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#290865 - 20/12/11 08:33 PM
please help?
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dfgkdh
Be Nice (I'm New!)
Registered: 20/12/11
Posts: 8
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hiya, i want to buy a decent but not too expensive (up to £100) acoustic guitar with my christmas money to try to learn blues on. i know nothing about what type of guitar would be good for this and im really lost please could someone give me some advice about some basic things i should look for in a guitar that would be suitable for playing blues? thankyou so much
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#290867 - 20/12/11 09:30 PM
Re: please help?
[Re: dfgkdh]
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Lester
Professional Forumite!
Registered: 28/05/11
Posts: 543
Loc: UK & Slovakia
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Hi dfgkdh and welcome to the forum.
£100 is a bit below the bottom end of the price range for a decent new guitar so secondhand will be the way to get one within your budget. Makes to consider include Cort, Epiphone, Takamine, Tanglewood, Vintage, Yamaha.
Places to look inlcude here at Guitars.co.uk, Richards Guitars, Cash Converters, Gumtree, ebay, the local paper and even adverts in the local newsagent's window.
Take someone with you who plays guitar as they will be able to check that it has no problems.
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#290868 - 20/12/11 10:32 PM
Re: please help?
[Re: Lester]
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The Tiggs
Professional Forumite!
Registered: 08/04/10
Posts: 412
Loc: Derby
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Hello dfgkgh
(or some other random selection from the middle row)
Really you can play blues on any sort of guitar and for £100 and a beginner I would recomend an electric one - even without an amplifier - buy one later. But if its an acoustic you want and you want to buy new then I'd stick to the name makes since they are unlikely to be complete rubbish. Epiphone and Fender do some basic acoustics about the £90 price point (on-line price) also check out the Cort AF510 NS which is just a tab more from Richard.
I've pm'ed you a link to a video on choosing a guitar from a site which also includes loads of free blues lessons. First thing to learn is the A minor pentatonic and blues scale starting 5th fret 6th string - get that down and you'll soon be jamming away like a gud un!
Good advise from Lester and Christeefur too - that Yam looks OK but I'd get the seller to post a picture of the action at the 12th fret - so you can see that the string hieght is reasonable - before parting with cash.
Edited by The Tiggs (20/12/11 10:52 PM)
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#290887 - 21/12/11 11:58 AM
Re: please help?
[Re: Jocko]
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dfgkdh
Be Nice (I'm New!)
Registered: 20/12/11
Posts: 8
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Thankyou all so much for your replies.:) I thought £100 might be a bit low but unfortunately I don't have more to spend so thanks for helping me find what would be good for that money. I will have a thorough look through everything you linked me to- I really do appreciate the help.:D
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#290893 - 21/12/11 04:53 PM
Re: please help?
[Re: dfgkdh]
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S&P
One of the Regulars
Registered: 18/08/11
Posts: 85
Loc: Sheffield UK
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You can get an Epiphone DR100 for that price or try a Washburn WG7S-ATB (£109) or a Lorenzo L449.(£80-90).
I have tried all of these for other people and are okay for Guitars in that price range.
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#290921 - 22/12/11 11:33 AM
Re: please help?
[Re: dfgkdh]
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Surfsilver
Professional Forumite!
Registered: 04/12/11
Posts: 177
Loc: London
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df, well done on taking the plunge, and £100 is a lot of money and perfectly adequate for a nice guitar. As already said, Blues is style of play invariably done on quite normal 6 string Guitars unless you want to delve into such as resonator, slide or cigar box.
Mississippi Blind Boy Chicken-choker Willie only had a tenth generation hand-me-down battered French axe, with original strings. But he couldn’t feel them much as his fingers were mostly down to callused stubs through a life of handling moonshine mash, which he went blind through drinking. 
Can’t say for sure of course, but reasonably expect you’ll need a few other ‘essentials’ to go with your guitar. In no particular order, a tuner, picks and stings.
