> The true magic lies not in the guitar itself, but in the virtuosity of the musician who brings it to life.
Arguments like these are often used to defend unpopular technology choices, like (insert disliked programming language here). "A true master can use any tool!" And yet, I've never seen a professional guitar player use a cheap shitty guitar.
Manufacturing is so good these days that even the cheapest guitars are pretty good. Justin Sandercoe is a well known guitar teacher on YouTube and he did a series where he bought the cheapest Amazon guitar ($60 IIRC) and went through a full setup with it. He and the guitar tech. were both impressed with how good the instrument was.
>Jack White was famous for using inexpensive guitars
Which is pretty good evidence that generally professionals don't use cheap/shitty guitars. You don't usually become famous for doing the completely normal thing.
The current nostalgia-driven market of guitars might distort our views of what constitutes a "cheap" guitar, and also what quality really means.
Lots of famous guitars had a "cheap" phase where nobody wanted them and they were left to rot on pawn shops before being rediscovered by some famous musician and becoming coveted again... that happened twice with the Les Paul (first with Clapton, then Slash), and then with the Jazzmaster/Jaguar/Mustang (thanks to hundreds of indie musicians).
Also, there were plenty of famous people playing student models: The Gibson Les Paul Junior/Special/DoubleCut played by Keith Richards, Johnny Thunders, Billie Joe Armstrong, Leslie West. Joan Jett played the even cheaper Melody Maker model. Also Danelectros made of kitchen countertops were played by Jimmy Page, Syd Barret.
Kurt Cobain had a Univox Hi Flyer era, and then a Mustang era. Always played cheap Japanese Stratocasters instead of the more expensive American ones.
Almost all of those guitars above were considered undesirable, antiquated and hard to play sometime in history. Especially in the 80s era of superstrats. Now they're expensive because they were played by rockstars.
This phenomenon still happens with almost every piece of gear. Josh Homme of QOTSA revealed in an AppleTV show that he'd play a cheap low-quality Peavey Amp an now this amp costs 10x what it did.
Parent means he was a famous example of doing that.
Not that White became famous because, or in any part due to, using inexpensive guitars.
And he was a particular prominent example, because he didn't just do it, he advertised doing it as part of his philosophy.
And he is not in any case the only example, tons of famous guitar players use cheap guitars, in stage and on records. They just casually use them, they don't make a point of it, unlike White.
Which is irrelevant, and wasn't part of the original claim. He still made his livehood singing and playing guitar to tens of thousands of people at a time.
Besides, virtuoso guitarists also use cheap inexensive guitars all the time. Some examples, out of the top of my mind:
Prince, a big virtuoso, favorited his "Madcat", a Tele clone he bought for like $50 dollars.
Eddie Van Halen often used cheap Teisco guitars.
Mike Rutherford (the Genesis guitarist) used mucho-cheapo Squier Bullet guitars (Fender's cheapo line) for Generis 2020 live tours.
Marillion's Steve Rothery also uses a Squire as one of his main axes.
The Beatles were also known for using cheapo guitars like Epiphone Casinos.
I guess that doesn't really contradict the GP, though, no? They said "cheap, shitty guitars". Sounds like Jack White used cheap, but not shitty*, guitars.
Nah, they were categorically "shitty", since they were not well made and a bit difficult to play.
"I’ve been playing the most difficult guitars to play all my life. But with all the changes I had to deal with—people I never played with before, two days of sessions in New York, two in L.A.—I didn’t have time to monkey around with antique guitars in that moment."
Jaco Pastorius famously played a Fender Jazz Bass from which he removed the frets with a butter knife, then sanded down and finished with marine epoxy.
Then it got broken so he had it restored and kept playing it.
Many touring or pub musicians play a plain old mass produced guitar, because if anything happens to it (for example, when flying) they can just pop into any music store in whatever city they are and get another for a reasonable price.
Was a Fender Jazz Bass a cheap instrument, or just a non-expensive instrument?
I think there’s the gap between the most overpriced gee-whiz prosumer device that they’ll try to sell somebody with more money than skill, and an actual professional device.
I also think there’s a space far below the actual professional device, the space of brands that the professional might not even think about—stuff that exists to trick people who just stopped by the store or who are shopping for their kids.
