Avoid Expensive Guitar Buying Mistakes!

When buying a guitar, especially second hand, it is important to be very thorough in checking it before parting with your hard earned cash. The Nitty Gritty Guitar Book offers excellent advice on buying and maintaining guitars, and will help you avoid expensive mistakes when buying guitars. The following is some of the things you need to check before buying. For more great tips like these, buy the Nitty Gritty Guitar Book.

1. Aesthetics & Appearance - choose carefully. Although an electric guitar shaped like a shark may seem like the coolest thing in the world right now, will you still like it in a week once the novelty has worn off?


2. General condition - check for damage to the body (cigarette burns, belt buckle marks), and whether the guitar has its original finish or not. On acoustics check for splits and cracks. Remember, you will be spending a lot of time with this instrument, so take some time to make sure there's nothing that will annoy you later.


3. Weight and balance - the guitar should hang comfortably on its strap when placed around your neck, and not tip one way or the other.

4. The Neck - this is one of the most important parts of the guitar, not least because major problems in this area can be very difficult to fix. Check the following carefully;

- Is it straight? - an easy way to check this is by fretting a string at the first and twelth frets simultaneously (with the aid of a capo), and making sure that the string is parallel to the neck along its length. If it is, then the neck is straight.

- Fret wear - Frets should be smooth to the touch, with no rough edges and sit tightly in the fingerboard. Badly worn frets will require a refit, which could set you back up to £200, so again check this carefully.

For more information on common guitar problems, and how to avoid expensive mistakes when buying guitars, including how to check the playability, electronics, tone and tuning, have a look at the Nitty Gritty Guitar Book, available NOW on Amazon.com

4 New Guitar Innovations

Hello!

Today I'll be looking at some of the recent technological advances that could change the face of guitar playing forever. Or in the case of the last item on our list, just make some Scandinavians look a bit silly. To stay informed in your guitar purchasing decisions, get a copy of the Nitty Gritty Guitar Book, the latest and essential guide to buying and maintaining guitars.

1. The Gibson Robot
Fancy electronics in the bridge and headstock, and tiny tiny motors in the tuners means that this guitar can tune itself.

Although this isn't the first self tuning system to be developed (the 'Transperformance' system has been around for around 2o years), it is the cheapest and the least invasive - the Transperformance system significantly altered the look and feel of the guitar. The Gibson Robot is available in a variety of shapes and styles (including the classic Les Paul shape) for between $1000 and $3000 (a bargain compared to some of the guitars we looked at the other day!). It comes with 7 factory preset tunings, 6 of which can be customised, and tunes in around 15 seconds, meaning that the days of taking a second guitar for that annoying song thats tuned half a step down could soon be over!

2. True Temperament
This strange looking thing is a 'True Temperament' neck. To explain what this is for we're going to need a bit of guitar theory. For more in depth explanations of the various parts of a guitar and how they affect the sound, check out The Nitty Gritty Guitar Book.

When tuning your guitar, as well as making sure it is in concert pitch (as checked with an electronic tuner), you also need to tune by ear to correct that the guitar has the correct intonation (that it is in tune with itself).

Although there is a setting in the bridge to help with this, the overall system is flawed, because there are myriad factors affecting the intonation. When deciding the spacing of frets, most guitar makers use only one of these factors - the scale length.

What 'True Temperament' have done is to ascertain the perfect fret position for each string individually at each semitone, resulting in the curious curved frets.

I predict that these kind of frets will become more and more popular over the coming years - in fact Steve Vai has already made a pledge to retrofit all his guitars with True Temperament necks.

3. Synth Guitars

There are two I want to talk about here. The Moog Guitar is made by a prominent synth company, and allows guitarists to utilise a wide range of effects in their music, including infinite sustain. The Fender VG Strat is similar, but has the added bonus of being able to output in 7 different tunings at the turn of a dial, which is pretty impressive!

4. The Virtual Air Guitar Project

Computer science students in Finland have written a program that tracks the movement of your hands while playing air guitar, and then plays riffs and licks to match.

The system is built around motion sensor technology, and a database of scales built around the minor pentatonic (common in rock music). The software plays through the scale as the left hand is moved up and down the "fretboard", and the system even includes hammer-ons and bends. There's also a foot pedal that switches to a mode that plays chords.



Although some of these guitars may be slightly out of your price range (although cheaper than the ones we looked at last week), its definitely a good idea to stay informed. This will give you a better chance of getting a good deal when buying your next guitar. Check out The Nitty Gritty Guitar Book; the essential guide to buying and maintaining guitars.

Top 10: Expensive Guitars

Although this blog aims to help you get the right guitar, at the right price, its sometimes fun to look at the other end of the price spectrum. Today we're running through the 10 most expensive guitars.

