The Best Tool to Buy a New Guitar is a Blindfold

No worries folks, I haven’t lost my mind, so far as you know. I’m serious here, in earnest even. Allow me to explain why.

A guitar that works for you, or bass, or mandolin, or banjo for that matter is one that you want to pick up and play and when you do, you don’t want to put it down unless you are compelled to do so by external demands, such as family, job, or whatever.

Playing is joy and free from pain. The weight doesn’t bug you whether on your lap or playing while standing. The neck thickness and carve fits your hands. The fretboard edges are suitable for your style. Your fingers feel good when playing. You don’t cramp up, or feel unreasonable tension in your lower or upper arms. There is no strain on your neck or back. You feel the instrument through your body and it sounds the way that you want it to sound.

These realities apply whether we are talking about acoustic instruments, semi-hollow instruments and solid body instruments. They should all be true when the instrument is NOT amplified, plugged in, coloured by effects or whatever. It needs to be great regardless of where you are. Playing should not be work that causes disruption. Learning the skills to play to your level of satisfaction is the only work that really counts. If you have to work at that instrument or in some cases fight it to get what you want out of it, it may be a fine instrument but it’s the wrong instrument for you.

I started out like a lot of musicians. I aspired to own a specific guitar. For me, it was a Gibson Les Paul in Cherry Sunburst. I still own it, but it took a lot of professional work by great technicians as well as myself to get it to where I play it without any issues. At the time, for less money, I could have bought another Gibson product (my local guitar shop that I could walk to carried Gibson and Fender) called the Marauder. Because that shop’s owner was very supportive of young would be musicians, I probably spent four hours playing that guitar in the shop of Mr. Ken Jones. It was perfect for where I was at 14. Lightweight, fit my hands and fingers, sounded great and it never got in the way of my playing. I didn’t buy it because it did not say Les Paul on the headstock.

This fixation with brands and logos continues today. We regularly see reviews of how this Squier is better than the appearing to be identical Fender, or where the fit and finish of a solid wood Recording King sounds as good as a Martin at twice the price. These conclusions are all subjective. Possibly correct for the writer, unless said writer is a paid influencer, in which case it’s all propaganda, but perhaps not right for you.

I bought my first Martin, an old D-28 because I was convinced that only a Martin was a good enough acoustic guitar. I sold off my BC Rich acoustic to help pay for the Martin, and until I changed my style to fit the Martin felt that the BC Rich acoustic at one-fifth the cost sounded and played better. I still have that D-28 but even after decades, it’s not my go to acoustic. I like it, but it’s not my number one.

Hence the need and value of the blindfold. Brand, logo and colour are the primary drivers for many guitar buyers. They often operate on the illusion that if they buy an American made, Fender Stratocaster and string with 11s or 12s they will sound like Stevie Ray. Even more probably if they buy the Stratocaster that has SRV engraved in the pickguard. Yet, we are all smart enough to know that this is a massive falsehood, yet many makers continue to build and mark up massively so-called signature guitars. The price of many has past moderate delusion and entered the stratosphere of insanity and the number being sold has dropped, but in this world of Internet, YouTube and TikTok with the commensurate drop in attention span, makers still make a lot of profit on a guitar that has a silkscreen or decal of a pseudo-famous player.

My proposal for you is as such. When looking for a guitar, go with a trusted friend. Great guitar shops will have sales professionals who actively listen and don’t talk too much. They also won’t bring their personal bias to your next instrument, but such shops are growing scarcer by the day. So a trusted friend will help a lot.

You have a budget. Everyone does, whether we like to admit it or not, and extra credit card debt is never beneficial.

So here is the very simple plan.

Go to a shop with a quiet(er) rehearsal area. Some shops don’t have these and that’s a serious nuisance so cope as you best can. Some shops without little rehearsal rooms offer lessons on site and you may be allowed on asking to use an unoccupied lesson room.

Explain to the store that you want to try out a number of guitars of a specific type within a particular budget. A good sales professional who knows his or her stuff can work with your friend to select 4-5 for you to try.

You sit in the playing space and yes you actually wear a blindfold so you cannot see the brand, the model or the colour. Your friend hands you one guitar at a time, and you play it for at least five minutes. (Your friend or the store representative will have tuned it first). Your friend will then note in some way your reaction to the feel of the neck, the sound of the guitar acoustically (never plug in a guitar at this point), how you feel the resonance, how you find positions without looking, where your fretting and picking hand falls, how the guitar fits your body. Then your friend takes the guitar away, puts it on a stand and hands you the next guitar. You do the same thing for up to 5 guitars. Then you talk. You identify which guitar or guitars felt best. The ones that don’t make the cut go back on the wall. If you have found one or two that really felt great, you refine on those, but if not, bring in a couple or three more.

Within an hour, you will have found the guitar that feels, plays and sounds right for you. At this point, you can take the blindfold off while promising yourself to not let prior impressions or marketing foo foo dust turn you off. It’s ok to be surprised by the brand and model. This happens more times than not. If you can get past that, then you consider the colour and finish. Maybe the guitar you liked best is truly ugly to you from a finish perspective. The store professional can then check into other finish options on the same brand and model. Get one of those if they exist and blindfold up again. Now compare the two guitars without knowing which was which and pick the one that you think plays, fits and sounds best. Remove the blindfold. That’s the right guitar for you.

Doing this takes enormous courage and individual commitment. You may end up with the guitar that you thought would be perfect, a common model from a big brand. You may end up with something you had never heard of or knew of but had never been willing to consider based on brand, model and colour.

I will give you another example. I have purchased several Les Pauls over many decades. I still have many of them, but they are not created equal. Some I find more generally usable than others, and I do tend to gravitate to one over the rest. I had heard really good things about Heritage Guitars, instruments from the old Gibson factory and designed and built originally by folks who once worked for Gibson. Reviewers that I trust said really good things but finish and colour were always a thing. So I made an arrangement to take my most used Les Paul to a place with a couple of Heritages that were used and the shop agreed to let me do the blindfold thing. One of the guitars was removed from the test early leaving me with two. I had agreed not to touch the tuning keys, the headstock or the pickguard as they could be giveaways to the maker and that might influence me.

In the end, I felt that both guitars were excellent fits for me in every way. There were subtle differences but nothing so much that would push me one way or the other. The shop owner then plugged them in to a small amp individually. One definitely had lower output pickups and thus to my ear sounded like it had more headroom, while the other had more grit when the volume knobs were set full on. I liked them both. When the blindfold came off, I had my Les Paul and a Heritage. Either would have suited me extremely well. The big difference? Well of course I already own the Les Paul, but the Heritage guitar had a price tag around three thousand dollars less than what I had paid new for my Les Paul.

Could I possibly live without a Les Paul style guitar that did not say Gibson on the headstock? Yes, I can, and I do. Had I been brave enough to do the blindfold test first, I would have saved three grand, although knowing me, it would have gone to another guitar or piece of recording gear.

Wrapping Up

The blindfold exercise is not for the easily influenced, nor is it for the person who does not trust their own mind. But if you have the wherewithal to do it, then do it the next time you are ready to buy a new instrument. You will end up with the best instrument for you.

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