Buying a Guitar or Bass for a New Player

Hi folks. Thanks to my buddy David for the suggestion for this article. Usually I talk to this stuff closer to Black Friday and Christmas, but the point is made that the start of school also coincides with the start of new ventures and playing guitar or bass is an awesome venture. While I address buying for young people, the guides fit new players of ANY generation.

I'm going to start with the end in mind, the end being a level of enjoyment and confidence that keeps players playing. Forget all the YouTube and maker video stuff if you can, and get lessons set up for the new player. You may need, and I encourage it, to try a few teachers before settling in to a schedule. Finding a teacher that the player can relate to, a teacher that is easy to understand, and who listens to the student while being focused on the progress of the student is the MOST important element in a player’s success. Every successful player has taken lessons at some point, and many successful players still do from time to time, for inspiration, for style acclimatization and to grow in new directions. Lessons are numbers one, two and three on the success checklist.

Next is to find a guitar that is similar to the guitar or bass played by whomever the new player admires most. If the new player is really into metal, a nylon string acoustic is a very bad decision. The good news is that there are excellent and affordable models for every style of music. The other thing that is very interesting, the data based on lesson specialists, is that people wanting to play guitar or bass are going to want to learn music from the sixties through the eighties most of the time as more modern music is less guitar or bass focused. If your new player wants to learn to do rap or hip hop, a stringed instrument is the wrong place to be, but you have likely figured that out. If your aspiring player is fond of folk or singer / songwriter music, you are looking for a six string steel string acoustic guitar. If your buyer loves Black Sabbath, you are looking for something that looks and sounds like a Gibson SG. If the guitar hero is is Stevie Ray Vaughan, or Eric Clapton or Jeff Beck, you want a guitar that looks and sounds like a Fender Stratocaster. Country electric fans are well served by a Fender Telecaster style guitar. If the player is fond of metal or “shredder” type music, look to an Ibanez or Jackson. If the player looks to heavier blues and classic rock, a guitar that looks and sounds like a Gibson Les Paul is where to go.

Understand that when starting out, Fender and Gibson brands are going to be priced out of the market, and to be blunt, you are paying a lot for a logo. Being open-minded is important when it comes to makers. Moreover, get into a decent guitar store and find a sales person who understands the balance between ears and mouth. Listening is more important than talking in a sales professional. If the recommendations start flowing without a lot of questions being asked up front, you are talking to the wrong person. Be polite and move on. Most guitar shop employees are musicians and some folks naturally recommend what they prefer which may not be appropriate at all.

As you all know, or know now, I do not earn income for any review or recommendation. I don’t get paid a commission, I do this because I love guitars and basses and the related stuff, so when I make a recommendation, I am doing so in your best interest. I already own the gear that I need.

Acoustic Guitars

Let’s start with narrowing the field for an acoustic guitar. Most acoustic guitars these days include a built in pickup. You want this. Eventually the player will want to play with others, because jamming is fun and everyone wants to be heard. Unless there is a formal classical guitar education as part of the process, a nylon string guitar is not the place to be. They are wonderful instruments, but not best suited to most of the music that folks want to learn to play. So I will reiterate that a steel string acoustic is where to start. you want a guitar that is easy to play, easy to make chords on and fits the person. Acoustic guitars tend to have deeper bodies and fit becomes very important. For this reason, if the player is still quite young, or is a smaller person with small hands, a ¾ size guitar makes a lot of sense. Obviously there will be more choice when it comes to full size guitars, but also note that there are multiple body sizes and styles for acoustic guitars. My long experience says that something in what is called an Orchestra model fits all well. Dreadnoughts and Jumbos are really big bodies and while it is not to say that smaller folks cannot play them, there is work involved. And more work may discourage the new player.

For steel string acoustics I tend to find that the best return on investment comes from Yamaha guitars. Yamaha has been making instruments for over a hundred years and they build excellent products. In the ¾ size I recommend their APX T2 lineup. These are fine guitars with a built in pickup, a solid spruce top and laminated sides and back. They also have real rosewood fingerboards, unlike the fake wood found on many other instruments in this price range (about $280 CAD). Most important, the nuts are properly cut and the action out of the box is set sufficiently low to make playing chords easier on the new player. While one will build calluses on fingertips over time, if playing is painful, it will not happen. Moreover, shorter scales are easier to press the strings down on. No pain, more gain.