Before we begin, remember that spending more money does not necessarily always mean you're getting a better instrument - Eric Clapton built his guitar Blackie (number 3 on this list) from 3 $100 Strats, and sold it for $959,000 dollars. You can pick up an excellent instrument for a reasonable price if you know what you're doing.

The Nitty Gritty Guitar Book offers invaluable advice on buying and maintaining guitars, covering everything from checks to make before you decide on a guitar, the best places to find guitars and keep resale value, and haggling tips to make sure you get the right guitar at the right price. Available at just £9.95 ($15) from Amazon, its bound to save you more than that throughout the years, as you progress on your journey into the world of guitars.

Who knows, maybe with the right combination of good guitars and practice, maybe one of yours will be worth this much...

10. 1949 Fender Broadcaster prototype - $375,000

Not much of a looker, is it? But don't let appearances deceive you; this is a very important guitar. Leo Fender's first solid body prototype became the template for one of the most popular guitars ever built (later dubbed the Fender Telecaster - sound familiar?). Although Les Paul was quicker off the mark in making the first solid body guitar, this particular model was key to the fortunes of the worlds most successful electric guitar companies, and as such is of great historical importance.

Sold to a private collector in 1994, for $375,000, the highest price ever paid for a guitar at the time.

9. Eric Clapton's Gold Leaf Stratocaster - $455, 550

Now this is more like it! Ordered by Eric Clapton in 1996, around the time of Fender's 50th anniversary. Clapton reportedly wanted something that could hang in a museum like the Louvre, and Fender delivered with a Custom Strat, plated with 23k gold. It later went into production, becoming the company's first signature guitar.

The original was sold at auction by Christie's for an impressive $455,000 in 1997.

8. George and John's 1964 Gibson SG - $570,000

This guitar was used by The Beatles between 1966 and 1969. George Harrison used it while recording and touring the album Revolver, while John Lennon used it during sessions for the White album. It was given away by George to Peter Ham, of the rock band Badfinger, and after his death lay undiscovered until 2002.

It was sold to an anonymous bidder at auction in 2004, for a staggering $570,000.

7. "Lenny" - Stevie Ray Vaughan's 1965 Fender Composite Stratocaster - $623,500

The great blues guitarist received Lenny from his wife in 1980 as a 26th birthday present, and named it after her. It was one of his favourite guitars, and he used it extensively until his untimely death in 1990. The SRV stickers on the body of this guitar were a trademark of the majority of Stevie Ray Vaughan's guitars, a habit he picked up from brother Jimmie who started this trend before him. In 2004 this became the first and only one of his guitars that has ever been released for sale by his estate, to raise money for charity.

It raised $623,500 at auction to benefit the Crossroads Centre in Antigua.

6. Eric Clapton's C.F. Martin & Co., circa 1939 - $791,500

This is a C.F. Martin & Company style 000-42 acoustic guitar circa 1939. It was the primary instrument used by Eric Clapton when his MTV unplugged special was recorded. It's smaller than a standard acoustic, and has fewer frets - optimised for finger picking and blues. It's final sale price was a cool $791,500.

5. Eric Clapton's 1964 Gibson ES0335 TDC - $847,500

Another one of Clapton's guitars makes the top ten. The reason for this is that he is one of the few renowned guitarists who does actually sell their guitars - usually to raise money for the Crossroads Rehabilitation Centre. There are definitely guitars out there (belonging to Jimmy Page, Van Halen and so on) that could fetch more if they were sold, but they haven't been put up for sale as yet.

This guitar was used by Clapton primarily during 1964, but only rarely after that. It fetched the highest price ever paid for a Gibson when auctioned.

4. Blackie - Stratocaster hybrid - $959,500

In 1970, due to the influence of Jimi Hendrix among others, Eric Clapton decided to make the switch from Gibson guitars to Stratocasters. Clapton bought 6 vintage Strats from a guitar shop in Texas for a hundred dollars each. He gave three away (to George Harrison, Pete Townshend and Steve Winwood) and then assembled the best parts of the remaining three (c. 1956 and 1957) into a single strat, which he christened 'Blackie' due to its dark finish.
Clapton played Blackie for the first time in January 1973, and continued to do so until it was retired in 1985 due to neck issues. A tribute model was made by Fender to Clapton's exact specifications.
Blackie was sold at auction in 2004, and became the world's most expensive guitar at $959,000. Proceeds from the sale (as with the other Clapton guitars on this list) went to the Crossroads Centre, a rehab centre founded by Clapton. It was purchased by US music store Guitar Center.

