| My recommendation? Don't spend an awful lot of money on a first guitar.
You don't even know if she'll stick with it at this point. Here's what
I'd recommend looking for:
o Decent action. Not too high, but no buzzing either. Of course
my first guitar almost required a C-clamp to fret the strings,
but I kept at it anyway. It probably built character. :-)
o Accurate intonation. Check the 12th fret harmonic against the
fretted note. Play chords at different places on the neck and
make sure they're in tune.
Don't worry a lot about looks (unless it's hideous). Don't worry too
much about sound/tone (unless it's really dull sounding).
Don't be afraid of buying used, either. If you don't play guitar yourself,
then get somebody that does to go with you to check things out.
-Hal
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| A couple of key issues:
How old is your daughter?
How much are you thinking of spending?
There is a pretty good article on "student" acoustics in a recent issue of
Acoustic Guitar. They rated about 12-15 instruments. Good basic info.
I think the previous noted had the correct idea: ease of play and intonation are
the critical issues to the beginning player. Looks don't count for much. But I
would add that size is an issue. If the player is young and small - small body,
small hands - you'll want to look at smaller guitars, and they're a little hard to
find.
Paul
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| Check out some of the 3/4 scale guitars if she's real small.
They're usally pretty cheap too,, like under 100 bucks.
Probably last her a year, maybe a year and a half. Good enough
to learn on...
Some terms simplified.
Laminted vs. Solid Spruce top.
The top of the guitar can be either solid or laminted. Solid is
one peice of spruce about 1/8 of an inch or so thick. Laminted
is multiple layers of thin spruce wood glued together. the less
expensive guitars are usually laminated tops. Solid tops are
generally more expensive, but they are superior in tone and quality.
Action: Critical, but most of the time, a good guitar repair guy
can work it down to make it easier to play.... how much tolerance
he has to work with, depends on the neck, as well as some other things...
You can also get light gauge strings to help....
I would make sure the neck is sized to her hand (as the last reply
mentioned.) A chuncky neck will cause some major pain and discomfort
in stretching the fingers if she has small hands... The body should
be in line with her size too...
as far as makers go. Alvarez is pretty solid, Fender's not too bad,
washburn, high defect rate, Harmony,, last a million years... not
much on quality in terms of wood and stuff,,, but just the same,
never seen one die... There's about a million others, basically
it's all the same when your looking at 250 to 300 dollar guitars....
the game changes up and over 500 bucks...
/r
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