Which gap you have to worry about falling into depends on the type of device.
Of course it was a good instrument, and it was made in the US with good materials, so it couldn't be the cheapest. It wasn't a Sears or Silvertone bass.
But it was still an off-the-shelf instrument that was mass-produced in order to be less expensive. I bet that virtually every instrument used in a professional orchestra at the time (except the tiny stuff) was more expensive than that bass.
No idea about Fender's quality range in Jaco's time (although to be fair, Fender was the original electric bass and there were fewer options overall in the 70s), but nowadays Fender basses vary quite a bit in price/quality depending on what line you're getting. At the cheapest end you have their Squier line, and then you have MIM/MIJ (made in Mexico/Japan) Fender basses, and at the top of the line are American-made Fender basses, which have their own price variations. But even the most expensive Fender basses pale in cost compared to like, a Wal.
I think what's notable about Jaco is less that it was a Fender and more that (the story goes) he DIY'd his fretboard with a butter knife. So the point of comparison would be between someone today, who feels like they can only get a good fretless tone if they go out and buy a fretless Wal for $10k, versus buying your own Fender for less than a tenth of that modifying the fretboard yourself—just like Jaco did.
The hivemind advice is to use a cheapest tool for learning when you're just getting started.
...and I strongly disagree with it. I think if you are serious about learning, you should get a reasonably good one from day 1 (if it doesn't hurt you financially, ofc).
Shitty tools can sometimes waste a hefty amount of your time. Anyone who ever paint watercolor on papers that are not for watercolor knows what I mean. All the time you could've spent on... guess what, practicing.
I've seen that advice about (electric) guitars too, and it's so wrong. A cheap shitty guitar will feel awful to play, have problems staying in tune, etc.
If you're at all serious about it, I'd go straight for one of the $1000+ flagship guitars. Go to a shop, figure out what you like, but absolutely don't waste your money on garbage.
Genuine question, when did you learn to play? Even 10 years ago entry-level solidbody guitars where quite good, and they keep getting better. Things like CNC manufacturing, tighter tolerances etc. really improved the quality of the average instrument.
I think you’re basically fine with anything $500+ these days tbh. I say this as someone who owns multiple $1000+ guitars. You might get incredibly marginal gains in playability, sound, etc, at that price, but realistically my $500-$1k guitars are all completely capable instruments.
For a beginner a $500 instrument is way overkill. An affinity squier, yamaha pacific, or a variety of epiphones are available for half of that, and are more than capable for beginners.
I can’t really speak to the other brands, but the Epiphones under $500 start to, in my experience, suffer from pretty meaningful playability issues- and I’d argue that’s even more important of a problem for a beginner.
I’d definitely not recommend going below $500 if possible. That’s price as new, btw. Used guitar is a great option.
There are brands like Harley Benton producing amazing €200 guitars.
I have one that I like as much as my two Custom Shop Gibsons... and it is vaaaaaastly superior to my Gibson SG Standard in terms of quality and playability.
Also the $1000 price point is a very awkward price point, IMO. Not that much of a quality jump compared to $400/$500 guitars, and proportionally not as good as more premium instruments starting at $1500 and up.
Due to manufacturing variability, a cheap Squier can be quite good or quite bad.
If you have the ability to tell the difference, you can get a quite good Squier by playing many Squiers in different shops and picking the best one you find. You can save a lot of money this way.
I think a lot of people tend to stick to the cheapest tool for far too long. However, starting cheap is a great idea. I've tried things for a few weeks that didn't stick, and was happy not to have spent the money.
Instruments and art supplies are a good example of this: a $100,000 violin is a lot better for your playing than a $50 one, and a professional miniature painter I watch on YouTube likes brushes that are $50-100 each (over a 40 year career, that can easily mean 6 figure spend as those wear out).
IMO once you can hear/feel the quality difference (or worse, spend time rectifying it), you should switch. For some things, that can take weeks or months, while for others it can take years.