3. Bob Marley's Custom made Washburn 22 series Hawk - estimated $1.2 to 2 million
Classified as a national treasure by the Jamaican government, this guitar is one of only 7 guitars that the reggae icon owned in his lifetime. On the 21st of November, 1971, after a gig in Vancouver, Marley gave the guitar to his guitar tech Gary Carlsen with the words, "Take it because you'll understand later". Admirably, Carlsen took this as a sign that he should use the gift he had been given to better the world in some way, and so he set up the charity "Different Journeys, One Destination", offering the guitar as a prize in a lottery.

Carlsen reportedly recieved an offer of $5 million from a Jamaican millionaire, but I have used the more conservative estimate given by Sotheby's auction house of $1.2 to $2 million.

2. Jimi Hendrix's 1968 Stratocaster - rumoured $2 million

This guitar illustrates the point I made earlier about Eric Clapton's position on the list being under threat from equally renowned guitarists instruments' being released for sale. Hendrix played this guitar at Woodstock in 1969.

From 1970 until 1990 it was in the possession of his drummer Mitch Mitchell, before surfacing in 1990 at the opening of the new Fender Artist Centre complete with cigarette burns on the headstock, and Jimi's trademark upside down stringing. It sold at Sotheby's in the same year for $198,000.

Rumour has it that Paul Allen (Bill Gates' right hand man at Microsoft) paid 2 million dollars for this guitar in 1998. There no telling what it could be worth now.

1. Reach out to Asia Fender Stratocaster - $3.7 million
This guitar was sold at auction in Qatar in 2005, to raise funds for Reach out to Asia, a charity set up to help tsunami victims. Co-ordinated by Bryan Adams, it is signed by Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Brian May, Jimmy Page, David Gilmour, Jeff Beck, Pete Townsend, Mark Knopfler, Ray Davis, Liam Gallagher, Ronnie Wood, Tony Iommi, Angus & Malcolm Young, Paul McCartney, Sting, Ritchie Blackmore, Def Leppard, and Bryan Adams himself. It was initially by the Qatari Royal family for $1 million and then donated back to the charity, after which it was sold again for a price of $2.7 million, meaning that this guitar has generated a total of $3.7 million dollars for charity.


This guitar has set an impressive benchmark, and I think its one thats unlikely to be overtaken. What do you think? Is there a guitarist who could raise more money by selling their beloved instruments? How much would you be willing to pay for a guitar?
If its not as much as some of the prices here, then don't worry, because a new book from Smoking Gun Books is here to help! The Nitty Gritty Guitar Book is the ultimate and essential guide to buying and maintaining guitars. Available now from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, it will help you get the right guitar for you, at the right price.
Thanks for reading, and check back soon for tips and tricks on buying guitars.

Les Paul R.I.P.

Les Paul was a musical pioneer whose inventions changed the shape of modern music forever. Who knows what kind of musical landscape we would be in without the solid-body guitar, or multi-track recording?

"He was an exceptionally brilliant man, musician, inventor, mentor and friend."

- Slash, Guns & Roses

"A legend of the guitar and a true renaissance man, Les Paul disproves the cliche that you can only be famous for one thing. His legacy as a musician and inventor will live on and his influence on rock and roll will never be forgotten."

- The Edge, U2

"An innovator, a groundbreaker, a risk taker, a mentor and a friend."

- Billy Gibbons, ZZ Top

"A genius inventor, musical innovator, and a wonderful person. Without the advances he pioneered, the recording sciences and the electric guitar would have been left years behind."

- Joan Jett

"The name Les Paul is iconic and is known by aspiring and virtuoso guitar players worldwide," "That guitar is the cornerstone of a lot of great music that has been made in the last 50 years."

- Paul Stanley, KISS

"Les Paul was a pioneer, an innovator and a dear friend. I am deeply saddened at the news of his passing. It was truly an honour to have known him and sit around with him talking guitars."

- Eddie Van Halen

"Les Paul as a guy makes an incredible difference to the story of rock music. Mostly because of his innovations of recording techniques. To say he is an innovator is an understatement. The legacy of rock and roll over the last 45 years is almost unthinkable without him."

- Johnny Marr, The Smiths

"He's the man who started everything. He's just a genius. He set the scene for what was to come as the pioneer of the electric guitar and new tape-recording technology. The Les Paul Gibson guitar that I got, I've played all the way through my career. It's absolutely irreplaceable. I've had a marriage with that guitar."

- Jimmy Page

“We must all own up that without Les Paul, generations of flash little punks like us would be in jail or cleaning toilets,” he said. All of us owe an unimaginable debt to his work and his talent.”

