The very first electric guitar you ever owned, how good or how crap ?

CHRISB50

@Limehouse_Blues my mate had one of those. It was actually the first guitar I ever picked up. Upside down of course as I'm left handed. I couldn't even fret a note on it (not the guitar's fault. More my fingers). 

Seeing your picture brought back some happy memories. 

Cheers  for posting that. 

Roland

Telejester said:

Your first gtr, nice or junk ?

My first guitar, as opposed to the plywood box I borrowed from a neighbour, was a Hofner President. A nice looking jazz box with nice wood and a low serial number, but rather thin acoustic sound. It became my first electric when I fitted pickups. That's the guitar I gigged in the late 70s. I still have it, but without a truss rod the neck has bent beyond playability.

Maynehead

I'm surprised nobody has said a Yamaha Pacifica yet... That was mine. A PAC112 in natural finish. Got it as a package with a Marshall MG15 for 200 quid from Dawsons Manchester.

I never really thought it was a good guitar and was always dreaming about getting a better one. Looking back now, I realise that it wasn't the guitar, it was the amp! That amp was absolutely atrocious. The guitar on the other hand was great... I never set it up, because I didn't know how to, but even after years of use it played just as well on the day I sold it as the day I bought it.

The only thing that let it down was the bridge pickup. It sounded a bit weak and noisy. I'm sure with better pickups it would have been a gig worthy instrument.

antifash

Kay Strat. POS. 

Rocker

Fender Strat in the mid 1970s. My first gigging guitar was an acoustic with a single coil pickup near the neck. It was a good guitar. I bought a well used Tele (black) from a local shop. My family were horrified, they felt that a new guitar should be actually new. The dealer drove out to our house and offered a brand new Strat for the Tele. Under pressure from everyone, I caved in and ended up with the Strat. The worst pile of firewood ever shaped to look like a guitar. Put me off Fender for years...

NelsonP

hairboy said:

Marlin Slammer, a Strat copy in red, mum bought for me in a charity shop. Didn't have an amp so only played it acoustically. 
Remember playing Don't cry and Civil War intros pretty well The following year, I part ex'd for a HB and Floyd Rose strat type from Phoenix (or something like that. It was a mail order thing back in the 90s), and also bought a 10w Marshall and Boss Metalzone, and was quite happy for a while. 

Ha - I had a Marlin strat. I played that through an Arion Metal Master and Stereo Chorus into a Sound City 30w amp.

Here is the 'dream rig'......

ESBlonde

You kids of today don't know you're born (dons typical yorkshire cap and accent).

Early 1970s Woolworths Audition electric guitar for £21 brand new. I had to borrow some cash off my Dad because my part time job paid about £0.75p a week in those days to cover everything.
This from a previous thread
http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/27965/what-was-your-first-electric-guitar/p2

boogieman

merlin said:

A Woolworths "Audition", which I learned many years later was made by Teisco. It was below all criticism. Then onto a Columbus hollow bodied thing that was SO much better but still below all criticism. Then a Yamaha SG45 that was really good by comparison, actually just really good. I wish I still had it. 

I had a Woolworths Top 20. Awful thing, never stayed in tune but looked cool in a red-black burst. Had the comedy slide switches for selecting pickups, which were great fun when you accidentally knocked them to "off" and got complete silence. Mine came in a homemade wooden case that was white with an orange fun -fur lining. It weighed a ton. 

ICBM

Rocker said:

Fender Strat in the mid 1970s. My first gigging guitar was an acoustic with a single coil pickup near the neck. It was a good guitar. I bought a well used Tele (black) from a local shop. My family were horrified, they felt that a new guitar should be actually new. The dealer drove out to our house and offered a brand new Strat for the Tele. Under pressure from everyone, I caved in and ended up with the Strat. The worst pile of firewood ever shaped to look like a guitar. Put me off Fender for years…

That's a real shame, I bet that Tele was a 60s one if it was well-used by the mid-70s, and probably a vastly better guitar than the firewood Strat.

Bridgehouse

ICBM said:

Rocker said:

Fender Strat in the mid 1970s. My first gigging guitar was an acoustic with a single coil pickup near the neck. It was a good guitar. I bought a well used Tele (black) from a local shop. My family were horrified, they felt that a new guitar should be actually new. The dealer drove out to our house and offered a brand new Strat for the Tele. Under pressure from everyone, I caved in and ended up with the Strat. The worst pile of firewood ever shaped to look like a guitar. Put me off Fender for years…

That's a real shame, I bet that Tele was a 60s one if it was well-used by the mid-70s, and probably a vastly better guitar than the firewood Strat.

