Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2018 11:59:38 GMT -5
Also consider buying a used guitar. Let somebody else take the hit.
Parlor guitars are really my favorite. I am honestly not sure where a 00 size fits in there, but that is what I have. I notice a real difference in quality between what you get new for above, vs below, $500. As others have pointed out, there is a point of diminishing returns at some price point higher up the spectrum. in my personal experience, that seems to be in the low $1,000 range. Buying used, it is a matter of finding one of these at a more affordable price, so I can't put a price on used guitars as any kind of statement.
All I know of the lower priced brands is that I have read quite consistently that folks seem to like Alvarez, but the models I have seen discussed seem to be around $800 new, which fits my own observations.
There was a post commenting on all the advertising crammed onto a page these days and how distracting it all is. I strongly agree with this. I get the sense that our collective attention span is getting shorter and shorter all the time, and having multiple things going on at once seems to be the norm, with anything less being considered boring.
My involvement with the internet began in the mid-80s, when nobody else outside of my work environment even knew what it was. Back then, the standard was modems, and everything was done in text. Things were focused then with news groups and text news readers. The internet was for us engineers who were developing and expanding on DARPA-net, so the traffic was almost entirely highly technical and shared between a few commercial companies, universities with research grants in this area, and the government. I certainly had no vision with regard to what the internet would become. I guess that is why I am not rich (other than that I am Tony and Rich is another guy who lives on the second floor of our condo building).
There is also a big difference in guitar culture between pre-internet and now. There was a time when we didn't have all manner of learning materials such as DVDs and tons of TAB to work with. We learned largely by ear off recordings, had LOCAL friends with whom we swapped licks and jammed. It seems to me that we are now flooded with almost too much of a good thing, so that if it takes more than a few minutes to learn something, it is time to try something else instead.
Rather than finding local people to share our guitar interest with, we isolate and instead find people online whom we will never meet face to face and really get to know and jam with. I see folks at bus stops around the university, all on their own cell phones, rather than talking to the person next to them. It seems to be a big cultural change brought on by technology.
It is a double-edged sword. The internet has brought us much goodness too. We now have direct access to the guitar players we admire, since much of their income now comes from having, or being on, a teaching web site where they don't have travel all over giving seminars. If only 1% of the population is interested in the style(s) of music that interest us, 1% of a smaller town or city may be 0, where 1% of the world may be enough for at least a small forum. If we can discipline ourselves, we have tremendous learning tools these days, with software to slow down audio and even video and loop small sections endlessly, DVDs teaching anything we want to learn, and we now have sites providing even more up to date content for a nominal subscription fee.
It is all out there, but it is up to us to find the discipline to filter it somehow and then to stick with something long enough to master it before moving on.
Tony
Parlor guitars are really my favorite. I am honestly not sure where a 00 size fits in there, but that is what I have. I notice a real difference in quality between what you get new for above, vs below, $500. As others have pointed out, there is a point of diminishing returns at some price point higher up the spectrum. in my personal experience, that seems to be in the low $1,000 range. Buying used, it is a matter of finding one of these at a more affordable price, so I can't put a price on used guitars as any kind of statement.
All I know of the lower priced brands is that I have read quite consistently that folks seem to like Alvarez, but the models I have seen discussed seem to be around $800 new, which fits my own observations.
There was a post commenting on all the advertising crammed onto a page these days and how distracting it all is. I strongly agree with this. I get the sense that our collective attention span is getting shorter and shorter all the time, and having multiple things going on at once seems to be the norm, with anything less being considered boring.
My involvement with the internet began in the mid-80s, when nobody else outside of my work environment even knew what it was. Back then, the standard was modems, and everything was done in text. Things were focused then with news groups and text news readers. The internet was for us engineers who were developing and expanding on DARPA-net, so the traffic was almost entirely highly technical and shared between a few commercial companies, universities with research grants in this area, and the government. I certainly had no vision with regard to what the internet would become. I guess that is why I am not rich (other than that I am Tony and Rich is another guy who lives on the second floor of our condo building).
There is also a big difference in guitar culture between pre-internet and now. There was a time when we didn't have all manner of learning materials such as DVDs and tons of TAB to work with. We learned largely by ear off recordings, had LOCAL friends with whom we swapped licks and jammed. It seems to me that we are now flooded with almost too much of a good thing, so that if it takes more than a few minutes to learn something, it is time to try something else instead.
Rather than finding local people to share our guitar interest with, we isolate and instead find people online whom we will never meet face to face and really get to know and jam with. I see folks at bus stops around the university, all on their own cell phones, rather than talking to the person next to them. It seems to be a big cultural change brought on by technology.
It is a double-edged sword. The internet has brought us much goodness too. We now have direct access to the guitar players we admire, since much of their income now comes from having, or being on, a teaching web site where they don't have travel all over giving seminars. If only 1% of the population is interested in the style(s) of music that interest us, 1% of a smaller town or city may be 0, where 1% of the world may be enough for at least a small forum. If we can discipline ourselves, we have tremendous learning tools these days, with software to slow down audio and even video and loop small sections endlessly, DVDs teaching anything we want to learn, and we now have sites providing even more up to date content for a nominal subscription fee.
It is all out there, but it is up to us to find the discipline to filter it somehow and then to stick with something long enough to master it before moving on.
Tony