Beginners aren’t in a position to figure out the difference between a usable $80 guitar and a barely playable $80 guitar.
My experience with Guitar Center specifically is that at most stores, most of the cheap guitars on sale won’t be set up properly and some of them will be missing strings. Buying an $80 guitar from GC is a roll of the dice.
If you know what you are doing you can buy a guitar for $60 or $40 on Craigslist. Doesn’t mean that you have good odds as a novice.
> $80 guitar and spending money on lessons—this goes against every piece of advice I’ve ever heard from a guitar teacher about buying your first guitar.
Sure, if you're already taking lessons...
> Yamaha guitars start around $160, and they’re fantastic beginner instruments.
Yamaha guitars start around $160 new.
If you go to a local guitar shop they almost always have playable used guitars in the <$100 range. Even Guitar Center will often have a Yamaha that's discounted because it was returned opened, or because it has a manufacturer blemish that doesn't affect play.
Guitar shops will almost never sell an unusable guitar in my experience (this is not true of consignment stores, thrift shops, or pawn shops).
$80 guitar and spending money on lessons—this goes against every piece of advice I’ve ever heard from a guitar teacher about buying your first guitar.
That is, buy something good enough that it doesn’t make you miserable when you’re just starting out. A lot of $80 guitars are absolutely miserable, or will be miserable shortly after you take them home.
> It's better to be a virtuoso with a Yamaha than to have a high-end Martin you can't play collecting dust in your attic.
Yamaha guitars start around $160, and they’re fantastic beginner instruments. They’re also not the cheapest guitars you can get. The cheapest guitars you can get are around $80, have high action, don’t stay in tune, and my experience is that you have good odds of getting cut by the fret wire or seeing the neck warp at some point after you take the guitar home.
That’s all I’m talking about—between “made as cheaply as possible” and “no expenses spared” there is this vast middle ground of “decent price/quality tradeoff”.
I’m by no means an expert on guitars—but I do have a small guitar maintenance kit, and I help out friends or colleagues set up their guitars to make them a bit more comfortable and playable. I’ve seen too many “cheap as possible” guitars where my conclusion is that the guitar is unplayable and it’s just beyond my ability to make it playable.
Don't worry so much about Guitar Center... I think the core advice of buying a cheap (used?) X at an X store instead of a cheap X at a general purpose store is pretty good. Your local bike store isn't going to sell the same low end bike shaped objects as a department store or even a chain sports store. Your local music shop is less likely to sell awful guitar shaped objects than Walmart. Etc.
Haven't had that experience. They might ask about price range which only makes sense, no point showing you a $1500 axe when you won't spend more than $300. But I was in GC about a month ago and spent an hour fooling around with different guitars and got no pressure from the salesman at all. He knew I was looking at the $300 stuff but he was fine with me trying out the $1500 too.
Back in the 80's, Guitar Center was AWFUL. I'd go in to buy a pack of strings and the salesman would want to negotiate the price. Hated the place and would never go. I rediscovered GC a few years ago and was pleasantly surprised at the changes.
Not sure that's great advice for someone who doesn't know how to play. Sure you can get a decent guitar for that price, but if you don't know how to play it, it's hard to tell. I would wager at least 60% of those guitars in that price range need to be sent to a tech to be set-up so that a beginner doesn't get frustrated.
I've had good experiences with Musician's Friend, and with great deals. I've gotten two great guitars from them in the past few months at $150 and $200 off (for $300 and $350 respectively).
That said, I'd love to go to a GC in person and try before I buy. Just...not during a pandemic.
Where you get into trouble with the guitar example is going under $300 (used). A lot of the beginner instruments (think: First Act) are so poorly made they’re hard to play without having work done on them by someone who really knows what they’re doing, and sound terrible regardless. Going from $150 (new) to $550 (new) is a huge difference in quality, and even a beginner will notice.
That seems to hold for a lot of instruments—there’s a price under which the quality’s so bad it could turn off someone who might have kept playing.
I'm curious what it is about Guitar Center that you're saying is outdated:
I would think buying an instrument demands at least some hands-on experience to confirm your choice, but not many parents are concerned with giving their kids a test drive of new toys before purchase (and indeed can't, due to packaging).
I will say this. I've gone to a guitar store, not unlike Guitar center, a couple of times with a friend who was interested in getting into it.
The salesperson was interested in selling an expensive ass guitar to a beginner and less interested with her concerns as a beginner.
She felt very uneasy about the whole thing.
Luckily she found a smaller teaching school where the sales person was more personable and even helped her find a nice used guitar at a reasonable price and she took the time to talk to her about how to go about beginning.
My point being: when some of the big guitar stores have a reputation of having people try push and rush to sell you expensive stuff and, also, chastise and sometimes even mock people trying out instruments. Then it's no wonder people would go elsewhere to look for instruments, even online.