For a tuner I suggest a Snark clip on – and while about it may as well get the red ‘all instruments’ version, @ £12 on say Amazon. It’s only a few squid more than less versatile but perfectly adequate versions, as long as they’re chromatic.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing...X7G1BEK6PR452WF
Picks, rather plectrums, are a path you walk yourself. The three criteria are shape, material and thickness. The teardrop/leaf shape being the most widely used followed probably by the rounded triangle, or Fender ‘346’/Gibson ‘Wedge’ if you like. Then there’s Fin, Pyramid, etc, etc, etc. Commonest material is probably celluloid, then there’s nylons, assorted other plastics, woods, bones, shells, metals, coins and even felt. Thickness is important as they vary from pluck’n’split to an ice scraper. If a manufacturer is overprinting or marking a pick it’s not really a hardship to include the material’s thickness in mil. Terms like ‘Thin, Medium, Thick’ don’t say too much and vary between manufacturers as there’s no firm standard. If you’re staring from square one, perhaps get a selection of thicknesses in celluloid teardrop? If your local shop is asking 90p each, or something silly, try someone like Tone Deaf Music who’ll rip you all of 18p each.
Finger-picks are a different animal again and may or may not appeal? Then of course you can always just use your fingers and nails – or any combination of all the above.
Strings are of great importance, no less than when first starting. There’s enough to concentrate on without sore fingers. ‘Tree trunk’ strings are NOT essential to learn an acoustic with, and, in the opinion of some (inc. me), NOT essential years down the road – depends on the sound YOU want and what YOU are happy with. Fancy kicking convention in the pants? Good. acoustic string broadly fall into two camps, Phosphor Bronze and 80/20 Bronze – plus a number of special’s and exotics. There’s reams on the web about difference and comparisons, but at the end of the day it’s what you like. Essentially, 80/20’s are brighter but dull quicker than PB’s – you decide.
Reasonably, with Blues you’re going to use string bending which will probably include the 3rd (G) string. Plain steel’s bend better than wound. With regular electric guitar stings you can expect to get a plain 3rd but with acoustic strings it’s wound. Why? Ernie Ball have a hybrid set (PB 10-52) with plain 3rd, but they may be considered a bit too light’n’heavy? A solution, other than fitting electric strings (which you can do perfectly well but it’s probably a bit too much of a culture shock for the die-hards), is to take, say, a nice heavy set – like D’Addario EJ18 (14/18/27w/39w/49w/59w) – buy a lose plain .010, use it as your high E, move the other strings up one, and sell the 59w on Ebay or to some suspension bridge company. Your fingers now say ‘thank you’ for your 10/14/18/27w/39w/49w set-up, and you get nice bends on your acoustic G.
To try for a lower outlay, you could use Peavey’s (Chinese) Highway Phosphor Bronze 10's set. In which event you’d need to get a plain .018 and ditch the wound .023w. viz. 10/14/18/30w/39w/47. I found these strings OK for trying things out, but not much of a life-span.
_________________________
~~~~~~~~~~ "I've suffered for my music, now it's your turn" ~ 
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#290927 - 22/12/11 01:27 PM
Re: please help?
[Re: Surfsilver]
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Lester
Professional Forumite!
Registered: 28/05/11
Posts: 543
Loc: UK & Slovakia
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... £100 is a lot of money and perfectly adequate for a nice guitar.
Sorry but I beg to differ. I think of £400-£500 being the price point at which you get the best value for money. Spend much more and sure, you get better quality, but you can get less value per pound spent. Spend much less and you will have to accept compromises, also reducing the value of each pound you have invested in your guitar.
Tiggs's comment was pretty spot on when he said:
... basic acoustics about the £90 price point ...
A £100 guitar will be that: basic. Hence the advice to look at secondhand Guitars or to look at specific new Guitars that are known to be above average quality for the low price point.
There is nothing wrong with having only £100 to spend. Just be careful; don't rush a decision that you may regret after a month or two.
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#290930 - 22/12/11 06:37 PM
Re: please help?
[Re: Lester]
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Oldjono
Professional Forumite!
Registered: 15/09/09
Posts: 852
Loc: Dorset
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A reasonable acoustic for £100.00 is not that difficult to get hold of. May I suggest looking at something at about £80.00 second-hand and asking your 'nice friendly guitar repairer'  to look at it and maybe spend half an hour for £20.00 giving it a tweak. That would then represent a good investment and the repair man will give you advice too, they're like that.
Infact! Go to one first, as they can usually put their hands on something far better than you'll get in a second-hand shop.
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