Guitar Shopping

Go guitar shopping and find that guitar gem on a budget (low, at that!)

Great advice, Dave! - SCOTT 

Guitar Shopping Advice

Being a low-budget guy (not by choice, I assure you), I make do with less expensive guitars and do a lot of swapping to get what I want or need. I have developed a little routine for use in selecting among different specimens of the same model guitar, to find the best one of the bunch.

For example, last year, someone gave me a $100 gift card to Guitar Center for Christmas, so I went down there and started looking at what I could get for that $100. I had thought about just getting some strings, guitar polish, maybe a strap and/or good cable or two, but finally decided I needed another guitar. You always need another one, right?

After all, I was at the Guitar Center - a perfect place to go guitar shopping!

OK, so they had several on sale at that price point, and I narrowed it down to two, finally, the Fender Squier 'Bullet Special', and the Epiphone 'Junior'. Both these guitars are single-humbucker, stripped-down instruments.

I started by examining all the Fender Bullet Specials, because I like the Strat shape, but hate whammy-bars, and thought I could eventually add a nice single-coil pickup in the neck position later. But when I had checked them all out, I realized that to me, they seemed flimsy, lightweight, and just not very robust at all. The pickups all seemed very wimpy and thin-sounding, as well. Another mark against any Fender-ish product for me is the 25.5" scale length. I never liked that much, preferring the 24.75" scale of the Gibson family.

So while the Bullets looked very cool, I decided to drop them and started checking out the Epi Juniors. There were a good dozen of them in the store, so I had a nice sampling to choose from.  I just started with the first one in the rack, and went down the line from there. I found that there was a lot of variation in these guitars, presumably all made in the same Chinese factory.

Guitar Shopping Tips:

So I made up an organized, systematic approach to comparing these guitars amongst themselves, and separated the evaluation criteria into different categories:

• Fit/Finish/Overall Appearance
• Playability
• Unplugged tone/body resonance
• Plugged-in tone/volume

I started by looking each guitar over carefully, checking for sloppy neck/pocket fits, rough and/or poorly trimmed frets, finish blemishes, loose pots, that sort of thing. If the pieces of the instrument don't fit together as they should, and the general looks of it aren't good, chances are it will sound and play just as bad as it looks.

I set aside several guitars for advancement into the next appraisal criterium, and began play-testing each one, checking for anything that detracted from the playability, or the adjustability that would affect playability. Of course, none of them were set-up the way I like, but I took that into account. I ended up with a few that played nicely, so I started to pay particular attention to what they sounded and felt like when played unplugged. Generally, a solid body guitar that sounds good unplugged will sound great plugged in, so I selected the best few of the lot on that criterium. Then it was time to hook up! My axiom about sounding good unplugged held true, as the best-sounding one plugged in, both clean and distorted, was the one that sounded best unplugged.

As luck would have it, the best-sounding one had the best wood-grain look, and the best fit & finish, as well. It also was the heaviest one, and there was quite a noticeable variation in weight among them. The lighter ones tended to sound 'indistinct' and had less sustain. And after all, a Junior ought to have killer attack, and sustain for a week.

Guitar Shopping Summary

So when you're on your Guitar shopping quest, don't just walk into the store and grab one of a bunch of the same make/model of guitar. Among less expensive guitars, you'll find a lot more variation on one model than you would on, say, Paul Reed Smith guitars. Check them ALL out before you leave with one. There are a few 'pearls among the swine', even among cheap guitars. And even though all cheap guitars tend to have really crummy tuners on them, you can spend <$30 later and replace them with some 'gooder' ones. Even good pickups, better than OEM on these guitars, are available for decent prices. Mighty Mite's pickups aren't too shabby, for instance. They're at least better than some of the cheap guitars' OEM pickups are. You can buy an Epiphone, a Dean, or a Squier guitar for $100, spend another $100 (or less) on it later to upgrade the tuners and electronics, and end up with something comparable to many $300-$400 guitars on the market. 

If you just take some time to know what to look for while guitar shopping, and are able to do the simple mods like replacing tuners & pickups in them, you will end up with a TONE MONSTER and in a nice budget!

Good Hunting!
Dave Hughes 

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