Phil Taylor
C.O.G.
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Post by Phil Taylor on Aug 25, 2021 9:18:25 GMT
It depends. As a player I would always encourage people to but the best guitar they can afford but only if it inspires them in its sound a playability. But remember the guitar that inspires may not be the most expensive - but this holds in many areas of life. Collectors will buy for other reasons including uniqueness, history, range across the selection and so on. For me the best guitar is the one that makes me smile while I play, whether I play something well or not. At the end of the day this is not rocket science. But it is simply about having fun :-) As I was reading all the posts in this thread I knew what I would say and this post of Andy's nailed it for me. So nothing much to add really other than to say when I take my Lamorna out of the case I smile and marvel at the beauty of it and say to myself well look at that!! My other two Brooks pretty much do the same and that is good in my view. When I got my first Brook in 2010, the Torridge, I found it really inspiring and began writing my own pieces many of which I feel proud of and that to me is invaluable. So in a nutshell I think if buying any guitar that may inspire you to play more, makes you happy and you can afford it then go for it because life may indeed be a long song but the tune ends too soon for us all..........
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Post by michaelwatts on Aug 25, 2021 9:46:21 GMT
Erm no!
Buy the best guitar you can afford (with equal weighting on both parts of that sentence) and enjoy!
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mandovark
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Post by mandovark on Aug 25, 2021 10:10:28 GMT
"You should only buy guitars appropriate to your skill level." "Indeed. That is why I have bought this custom-made guitar, hand built by one of our finest luthiers." "But you are, um, not a very good player." "Quite so. And therefore I need all the help I can get."
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Wild Violet
Artist / Performer
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My main instrument is: Symonds OM-14
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Post by Wild Violet on Aug 25, 2021 10:14:58 GMT
I think if we only bought guitars that were appropriate to our skill level, some of us (myself included) would only own something like a decent lower end Yamaha, Tanglewood, Epiphone, etc. Think how many luthiers would go out of business! I remember Fliss, she's a lovely lady. One of her guitars had a natural wood grain pattern on the side that looked like the face of a golden retriever, it was really cool.
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Post by jonnymosco on Aug 25, 2021 11:49:54 GMT
We are fortunate that guitars are relatively cheap. If we played the piano and wanted to purchase the cheapest acoustic upright it would be around 2k, Chinese and lacking quality. For a playable used, c.1k.
I've always bought guitars I can't afford, but which always inspire and help make the music I love.
Jonny
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Post by skyetripper on Aug 26, 2021 6:59:57 GMT
I know of many people who have bought very expensive Porsches, Ferraris and McLarens. None of these people have a skill level anywhere near that of a race driver but they buy them because they want them and can afford them, or at least they can afford the finance.
I agree with Jonny - even some of the most expensive guitars are very much cheaper than other 'lifestyle' purchases. I for one am under no illusion that the quality of my playing justifies having the guitars that I own, but I can honestly say that I play them every day and every now and then it all comes together and the feeling it gives is priceless.
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Post by Matt Milton on Aug 26, 2021 8:27:41 GMT
But I can still convince myself, if not always 'others', that to spend £1,000 say on a lovely guitar which I will play for say 7 hours a week for at least 10 years, works out at about 27p per hour and if anyone can find better value than that for a pastime/indulgence then I'd like to know what it is. FFJ Very good point. I use something similar as I tend to buy second-hand. Say I buy sensibly for £1000 - I don't consider the capital cost, what matters is how much you 'lose' when you sell. The difference / loss is a lease cost and it generally makes even 27p/hour look a bit steep!!. There are times it works the other way - the last 2 Fender basses I sold made £50 on one, £100 on the other. So my thing generally is buy quality second-hand, and accept a modest loss later, knowing you'll get almost all the capital back... and round we go again. Oh, hang on. I've just explained to myself that the Collings down the road is a sensible four grand. I look at buying stuff in similar fashion. If you buy something that costs £2000 and it depreciates by 25% due to being secondhand then you've lost £500. But if you buy something for £400 and it depreciates by 25% due to being secondhand then you've only lost £100. I have tended to buy mid-price instruments and gear ever since I was 18 and could afford to do so. This means that, by chance rather than design, pretty much everything I've bought has retained its value or even gone up in value thanks to inflation. It helps if they are 'industry standard' products that don't go out of fashion. The great thing about gear in that £200 to £500 range is that if it sticks around it may end up going 'up in value' simply due to inflation. Course, it helps to trust your ears and instincts. I feel very smug about my Recording King ROS616, an all solid mahogany magical guitar that was a steal at £360 new back in 2012. Ditto my Squier Jagmaster, a no-nonsense two-humbucker electric that I bought in my early 20s back in the late 1990s. It was on a one-day special offer at some enormo guitar fair at Earls Court. Dug it out of the loft recently and was struck by just how darn good it sounds. Looked online and it turns out the internet agrees; it has earned a reputation as being one of the best things Squier ever did.
