How to Buy a New Guitar without Getting Ripped Off

By: Laurie Lea

 If you're looking to buy your first guitar, upgrade the guitar
you have or add to your growing collection, you'd be very wise
to do your research first to make sure you get a decent
instrument that you'll be happy with. It makes no sense at all
to rush the process. You may wind up hating the guitar you get,
you'll never play it, be angry with yourself that you wasted the
money and you might lose money on it when you go to re-sell it.

Most people will suggest that you to go down to your local music
shop and try what they have. We'll get to that point, but there
is some fun and easy legwork you need to do before you ever set
foot in a music store, especially if it's one of those that are
crawling with commissioned sales people.

You'll need to narrow down exactly what type of guitar it is
you're looking for. The two basics types of guitars are acoustic
(hollow body) and electric (solid body). After you've picked the
basic type you also need to consider what you want the guitar to
look like. While this makes absolutely no difference to how the
instrument sounds, you're going to have it for a long time and
you want to be proud of it. What the guitar looks like is an
extension of your personality so don't be ashamed to make the
look of an instrument a priority.

Guitar magazines can be great sources of information as they
usually have monthly reviews of guitars and equipment. Be
careful with these though. While most guitar magazines will give
honest and unbiased reviews of instruments if you flip through
the magazine you'll also notice that the magazine has full page
ads for most of the top companies. The companies pay the
magazines big bucks to run those ads so obviously saying their
instruments are junk in a review wouldn't be good for business
would it? The good things is that most companies now make entry
level guitars as well as many levels above, so a magazine is not
likely going to bother reviewing guitars that are likely to be
terrible. Next you'll want to check out the web. Go to
www.google.com and type in forum:guitar and you will get a whole
list of forums that are based on guitars. Of course this will
cover all aspects of guitar playing, guitar lessons, and even
guitar players but it will give you a starting point to find
forums that contain honest user reviews.

After you've trawled the forums and found some reviews you
should be narrowing down the choices and reading up on a few
models. Before you head to the music shop to try them out, check
out what your favorite guitarists are playing. Many have
signature models which generally cost more but they've
customized them based on years of experience and trial and error.

Armed with all of this knowledge you'll be able to make a very
informed purchase and hopefully buy a guitar that you'll be
happy with for years to come!



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