If we move to a full size acoustic, I still stick with Yamahas. In this case I recommend the FSX and FGX families in the $480 to $490 CAD price range. You are getting either a concert size or dreadnought size body, built in pickup, solid spruce top and rosewood fingerboards. There are different woods in the sides and backs depending on the version and there are many finish options. Again, the reason I recommend Yamaha is the quality of final product out of the box along with the ease of play and high level of comfort.

Unless otherwise directed, I always look to an acoustic with a cutaway to make access to the higher frets easier. It’s not a requirement, but it is a real benefit to many players.

Now specifically on the subject of acoustic guitars, look to find a shop that either offers a free setup with the purchase (best bet) and if offered get it done. If not offered ask to have a set up included with your purchase. You will not take the guitar home that day, but the short delay will be worth it. Also ask the salesperson what gauge strings are on the guitar. A new player will find light and extra light strings easier to play. so if the sales person says it comes with 12s or 13s, negotiate the replacement with a new set of 10s as part of your purchase and the setup. For strings, I will always recommend D’Addario EJ15 .010 - .047 strings asa great choice and widely available. Extra light, easy to fret and long lasting with minimal care. You also must get a gig bag to make it easy to take the guitar to lessons and to friends. Hard cases are heavy and cumbersome. I never play a guitar without a strap, because gravity always works. Some acoustics do not have a forward strap pin. Any decent guitar shop will install one for you for about $5 if one is not on the guitar. It’s not 1940, and there is no need to use a leather thong to tie the strap to the headstock any longer. You also want to get a humidifier for the guitar because while the back and sides are laminates, the top is solid wood and you do not want it to dry out and most residences are way too dry. Air conditioning dries a residence in summer and electric heat and gas heat without a maintained home humidifier does the same in winter. A selection of picks is useful purchased in different gauges from light to heavy. Most important after lessons is a simple tuner. There are all manner of tuners that clip to the headstock that are perfect and less than $30. I favour the ones from Snark and D’Addario for low cost, high accuracy and ease of visibility. There is no point in playing an out of tune instrument. Contrary to what you might hear, smartphone based tuners are inaccurate unless you pay for one and even then, they can be problematic. The tuner goes in the gig bag and is always available. Always have a microfibre cloth from the dollar store to wipe down the strings after every playing session. It extends string life and removes perspiration and dirt that kills strings fast. You will see my full accessories recommendations at the end of this article.

You will hear and read that you can buy much less expensive starter acoustics. This is true. What gets left out is that they are cheaply built, are mostly plywood and are rarely setup properly and are not ready to play even marginally out of the box. Never buy a guitar with the intent to move up in a year. If playing doesn’t stick with the new player, no one is going to want that $200 hunk of junk. However there will always be a market for a decent acoustic guitar and a good one will last a very long time.

Electric Guitars

Moving on to electric guitars, body style is the first consideration. If the player is Les Paul or SG oriented, look to one of the Epiphone Power Player models. If the player is Stratocaster or Telecaster oriented, look to a Squier Stratocaster or Telecaster in the Affinity family as a really good place to start. I am less enthused by the Epiphone Specials or Squier Bullet series. They are built to hit a price first, and it shows in the playability, reliability and sound quality. I recommend avoiding the “packs” that appear to include everything, because they are an amalgam of lesser quality and harder to play instruments set to hit a price point. For that would be shredder or metal player, the Ibanez GIO RG and Jackson JS32 families are very hard to beat. You are getting better hardware and pickups in these models than their lesser priced brethren. They will play better, sound better and hold tune better when the erstwhile Steve Vai or Nita Strauss gets on the whammy bar. Don’t get concerned about the number or type of pickups at this point, If you get the body style that fits, so will the pickups. We are not talking about entry level kit here, and today’s pickups in the ranges that I am recommending are superb, often more consistent and better sounding than those old random winds in the insanely expensive “vintage” guitars.

