cool story. I've got one of those USA Bullets. It's been modded a bit, and doesn't have the all in one bridge/pick guard assemblies. It's a cool guitar. If you are looking for a Bullet though, I'd recommend the MIJ ones, as they are an incredible bang for the buck. I've got two of the MIJ ones, and one MIA.

 

Cool, from my brief bit of research today, yours is the Bullet Deluxe whereas mine was just the standard Bullet. Cool pickup swap! For some reason, I recall mine having a more strat-like body than yours and the one I linked on ebay.

[aliensporebomb]

A horrid Austin Les Paul copy. It's a miracle I still play guitar.

[cratz2]

Sorry... no great stories... my first new electric guitar was a Japanese Fender Strat. H/S/S, pearly white, black headstock... I think it was a 1983 but I've yet to see a pic of a guitar exactly like it.

 

Right now, my #1 is a partscaster, half of which is a Japanese Fender Strat.

 

The sort of sad part of the 'first good electric' is at the same shop, they had either a 1962 or 1964 Fender strat that was what I would call coral which I assume to have been faded Fiesta Red. I think it was $400 whereas my new guitar with a hardshell case was about $270 with tax.

 

 

Of course, most folks that have been playing since the 80s (or earlier) have a number of those kinds of stories.

[Vibroluxman]

 

A superstrat for your first? Cool!

 

 

I hated that thing. My Dad made me buy it. I saved up for ages to buy the guitar (14 or 15 at the time) and it was not what I wanted at all. All black, 24 fret HSH setup with vintage style trem. Especially when the intonation wasn't set on it. After that it was tolerable, though the Randall Amp wasn't really what I wanted either, it's what my dad had back in the 80's, so that's the brand he had me get. He wouldn't let me go near the Squiers or the Epiphones because he had a negative view on them from back in the day. I kept both Washburn and Randall for about 3 years before I got the Fender Strat that I had wanted all along. From the randall I ended up trading to a Marshall MG with reverb and some other random effects built in (MG15r or something like that) and from the Marshall to a Hotrod Deluxe for gigging and for lightweight use a Trademark 30. Been changing things around a lot the last year or two, but that's mostly because I'm having fun trying different things out.

[caveman]

1918 "The Gibson" L3, I played this guitar from 53 to the early 60's when I went electric. My brother trashed it and I took back a few years ago.

 

 

I also have the original case.

[77BlazerK5]

1981 skylark was my first guitar bought from JCPennies? as a bday gift from mom.learned to play all early hard rock/metal songs on it ,loved it then upgraded to a LP

sold the skylark to my best friend 15+ yrs ago.

and just bought it back a month or so ago,back home where it belongs!

brings back sweet memories and plays great!

 

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[phaeton]

Ok, I'll tell you a story...

 

In 1987, I was 13. I wanted to play guitar so bad, but I was {censored} poor and I knew I wouldn't have the money to buy one. Even the $100 Harmony guitars in the Sears or JCPenney catalogue seemed out of reach. So I tried to build one instead. I found some wood, some eye-hooks, various things for strings (fishing line, twine, rubber bands, etc). What I ended up with was probably closer to Lester Paul's "log" than anything else. I amplified it with a cheap microphone we had laying around, and I plugged it into my dad's stereo when nobody was home. I knew nothing about intonation or tuning or anything. I cut slots for HO railroad rail frets in the neck based upon a 'scaling up' of the strat in the Buddy Holly poster on my wall. Unbelievably, I was able to pick out some tunes (or so I thought at the time, using the plastic clip thingy from bread bags and cut up lids of plastic containers). This lasted about a month, until my younger sister got mad at me for something and smashed it. She was like that.

 

Then, about a year later, I met a guy that lived at the bottom of the mountain. He was a C&W player who had shared the stage with some guys I had never heard of at the time and wouldn't come to appreciate until later, i.e. Willie Nelson, Chet Atkins, etc. Anyways, he purchased this cheapo guitar for his twin daughters who had minimal interest in it. It was a "Norma" brand, similar to this:

 

 

...minus the 'middle' pickup, and with all the knobs pulled out of it. To me, it was a real guitar (much better than my log) and so I was interested in it. Every day when I walked to the bus stop to go to school, I saw this guitar sitting outside, leaning up against their garage. Rain or shine, it sat there for a month. So one day I dug up all the dimes and quarters and dollar bills I could find, and I went down the mountain and offered the guy $21 for it. He accepted. It had 5 rusty strings on it, and after an hour or so of me picking at it, it had 4. A few days later it had 3.

 

I bought a pack of Hard Rockin' Steel strings, a handful of picks out of the fishbowl at Larry's Music, and someone showed me how to string it and tune it. Got ahold of a Mel Bay chord book from 1961 at a yard sale. Bought a disassembled and {censored}ty "G Blaster" amp all apart and in a paper bag from a friend for $20. I figured out how to get the amp together and made a cord for the guitar out of some wire I found.

 

GAWD that setup sounded like {censored}. Just total {censored}. I was trying to do thrashmetal and it only had a P90 style pickup at the neck. I painted the word "NOT" up around the 15th fret, because Scott Ian of Anthrax had it on his guitar. Tremolo picking got so much better after I wore the upper frets down under the low E string. A couple of years later (1990) I got a Squire Strat for my 16th birthday (I split wood all summer and worked at this one {censored}ty place to buy it). It was a better guitar in so many ways.

 

 

I still have that Norma in a closet at my parent's house. Not sure about the G-blaster amp. The Squire is in a case in my bedroom, along with 3 other guitars and 2 basses.

[kit_strong]

Some cool stories here.

My story is not so interesting.

 

The year was 2004, I was 32 years old and had a well paying job. But emotionally I was in a somewhat low point in my life and starting taking some steps to initiate some change. One of those was to finally start learning guitar. While I couldn't justify a $1500-2000 Gibson Les Paul I wasn't going to go scraping the bottom of the barrel either. I went to Guitar Center and for $300 got an Ibanez AEF18 (acoustic electric folk) and scored a NIB Epiphone LP Standard Plus from E-Bay for $379.

NOt the greatest guitars but far from the worst.

[BeanoBoy]

I'm afraid my story is typical of a lot of guys back in the early 60s. My folks bought me a Sears Silvertone with an amp built into the case. It was basically the Dano that Jimmy Page used so proudly. Wish I still had it.

[WilmerTheWhite]

My first electric was a Hagstr

[Deadbeat Son]

My first electric was a Hagstr

[gergbee]

Sigh, my first electric was purchased with the proceeds of a steer that my dad said I could have. It wasn't that great of a steer...

 

Guitar was a Vantage...must have been 1979 or so.

 

I wish I had that old beast back for sentimental reasons.