In instruments, going for the absolute cheapest one is almost a recipe for disaster. I don't know about violins, but I had piano classes a decade ago and now I'm with clarinet classes. In both cases, the cheapest option would have push me away from the instrument. In pianos, the cheap electric ones are very crappy, usually don't have the full key range, the weight of the keys is non-existent, and sometimes even the size is wrong, not to mention the sound. For clarinets, you can find ones for less than 100 dollars on Amazon, but they sound like crap, the keyboard is fairly bad and they fight you when you want to make a decent sound. If you buy one of these, the most likely outcome is that learning is so hard and unrewarding that you end up abandoning it after a few months.
Usually the best idea is to start out with the entry level range of established brands. I'm not up to date on pianos, but for clarinets that's $500 minimum. Yes, it's more expensive, but if you have at least a basic commitment to learning it's going to pay off. The other option if you aren't sure is getting a loaned or rental instrument, but please don't buy cheapo instruments because that's just throwing money down the toilet.
I am a pianist, by the way. My current instrument at home is >$50k but I play a lot. My starter instrument years ago was $1000, and was a great starter upright.
If you're learning the piano don't get a keyboard. Just don't.
Depends on your age:) My dad lent me a beat up old car to go to college and I smashed it to bits over the years. I took very good care of my first car when I bought it with my own money.
Regarding tech, it’s good to go with the industry standard, learn why it’s the standard, and go from there.
I don’t know if you’ve over qualified to the point you can’t lose (“shitty”), or if this[0] counts. I thought Peter Buck (of R.E.M., most associated w Rickenbacker) might have worked w a Sears guitar too (he might have, but I couldn’t find a reference), but he apparently used a Sears Silvertone amp as a regular piece of his gear[1]. Is buying from a Sears catalog good enough to qualify as “use any tool”?
This is also glossing over the garbage and hand-me-down crap that many grow up with on their way to becoming experts.
>And yet, I've never seen a professional guitar player use a cheap shitty guitar.
Professional guitar players use "cheap shitty guitars" all the time. From the Beatles to the biggest stadium bands, not to mention people who make it a point of pride to do so, like Jack White.
Electric guitars (and basses) are pretty simple instruments, there are only 3 things that affect the sound you get out of it: the pickups (and how they're placed), the strings you are using and the setup. Everything else is quality-of-life improvement rather than sound improvement (assuming the instrument is at least mostly competent and doesn't have frets placed incorrectly or some internal signal processing that destroys the sound). However, for acoustic instruments, you certainly get what you pay for. You really don't often see professional violinists or classical guitar players using cheap instruments, as the quality of the instrument affects the sound to a much higher degree.
Most tools are quite similar to this, professionals know what they are looking for and don't need to get the most expensive or advanced tool, except in cases where it is absolutely necessary for optimal performance. They know the key things to look for to get the best performance out of the tool and the other characteristics they choose according to their preference or customize as needed.
If you're interested, this is pretty fascinating - he shows experimentaly that the guitar itself has little to do with tone.
Other than that better made instruments could (no promises!) hold their tuning a little better, but you can cheaply buy locks or spend some money having that re-done.
More than this and I have a hard explaining what a "pro" guitar could do to help an amateur. You get the same tones out of it, pedals and amps have much more impact on sound anyway.
And seriously, unless you have musical training, you'll never hear the difference between epiphone and gibson, or squier and fender.
> Van Halen bought the body and maple neck (which was a factory reject) for $130 [...]. Van Halen was able to purchase the factory second body at a discount price of $50 due to a knot in the wood. The $80 neck had jumbo fret wire, and its truss rod was adjustable at the heel.
That seems to be pretty cheap. I agree he didn't do it to save money though.
Theres examples, though. Stephen Hendry, the Snooker professional played with the cheap 40£ cue of his youth for a long time into his professional career and won championships with it. It broke in 2003:
Kurt Cobain famously played cheap shitty guitars because that’s all he could afford but also the overpowered humbucker helped him develop his famous tone. He wrote some famous songs with them. Univox Hi-flyers to be exact. He went through a ton of them and they were about $100 each. He even played them after he was wealthy.
Arguments like these are often used to defend unpopular technology choices, like (insert disliked programming language here). "A true master can use any tool!" And yet, I've never seen a professional guitar player use a cheap shitty guitar.