When I first took up bass back in the early 90s, a mate of mine had a rather dubious fender bass. 

He proudly announced to me that he'd traded it at a shop for a bass that someone had given him after their father had died. 

I asked him what it was and he said "some weird ass plank of wood called a Wal or summat.. looked like right cheap shit"

WezV

scrumhalf said:

One of these:

http://xelectrical.com/images/5107.jpg

Beyond crap.

I had a fire with one of those

It it didn't even burn well

Vibetronic

guitars4you said:

Vibetronic said:

Mine was an 'Axe' in about 1987, cost £89 from an advert in Metal Hammer. It was actually fine for a first guitar; my mate had a Satellite LP which was much, much worse.

'Axe' - are those the ones that came in a 'see thru' bag that looked like a rain coat/mac 

that's the one Also came with some instruction books, lead, and a really crap amp. Still, not bad for £89, and I was very pleased with it at the time. The only thing I didn't like was that it had 'Axe' written on the body in really big letters.

WezV

My first was a 94 squier strat.   Not bad at all in hindsite but I modded it beyond recognition... at one point I think it had the 2 pickups from the satellite I burned wired as a neck humbucker.

OilCityPickups

WezV said:

scrumhalf said:

One of these:

http://xelectrical.com/images/5107.jpg

Beyond crap.

I had a fire with one of those

It it didn't even burn well

I had one that looked identical, except it was branded Maya. it too was my first.  

proggy

A Satellite Precision bass. Truly horrible thing, it had black coated strings on it and sounded terrible. I bought a new set of strings and after a couple of months the neck was as bent as a banana and unplayable.

adamm82

a very unexciting answer but a black squier strat from Rose Morris, I thought it was great considering my first guitar I was learning on was a nylon string classical guitar. 

after a year or so I saved up my low part time wages and bought a japanese fender jaguar I think I was influenced by Kurt Cobain at the time. I think it was a nice guitar but I had no idea what I was doing.

The squier was stuck in the loft for years and dug it out a couple of years back and it was not as fun as I remember. had some serious fretwear on it too 

Limehouse_Blues

CHRISB50 said:

@Limehouse_Blues my mate had one of those. It was actually the first guitar I ever picked up. Upside down of course as I'm left handed. I couldn't even fret a note on it (not the guitar's fault. More my fingers). 

Seeing your picture brought back some happy memories. 

Cheers  for posting that. 

@CHRISB50 ;


Cheers Chris.

I never met another owner of a Rockster but I know they were sold quite widely in the UK in the early 90s. I also remember fighting hard to fret barre chords on the thing. The mate I played with at school was a lefty and his folks found him a second hand red Hohner with a pointy headstock that was certainly a better guitar than mine. We played Quo together. He was Rossi and I was Parfitt.

There were two other kids at my school whose parents were well off and they had much more swish guitars. They were neither as good as me and my mate but I remember feeling envious that I didn't have a more expensive guitar. One of them regularly took the piss out of my Rockster, comparing it to his more expensive guitar (that he could barely play). I'd be surprised if that particular individual ever took his playing very far. Typical school bully. Better at giving other people a hard time than actually doing anything positive themselves. 

breakstuff

Hondo II Les Paul Custom alike in the mid eighties.Didn't have a amp at the time,so played it through my dad's hi-fi.Obviously sounded terrible in hindsight,but at the time it was all I knew.The action must have been reasonably ok as I learnt how to play barre chords on it.

I remember carving the shape of a Joshua tree on the front of it when the U2 album of the same  name came out,then stripped it completely and eventually skipped it.I kind of wish I still had it really.

mburekenge

Wow! I had the same model and colour. Plugged into my mum's stereo.

cruxiform

Kay Strat copy in 1984. My dad bought it for me. It was crap but I learnt my first chords on it so remember it fondly. After I got rid of it I saw Robert Smith playing the exact guitar on the Tube! I 'upgraded' to a black Marlin Sidewinder. It was even worse and after reading an article on adjusting the truss rod I put a bow in the neck so wide you could limbo under it. I threw it in a skip. When I eventually bought my first decent guitar in 1988, a Charvel Model 1a along with a Marshall Lead 12 amp, it felt like a Stradivarius to those 2 pieces of shit.