At least they can take the time and get comfortable and compare even though they can't hold the instrument.
> A beginner player would not appreciate the difference between a $200 guitar and a $2000 guitar. Someone struggling to find the finger positions for a simple chord isn't going to notice the action, fret shape, fingerboard radius, tonewoods etc.
This is a common thing to say, but it's untrue. A cheap and nasty instrument will have bad features that are noticeable even to beginners. Things like poor quality finishing, hardware that rattles, sharp edges on the edge of the fretboard where the frets haven't been smoothed off properly, etc, etc, and it's really uninspiring if your guitar isn't enjoyable to hold. Even more "advanced" things like having the right action or a comfortable neck radius are noticeable early on. Tuning heads are another big one, cheap tuning heads are awful (the difference between good and bad ones is like night and day), and if your guitar is constantly going out of tune due to that or something else, and if you're not completely tone deaf, you will notice and it will annoy you.
I have a different take, I always advise people to get the cheapest guitar they can find, a second hand one if possible (because for the price you'll get better quality). I've bought guitars for 50$ that were really good guitar for myself, so I can't see why you wouldn't be able to start with that.
If you're just starting out playing guitar, you can get a perfectly serviceable electric guitar off Craigslist for $100-$200. You can probably find used acoustics for even less money. Cut your teeth on a cheap acoustic guitar, and when you pick up a cheap electric guitar, it'll be so much easier to play. Build up your skill on that, and if you feel comfortable, head to guitar center and try out more expensive instruments. If the difference is notable enough to drop $2,000 on an upgrade, go for it.
If Guitar Center hadn't tarnished their service reputation those retail stores would at least have maintained that stream of revenue. Hobbies of all kinds seem to be booming with an influx of beginners who actually need these services.
I’ve never seen a guitar under about $300US new that was actually playable without some serious attention from a guitar shop, and on the lower end they’ll probably just tell you there’s not much they can do to make it better. They may need frets filed down to remove rough edges, neck adjustments, to simply have the tuners replaced because they’re so poorly-made they basically don’t work, et c.
Guitars that cheap are similar to crappy small-key $40-80 electronic keyboards that can only sound like three notes at a time and sound terrible doing it—they’re so bad that they will tend to frustrate and turn off even a beginner.
Having a knowing friend is the only real way to shop for a guitar. I was lucky at the time when I was starting that I had my brother-in-law help me choose between the cheap guitars and we found something for under $100 that sounded "good enough". Straight away he told me: "start with this, if you don't get bored in 2 months sell it and buy a $300 guitar".
Failing that, you can head to a small music shop where the guys selling (sometimes they have an in-store technician) can give lend you a hand at choosing something worth your money. Never buy your first instrument from a big shop where the guy behind the counter doesn't know shit.
Buying the cheapest tool can also easily discourage newcomers to a field.
As an example, I was nearly completely discourage from learning the guitar by the first guitar I bought. It was a really cheap stratocaster clone (<100$) with a really bad amp.
The thing was so bad that playing it was uncomfortable, and it was not even able to stay tuned thanks to the
crappy machine heads.
Looking back, I would have been better off buying a decent guitar from the get go, something in the range of 200$ would have ensure that (brands like Ibanez or Cort are able to produce quite decent guitars in this price range, even Squier (Fender low price brand) could be decent enough).
The point is to at least invest a little, usually avoiding the absolute lower price items, but targeting items one level above.
Small counterpoint: many people who buy instruments want to buy the actual instrument they try out. Quality in guitars (and other instruments) is wide enough that one might play well, while another of the same model plays like a worse, cheaper instrument. Buying a guitar untested/online (even the same model you tried in store) has a large amount of risk that decreases with the instrument price, but not always and not as quickly as you might expect.
I've spent a few thousand at Guitar Center on stuff for my kids, over the past two years. I always liked it. I don't want to order large things (like electric pianos) from sketchy online places. Guitar Center's pricing was always "good enough" for me, and being able to return the wrong thing and pick up the right thing in a single trip is really worth a lot.
I dunno. I'm nothing special when it comes to guitar but my first was a $50 pawnshop special that worked well enough. Then my second (this time an electric) was a crappy Strat knockoff, also used, for $150. Nowadays you can even get them cheaper from Walmart-type brands like First Act or online from importers like Rondo Music.
Sure, they're nothing great but they work for learning to play and screwing around with your friends in the basement or around a campfire (which is probably all you'd be doing with a uke as well if you're a beginner).
My experience with Guitar Center specifically is that at most stores, most of the cheap guitars on sale won’t be set up properly and some of them will be missing strings. Buying an $80 guitar from GC is a roll of the dice.
If you know what you are doing you can buy a guitar for $60 or $40 on Craigslist. Doesn’t mean that you have good odds as a novice.
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