Starter guitars

Every once in a while well-meaning parents would come up to me to ask where they can buy a guitar for their kids. The first thing I ask is how much they are willing to spend, and in a way this is a rhetorical question since I have a pretty good idea what the response would be. “Oh, not much,” they would say, and when I mention figures like 5,000 or 6,000 pesos they would balk and exclaim, “Not that much!!!” So by “not much” they often mean less than 1,000 pesos, and I tell them that’s not nearly enough to get a good guitar that their kid will enjoy playing and learning in.

The thing about starter guitars is that they have to have a balance of playability and low price, but this is not easy to find – at least not here in the Philippines. Cheap guitars are, well, cheap, and this shows in how hard they are to play. Cheap guitars are made of cheap materials, cheap wood, and cheap strings, and they are made cheaply by non-craftsmen (usually carpenters in between construction jobs) who have no idea what they’re doing.

So if your child is serious about guitar, and if you really want to encourage him or her to play well, then invest some money and buy him or her a good guitar. Remember that nothing douses a child’s enthusiasm more than a bad guitar that’s difficult to play. Again in the Philippines it’s difficult to find good guitars at low prices, and in fact I even recommend that you avoid the “Buy Pinoy” syndrome for guitars because I have yet to see a Filipino-made guitar on the market that’s worth the money. What you should look for are the Korean-made ones that are being sold for between 3,000 to 6,000 pesos (hence the figure I cited earlier) in many guitar shops (including SoundChaser and Better Components in Davao City). They’re not great, but once in a while you can pick up a good one if you know how to look.

Here are some things to look for:

1. Good construction. Make sure it’s solidly built.
2. Low action. “Action” refers to the height of the strings clear off the fingerboard. Make sure the strings are low enough to be pressed without much effort.
3. Straight neck. To check for straightness, grasp the guitar with both hands and bring the neck up to your line of sight (looking from the bridge toward the tuning keys -- see photo at right). From that view any bow or warp would be evident. You can also do this from the other end of the guitar (i.e. from the headstock looking down into the body)

Other details like a solid top are present only in mid- to high-end guitars, so there’s no use discussing them here. We’ll devote a whole other article to them.

If you have questions about starter guitars feel free to ask. If you’re in Davao City I can even go with you to the shop to help you find that guitar.