Electric Bass Guitars

Much of what I said about electric guitars is going to be true of electric basses. The style of the bass is going to matter to the growing bassist. It is a big deal and in a recent conversation on my podcast with a professional bassist, he recommends the Yamaha TRBX or BB families as a superb playing and sounding bass that the new player is not going to want to flip in a few months. They are really difficult to beat for the price. An alternative is to get into the Squier Affinity bass line. The build quality is very good and you can find more classic bass body shapes, although in my opinion the Yamahas in the same price points are better instruments. Unless there is some incredibly compelling reason, stick with a four string bass. Five strings are cool but add more complexity to learn and six strings are going to be big, heavy and require long fingers. I will recommend that with bass guitars to look for a bass that DOES NOT have active pickups. New players find the controls confusing and a dead 9v battery or pair of dead 9v batteries that require screwdrivers and octopus suckers to get at are just a complete nuisance. The best bass players in the music business regardless of musical style have been very successful for decades with normal passive pickups. I will also recommend that neither an acoustic bass or electric fretless bass is a good choice for the new bass player.

Summing Up So Far

Tying up this group, the recommendations are the same as for an acoustic guitar. After lessons of course, look to leveraging that free or reduced cost setup. I cannot tell you the number of times that I have done a proper setup on an instrument that the player thought was lousy only to have that owner come back really happy. I am not a professional guitar technician. I know enough to keep my own stuff maintained well, but ANY GOOD guitar shop is going to have a pro on staff to do setups. A proper setup can do more to improve the playability of an instrument than anything else. As with acoustics, I always recommend a string change and make it easy on the new player. I have yet to find any instrument in these price points to come with what I consider decent strings. As part of the purchase get new strings installed at the time of the set up. For electric guitars, at maximum a set of what are called nines (.009 to .042 gauge) are optimal. You want quality strings that are easy to fret, durable, not stupid expensive (beginning electric players break strings. Often a lot) and that don’t feel like barbed wire under the fingertips. Again no pain, big gain. There’s no actual data that says heavier strings have better tone, although facts are often ignored in this as in many other cases. As the great BB King was known to ask, “why are you working so hard?” Mr. King liked eights and no one EVER said his tone was lousy. For electric guitars I recommend D’Addario EXL 120 .009 - .042 strings or Ernie Ball Super Slinky .009 - .042 strings. Both are cost effective, feel great under the fingers and you can buy them in multi-packs for when strings get broken.

For basses, on full scale length basses, I recommend either Ernie Ball Super Slinky .045 to .100 strings or D’Addario EXL 170 0.45 to .100 strings. I recommend the light strings because they are easier for new players to fret and it also helps the new player get in the habit of using the pinky finger because there is less stress on it.

As for other accessories, a gig bag is necessary for going to and from lessons as is a comfortable strap. Many el cheapo nylon straps are so sharp on the edges they feel like they are sawing away at the neck. For basses, I prefer simple real leather straps as they handle the weight and don’t cut into the neck. For the sake of the player avoid pleather and so called “vegan leather” They get hot, don’t breathe and develop a fascinating aroma in short order. Just horrible horrible crap. Of course the guitar should have a tuner to go in the gig bag and for use when practicing. Don’t forget a microfibre cloth from the dollar store to wipe down the strings after every playing session. Five seconds makes the strings last longer. Of course a selection of picks is nice to start with. Celluloid is the most common material and you can get starter packs in different gauges. Also consider the grippy cat tongue picks or a pack of Dunlop nylon picks in different gauges. Each player is very different when it comes to picks. I use very thick picks on electrics and heavy picks on acoustics because I don’t hit the strings really hard. Some people like a pick that flexes more. Let the player decide.

Amplifiers

I’ve left amplifiers near the end because this is a space that is actually evolving very nicely. While purists will insist on tube based amplifiers, which do indeed sound great, tubes are not a great choice for the starting musician. Tubes are fragile, the amps are heavy and take time to heat up and cool down. Solid state amps are fine products and are most often poo pooed by tube fans. The starting to intermediate musician will never hear the difference. The latest amps are powered by solid state power stages with digital signal processing preamps. It is in this place where you really need to think about the use case. Most guitarists and bassists end up with multiple amps, one to play at home for practice either through the built in speaker(s) or with headphones for quiet practice and a more powerful amplifier for jamming with friends or playing in a band. I’m going to focus in this article on the home practice amp.