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Post by delb0y on Aug 26, 2021 12:27:13 GMT
I feel like I'm in a minority, but when I talk about the guitars I already own being better than I am, I think I'm really referring to my inability to hear or feel much difference in better guitars, and thus - for me, specifically - what's the point in spending more? I won't lie, I'd love an old J45 - but only because lots of my heroes use them. Two of my friend play J45s and obviously I've had a strum, but when I then go back to my Tanglewood I can honestly say my ears and fingers aren't good enough to tell the difference. And that's what I mean when I say my current guitars are already better than I am. A friend, Nick, alas long gone, always coveted a Yamaha I had. Year after year he tried to get me to sell it him because he loved the sound so much. To me it sounded...normal. Eventually I caved it and gave it him. I genuinely wish I had his ears. But then again, maybe it's in the fingers, and my touch is too heavy or something? Nick and I used to sometimes jam with another guitar player who had a Kinkade. Nick used to love the sound of that Kinkade so much. Again, to me, I just didn't - and don't - have the ears to appreciate better guitars.
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Post by fred7 on Aug 26, 2021 20:03:38 GMT
If we could only have the guitar to match our ability then the best Luthier in the world would only be able to make one guitar. That being the one for the best guitar player in the world. However, he would never be able to sell it because the voting public would never be able to agree who is the best guitarist in the world.
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Akquarius
Cheerfully Optimistic
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My main instrument is: Towet Fingerpicker, Dreizehnter SJ15 "Akquarius"
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Post by Akquarius on Aug 26, 2021 20:17:34 GMT
Nice one, scorpiodog. This question really bumps up every once in a while. I always get in trouble when I try to answer it, mainly because: 1) how do you measure your playing skill? 2) if you found a way to measure your skill, how do you find out which guitar would be an appropriate choice? 3) how many different opinions are needed to judge if your skill and your guitar are on the same level in the first place? 4) as the life of a guitar lasts quite some time, will the skill-quality-balance be still okay after 24 months? IF you managed to define this balance? I don't think any of these questions can be answered in a sensible way. Which is a fine excuse to get the guitar you like and play it the way you want.
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Post by Onechordtrick on Aug 27, 2021 5:04:05 GMT
Nice one, scorpiodog. This question really bumps up every once in a while. I always get in trouble when I try to answer it, mainly because: 1) how do you measure your playing skill? 2) if you found a way to measure your skill, how do you find out which guitar would be an appropriate choice? 3) how many different opinions are needed to judge if your skill and your guitar are on the same level in the first place? 4) as the life of a guitar lasts quite some time, will the skill-quality-balance be still okay after 24 months? IF you managed to define this balance? I don't think any of these questions can be answered in a sensible way. Which is a fine excuse to get the guitar you like and play it the way you want. I like your way of thinking!
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Post by andyhowell on Aug 27, 2021 7:52:28 GMT
I can gauge my skill level very effectively each time I play in front of an audience. Always a humbling experience!
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Post by fatfingerjohn on Aug 27, 2021 8:09:50 GMT
I can gauge my skill level very effectively each time I play in front of an audience. Always a humbling experience! Hi Andy. I, like many others, share your pain. My playing level is significantly better in my living room when only the dog is in the audience. And when I play one of my frequent bum notes the worst reaction is that she far*ts and goes into the next room, which I suppose is a reasonable consequential action. FFJ
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Post by scorpiodog on Aug 27, 2021 9:51:39 GMT
Hi Andy. I, like many others, share your pain. My playing level is significantly better in my living room when only the dog is in the audience. And when I play one of my frequent bum notes the worst reaction is that she far*ts and goes into the next room, which I suppose is a reasonable consequential action. FFJ
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Post by forestdweller on Aug 27, 2021 10:29:13 GMT
I have been following this fascinating thread with intrigue and have held off contributing until now. Others have said far more eloquently what I feel, especially Akquarius. I think he said it all really. There will always be someone better than us, and talent is a completely unquantifiable commodity (thank God, otherwise I am sure this government would find a way to tax it!) Anyway, I just wanted to add a story here. Some will know that scorpiodog recently leant me a very very fine guitar y Jose Marques. There is no way I would ever have been able to afford this guitar at Jose's full prices, though I know Paul got it for a very reasonable price. Ever since I received it I have been unable to put it down. I wake up in the morning and the first thing I want to do is play it. Before I got it I was struggling to play for more than about 30 minutes a day. Nothing to do with the other guitar I have been borrowing- its just that my wrist injury meant that when things got a bit painful I stopped. I don't want to stop with the Jose. I have battled through and am now easily playing for more than 90 minutes a day. Moreover I have started to revisit some old repertoire - all the lovely Martin Simpson and Tony McManus pieces I used to play all the time before I started composing my own tunes. I am, quite frankly having a ball, and this guitar is helping with the recovery of my injury. I am also hearing pieces very differently- its balanced sound, lovely thick cello like basses and crystal clear separation has made me assess pieces in a different way. Sometimes this has caused me to rethink some of my compositional decisions- but I think this is good. And what price do we put on a guitar that can do that? I reiterate what I said in another thread- when you pick up a guitar it has no preconceptions of your talent- all it asks for is that you play it and make music. If this means you become a better guitarist or composer than that guitar has more than made up for the price you paid for it. Robbie
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