Wannabe Guitarist!

[whyekong]

Oops, almost forgot to mention this. Getting good equipment and a good guitar tone is just as important as well. Believe me, you won't be inspired to play if you're stuck with an out of tune guitar, rusty strings with high action and running through a cracked amp with half the distortion working

As a beginner's guitar, the lower Ibanez seies (RG270 etc) is a pretty decent bargain. The tremolo system might be a pain when it comes to changing strings, but you'd need to master that sooner or later so why wait.

As for amps, stick with reputable brands, and try and get those with enough wattage for medium sized rooms (probably 40W and above). Stay away from the 10W practice amps because you'd outlast them very shortly.

When it comes to effect pedals, go for multi-effect pedals (Boss or Digitech etc). You'd need all the distortion/compression/delay/reverb sooner or later, so why bother with stomp boxes. For good distortion, I think Line6's POD is a solid choice. They've recently released a newer product (PODex ?) which is worth checking out too.

Hope that helps a little ..

 

[John Dee]

The Line6 POD is a good choice for a beginner. I regret buying an amp when I started playing 2 years ago, since I play my POD through my computer or stereo 90% of the time.

Unless you plan on playing live right away, you should really look into modeling amps like the POD or V-Amp and whatever else is out there. You'll have a much better idea of what kind of tone you're looking for when/if you do buy a real amplifier. I just got the new POD XT and I can get pretty close to Romeo's tone on the Odyssey. Some of the XT tones sound remarkably similar to the Line6 Vetta, which is what he's using on tour right now.

As for the guitar, I've seen Ibanez RG570's go for $200-300 on Ebay. I picked up a 1994 RG570 custom in mint condition for around $350 on Ebay a few months ago.

Dan Erlewine's book "How to make your electric guitar play great" has a checklist of things to look for when evaluating a guitar, like how to check neck straightness and relief, nut shape, action, etc, which would be useful to make sure you don't get a poorly made instrument.

 

[Luis]

I dont play the guitar, i play the piano, however in my opinion you should begin on accoustic as IntoObscurity said.

Take classcial lessons for year or more and then try to developed your own style. Its vey important to learn solfeggio and work on classical music pieces.

 

[Kronos66]

start on a acoustic can be a good thing. however, you're not forced to do so, for a couple of reasons :

-if you want to play electric, just do it.... don't play acoustic just because some people tell you that "Your finger strength and agility will be so much better", it doesn't mean anything, your objective (i guess) is not strictly to become a "efficient" guitar player, nor to become technically good as fast as possible, but most of all the sensation of create music with your fingers.
I mean this is totally pointless if you don't like classic stuffs, there is sooooo many good and still easy stuff to play.... acoustic or electric doesn't really matters because you won't play like Petrucci in 1 year of practice anyway, especially if you're so bored that you abandon it
this is the most important thing : enjoy !
music is nothing like homework to do....
and you can play classic guitar at the same time if you want....

 

[Warrior of Ice]

Well i cant really think of many songs that i would want to play on acoustic Mostly i would want to try to play stuff from Judas Preist Iced Earth and Pantera.