Solid state amps of the same wattage as a tube amp do not get nearly as loud. This is a good thing for the other people in the residence and for the neighbours. A five watt solid state or DSP amp is not going to get super loud, while a 5 watt class A tube amp will shatter glass. Most of the DSP based amps also include some assortment of effects and some even do a good job as a small amplifier for acoustic guitars with a built in pickup. I tend to favour this sort of thing for home and practice use. For the purely electric guitar player, the Line 6 Catalyst 60 (Line 6 is a Yamaha company FYI) offers six different amplifier simulations from old style clean all through heavy metal, a really good sounding reverb and 18 built in effects. At about $300 it’s hard to beat and can work for both practice and is portable enough for jam sessions. For about an extra $80 there is the BOSS Katana 50 Mk II, which includes 80 different BOSS effects and five different amp simulations.

For bass at home the Fender Rumble LT 25 has 15 amp simulations and 20 different bass effects. At $320 CAD it’s a killer amplifier.

The other amplifier that I am going to recommend is sold direct by a company called Positive Grid. It’s unique value proposition is that it does what is known as computational audio to deliver really amazing sound from a tiny box that has no right to sound as good as it does. The Spark Mini is a cube about 6” x 6” x 6” with two speakers and a passive radiator and sits on a table top. It runs off a USB charged battery and contains simulations for 33 different amps, 43 different effects and puts out 10 watts of power, perfect for home practice. It also has a headphone jack. The key thing here is that to get any of the real value of the Spark Mini is that you must have a smartphone with the Spark app installed to configure the amp sounds and effects. I like it because of the portability, the tiny footprint, the stunningly good sound and that in addition to electric guitar and bass amps, three of the included amp simulations are acoustic amplifiers and they sound surprisingly good, especially considering how much of an acoustic amp snob that I am. Priced at $309 and typically on promotion, it is the one sized fits most home practice amp that I recommend. It is not powerful enough to take to a jam, but will be enough for pretty much anyone playing and practicing at home. It is very much like the excellent Yamaha THR series or BOSS Katana AIR, only smaller and less expensive

Like the Catalyst, the Spark Mini also has a USB out for recording into your computer via cable and a simple Digital Audio Workstation like GarageBand on Mac (free) or Reaper ($60 download) for Windows.

Preferred Accessories

Tuners - Either the Spark tuner or D’Addario Micro Tuner are good options. The displays are large and readable, the tuners are precise and they run on generic CR2032 batteries. They clip to the headstock and can be stored in the gig bag for lessons and jam sessions.

Strings - Having tried most every brand on the market and some that no longer exist, you cannot go wrong with D’Addario or Ernie Ball strings. They are available in a variety of gauges, are easy on the fingers and have good lifetimes when maintained. Coated strings last longer but cost more, so unless you find the strings going dead really fast, uncoated strings are your best bet, and are far more available.

Gig Bags - Some instruments come with gig bags, most don’t. You want a gig bag that fits the instrument snugly, has a cradle where the neck meets the headstock with a strap to hold it in place and two sets of carry straps. A shoulder strap is fine, but you really want a set of backpack straps so your hands are free when transporting the instrument. Closed cell foam padding is best and only soft non-scratching materials inside - no vinyl, pleather or plastic. A bag that is water resistant is a good choice and pay special attention to the zippers as they fail most. You want large teeth and easy pull tabs. If the bag has YKK brand zippers, so much the better. Brass looks pretty but corrodes quickly and tends to gum up. A couple of outer pockets are handy, one big enough to hold a song book or sheet music pad, and perhaps a spare set of strings, and a smaller one to hold the tuner, and the vibrato arm if the guitar has one as you should remove the arm for transport. To be blunt, some of the free included gig bags are really awful things so ask to see the bag before you buy.