- Keith Richards, The Rolling Stones

“He was the first guy to do multi guitar, multi track recording and that turned me on to guitars and stacking vocals for our records.”

- Brian Wilson, The Beach Boys

"The original guitar hero, and the kindest of souls. Les Paul set a standard for musicianship and innovation that remains unsurpassed."

- Joe Satriani

“I don't think any words can describe the man we know as Les Paul adequately. The English language does not contain words that can pay enough homage to someone like Les.

“As the 'Father of the Electric Guitar,' he was not only one of the world's greatest innovators but a legend who created, inspired and contributed to the success of musicians around the world.”

- Dave Berryman, President of Gibson Guitar

Les Paul, musical pioneer
June 9, 1915 – August 13, 2009

6 Golden Rules for Good Guitar Care

How many of these rules do you follow? For more tips on guitar maintenance, and advice on buying a guitar to replace the one you've broken (!) check out the Nitty Gritty Guitar Book.

Golden Rule #1 - Carrying
- always use two hands to support the guitar when carrying it around
- avoid smacking it into door frames as you try and carry it dangling from one arm with your amp, music stand and coffee balanced in the other!

Golden Rule #2 - Heat
- never leave your precious guitar in areas subject to extreme temperature changes

Golden Rule #3 - Clean it!
- wipe it down with a cloth when you've finished playing to prolong string life
- Using talcum powder on the fingerboard before playing will reduce the effects of sweaty hands

Golden Rule # 4 - Get a case
- hard cases reduce the risk of accidental damage, and help to keep your guitar dust free and in tune.

Golden Rule #5 - Beware Belts!
- Belt buckle marks are a feature of many second hand instruments. Although not wearing a belt onstage doesn't look quite as cool, these kind of marks can really damage the resale value of your instrument.

Golden Rule #6 - Cigarettes!
- Various rock stars have made a habit of tucking a cigarette into gap between string and headstock at the neck, this is -not- a good idea. Cigarette burns on a guitar do not look cool, and will damage the resale value.

For more great tips on guitar care, and maintenance check out the Nitty Gritty Guitar Book, available NOW on Amazon.com

Common Guitar Buying Myths

1. XYZ model of guitar is bad news!
- Draw your -own- conclusions; each guitar is unique, so if even if you have heard that a certain company makes a bad guitar, this does not mean that all their guitars will be bad.

2. New guitars are better than second hand!
- Not necessarily true; some guitars (especially acoustics) actually improve with age as the wood ages. However, when buying a second hand guitar, it is important to be stringent in checking for problems. The Nitty Gritty Guitar Book provides a helpful and easy to understand check list of things to look out for when buying a second hand guitar.

3. Older/vintage guitars are better! - Again, not necessarily - a guitar doesn't improve with age if it was badly put together in the process. Beware overenthusiastic sellers, and avoid expensive mistakes.

4. A more expensive guitar will make me sound better! - This is not the case; its all in the fingers! However, a more expensive guitar will sound better when played properly and hold its value for longer.

5. U.S. brand name guitars are better! - Although most American guitars are well made, and some are outstanding, companies in the Far East such as Tokai, also produce some beautiful guitars.

For some top tips on buying guitars, and a directory of guitar manufacturers, check out The Nitty Gritty Guitar Book, by Smoking Gun Books, available NOW on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

Acoustic or Electric Guitar?

Are you thinking about learning the guitar, and wondering whether to go for an electric or an acoustic?

Although the decision should mainly be guided by the type of music you want to play, there are a number of factors that you need to consider. We'll run through some things to consider when buying your first guitar. For more, get your hands on a copy of 'The Nitty Gritty Guitar Book', the essential guide for buying the right guitar the right price.

1. Acoustic guitar are simpler, and cheaper because they do not have amplifiers and external effects, which can be a distraction when starting out.

2. Electric Guitars use lighter gauge strings, which are easier on the fingers, and a lower action, making them easier to press down. However, mistakes are more obvious on an acoustic, and there is a school of thought that says you should learn the basics on acoustic before progressing to electric.

3. Although electric guitars are easier to play, songs written for acoustics are generally simpler, slower, and written for one guitar, allowing you to play full songs alone.

4. If you are planning to play with others this could also impact your decision; as it can be hard for an acoustic guitar to be heard over crashing drums! However, this should not sway your decision completely, as there are ways of amplifying acoustics as well as electrics should the need arise.

Hopefully this article has given you an idea of some of the things you need to consider when choosing between an electric and an acoustic guitar. Of course there are many other important factors that you should also think about. For further information, and tips on finding, buying and maintaining the perfect guitar for you, check out The Nitty Gritty Guitar Book - the enthusiasts guide to buying and maintaining guitars.