acoustic guitar

Thinking about buying a acoustic guitar. Although I'm a first time buyer and would welcome any buying dicisions or things to look out for when purchasing your first guitar.

Im mainly going to be learning it in my free time, off and on. Not somthing seriously but I want to buy somthing that sounds good and will last for a long time.

Purchase range i've set aside is about $400-600. What would you recommend/brands/ect....

last weekend i was sitting here and i decided i want to learn to play again
so i searched ebay and bought a guitar
it was the cheapest nylong sting thing on there basically and it should be getting here this week.
it was 70 bucks.

i got a cheap one cause i want to know if ill like playing and if ill stick with it. no point buying a nice one if im going to get bored in a week.

try cool bannananannanasssss they were very helpful

they are in Winnellie and have a good offering of mid to high end stuff that has not been sitting on the shelf for 100 years. I got my wife a takimine for her birthday which she liked the "look" of - but it sounds and feels great...
Also important in the humidity is a strong neck as some timbers will twist and will never tune or play properly.

There is one thing that you should keep in mind... Buying a cheap guitar will still sound like a cheap guitar. I suggest you spend a decent amount (Around the 600 range will get you a nice one) that sounds good.
don't bother with cheap ones. They never sound as good, and believe me when you hear the lovely sound of a good guitar, it's all worth it.

Yes, but if you've never played guitar before it's not worth getting an expensive guitar because you might spend two weeks having a bash at it learning basics and then go "ahh, this is crap I never want to play guitar again" and congratulations on wasting $600 :)

That's a possibility, but if you spend 100 bucks on a crap guitar, you may never want to play again because of the crappy sound...

And if you buy a cheap guitar, as well as sounding crap, it's also harder to play.

Best advice I ever got when learning the guitar was to spend a bit of money on a guitar.

about $400-$600 is a good price point for a beginner guitar. It gets you above the cheep plytop and into to decent solidtops.BTW allow ~"00 to get a hardcase too.

Buy a nylon string classical guitar. They start at $50 for 3/4 size and go up to $200 for beginner instruments. The have a wide flat fretboard so it is easy to hit individual strings and facilitates proper hand position and technique, nylon strings that don't cut up your fingers as much as steel strings do (this is important when starting) and they hold tuning quite well and sound reasonable. Best of all you can grow out of them and buy a steel string acoustic or electric but there is always a place for a nice classical in any collection.

Trust me, this is what turns ppl off playing quickest:

1. Sore fingers
2. Sore wrist for the unnatural twisted fretting position
3. Difficulting plucking and fretting individual strings

A classical guitar helps with all these issues.

I guarantee that should anyone buy a steel string acoustic to learn on:

1. The tips of their fingers will hurt so much that playing will be limited to small five minute bursts every couple of hours until the tips are significantly hardened.
2. The rounded fretboard and closeness of the strings and frets will make the learning curve and ability to make anything musical sounding quite hard for some time.
3. You are going to break a lot of strings through tuning and have difficulty maintaining tuning unless you know how to use a tuner.

Anyways, don't forget the most important part of playing guitar is the spandex pants, the chest hair and the obscene facial gestures! ROCK ON!

1. Sore fingers - Check - ice bucket - 5 minute intervals
2. Sore wrist - Really freaken hurts now - ice bucket - 5 min intervals
3. Difficulting plucking - Check - where the f*** is that string

Yup I went out and purchased an steel string acoustic. First 2 days really hurt, but the bucket of ice water really helps. Then repeat doing the scales for the 100th time for 10-15 minute intervals.

Plucking the string was not a big issue, but more of a comedic act when doing the scale.

One of the biggest thing I didnt think would be a issue is the rist bending and reaching to the far side of the guitar. Most of the time when reading notes its like "you've got to be freaken kiding me thats going to HURT!"

Havn't broken any stings right now. Will go down to the shops next week asking advice in tuning the guitar.

Btw, for people here is the guitar i finaly ended up getting.

Cakamine model number:GS-330S

Very nice guitar, feels good and plays great. I went to about 5 stores asking if the person could play the guitar for me. This typicaly led to them saying "sorry we dont play". Finaly found one shop that the sales person could play. Shit he could play very well. So i got him to try out about 10-15 guitars in the rang that i wanted. After it we both looked at each other and said, yeah thats one's better than the whole lot lol.

I do feel bad when playing the wrong note, it seems like I'm killing the poor thing. Well finger have finaly stop hurting back to doing the scales again.

Note:
Purchased a solid carry case and stand.

whats some good songs to try learn?

http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/tabs/d/devendra_banhart/sawkill_river_tab.htm - my current project

Here is the current one im learning to play.
http://www.guitaretab.com/c/clapton-eric/22312.html

ha. tears in heaven. thats one of the first ones i ever learnt.

along with this - http://www.guitaretab.com/e/everlast/6210.html

yeah i thought that would be a easy song so i started to learn yesturday

man i play for 15 min and my fingers are killing
i got like the first 7 notes of "what its like" playing perfectly tho :)

im using guitar player pro to learn the tabs, its awesome

post up some links if you guys have any

the old man has got a nice fender acoustic which im gonna "borrow" this weekend.

like chad, im gonna try out the self teaching thing

Well I've gone from the typical pick, to using the hands to know using metal finger pick's. They're great! although the difference being is that if you make a slight mistake your going to hear it. Where with normal fingers it somtimes muffles the sound.

Personal preference really. But, I spent about 1 hr each day doing the notes from high to low. streching out the fingers and doing repeative plucking of the strings for example 1-3 3-2 2-3 3-1. Just different combinations to drill into my head where the strings are in relation to each other.

Right now I'm allmost completed the first verse of tears in heaven, but because of chaning pick I've had to spend about 1 day getting used to it again.

Oh btw, fingers will hurt, its about 6 days since i got mine and I dont feel the pain until about 3-4 hrs playing.

lastly, I spent $40 on a bag of picks different sizes, shapes, metal ect you name it I purchased allmost all of them in the store. Found about 2-3 out of the whole lot i like. Then another $50 for the tuning device.

Its all worth it when you play a song from the start to finish with perfectly sounding guitar.