Guitar Stand - When the guitar is out of the case and not being played it should be on a stand. The Hercules brand are superb but pricey. Avoid stands that sound too good to be true because they often have a foam pad on the legs that leaches dye into the instrument finish. I like a folding stand that goes into the gig bag pocket myself, so the stand can travel with the guitar.

Guitar Polish - There’s no need to waste money on “branded” cloths. Generic micro-fibre cloths are fine as are bar towels. You can use these cloths to keep the guitar clean and in conjunction with a decent polish, keep the instrument in good stead. I recommend the Taylor Guitar Polish or Jim Dunlop System 65 Polish or Music Nomad polish. Get larger bottles, you will save money. You can also use the cloths to wipe down the strings. A bag of micro-fibre cloths from the dollar store is a good plan.

String Cleaner - If a cloth sounds too pedestrian, the D’Addario String Cleaner is great. It comes in a small tin and a cap covers the unit when not in use. It does not leave a residue that will build up on wound strings.

String Changing Kit - I believe that every player should be able to change his or her strings. There are a ton of Youtube videos on this subject, some great, many horrible. I recommend that you arrange to hire the guitar tech at your favourite shop for an hour to teach the player how to change strings, to condition the fretboard, to check the action and the neck bow and how to know when it is time for a string change. You will probably have to ask for this service as I do not know any shop that just offers it. The player will want to have a simple action gauge, the truss rod wrench that probably came with the guitar, a tube of nut and saddle lube and a few microfibre cloths. A mechanical string winder, bridge pin puller and string cutter is a valuable tool. Get the D’Addario unit for guitar or for bass.

Guitar Cables - If the guitar is going to plug into an amplifier a quality guitar cable is a necessity. Be careful of the extra cheap ones on Amazon. Your guitar shop will carry a good quality cable at a fair price, so buy one of those. If you do not have a guitar shop handy, I am confident recommending the Ernie Ball cables that you can find online, although my preference are the heavier and more durable cables from Pig Hog. A low end cable will not deliver great signal and troubleshooting an intermittent cable is not worth anyone’s time. Look for a cable with a 90 degree connector on one end and a straight connector on the other, and choose the connector that provides the greatest comfort at the guitar jack.

Humidifier - If you are getting an acoustic guitar, or even a semi-acoustic guitar, a humidifier is a necessity. If the guitar has a sound hole, I recommend the Oasis humidifiers or the Music Nomad ones. Otherwise get a case humidifier. Humidifiers should be checked regularly and ONLY use distilled water in them. A 4L jug of distilled water is about a dollar at Walmart or the grocery store. Guitars like to be between 40% and 65% relative humidity. Too low a humidity can cause a guitar to dry out, maybe crack, and will have an impact on the straightness of the neck. Only guitars made completely of carbon fibre do not need a humidifier and you are not going to get a decent guitar made entirely from carbon fibre for less than $3,500 CAD. Humidifiers are inexpensive, last a long time and only use water as their consumable.

Guitar Strap - As far as I am concerned, every guitar needs a strap and I want to be able to put the guitar in its case without having to remove the strap. Straps have numerous designs and the choice is very personal. Some people like suede on the inside to prevent slippage. Just ensure that on whatever strap you choose, that the edges will not dig into the skin and that the strap has decent padding. For me, only a real leather strap with finished leather on both sides will do, but I am very picky. My favourite straps come from Walker and Williams in California. A good guitar shop will carry them or another line that you may like. Avoid all nylon, plastic, pleather and vinyl. The player will end up hating the strap and that is sometimes enough to dissuade someone from picking up their guitar.

Picks - I am not even going to try in this area. Get a couple of assorted packs and let the player decide. The teacher may a good influence depending on the musical styles being taught. Heavier picks are more precise, but it’s a bit harder learning to strum with a heavy pick. Your player will decide and over the course of being a player, will probably try hundreds of different picks. Players will often read articles in magazines or online and choose to use the same picks as their personal guitar or bass hero. That’s cool and most of the time, those picks are inexpensive. There are some egregiously expensive picks out there, so don’t get caught in the trap that a $60 pick is better than a $2 pick. Because it isn’t to the majority of players. Also new players lose picks all over the place.