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

Pablo

An Epiphone Les Paul Special ii which cost £200 in 1996, and I still have. Put a set of grovers on it fairly early on at the recommendation of my guitar teacher, although I don't think I fully appreciated them until now.

I dug it out of a cupboard about two years ago when I decided to start playing again. Tons of string rattle so took it to @FelineGuitars where Jon discovered the neck was flat and the trussrod only worked in one direction. Had it set for 10s to increase the tension and now it's still good for a thrash. 

It's also totally skewed my idea of what a guitar neck should be like - a slim D. When I try something like a Revstar, it feels like a baseball bat.

dogload

scrumhalf said:

One of these:

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

Beyond crap.

Same here. Terrible guitar.

grungebob

A hohner rock wood lx90 otherwise known as a strat copy. Either these where just good,the shop did a great set up or I just got lucky but it’s played great from day one. I still have it although it isn’t playable now as it needs a full refret as I’ve worn them out over the past 24 years. 
It has a new Wilkinson bridge about 15 years ago and a Duncan JB in the bridge wired single tone and volume ( the second tone pot fell off, like completely, wires and all). 
Its dinged and chipped the right way through constant gigging as a youth and I love it. 
I’ve decided although it’s worth nothing to anyone else it’s worth getting a luthier to refret it and set it up so I can continue to use it for the rest of my life. It holds a special place on my heart as my late dad and I went shopping together for it, I’m a lefty but he made me buy a righty. 

ChuckManual

My first guitar was a no-name POS that looked like the bastard mutant offspring of a Strat and an SG, in all the absolutely worst ways you could possibly imagine. It had an action you could fly a plane under, no concept of correct intonation - and, despite it appearing to weigh no more than an ounce (at best!), it was so headstock-heavy that it would kamikaze nose-dive towards the floor with the zeal of the most committed lemming. 

However... It must have left some sort of a formative impression on me - because whenever I see a guitar with a crimson-to-black burst paint job (like it had) I always think it's nice ...and whenever I briefly flirt with the idea of having a guitar built, a bevel-top Strat is always the design's starting point ...and - I'd probably KILL to have the gold foil pickups it had in it, in something I own now!

Unfortunately (just like the man Johnny Cash met in Reno) I shot it many years ago, just to watch it die. A mate's dad had a high-speed slow-motion 16mm cine camera - and my grandfather had a rather wonderful shotgun - so we put the two together for spectacular artistic effect!

I seem to remember him using the footage as part of his A-level art course...

Bucket

Dean Baby ML, circa 2007. I was a 12-year-old Dimebag fanboy, so it had to be an ML.

It was a rather wimpy-looking metallic silver. Not any more.

 https://i.imgur.com/9KY7zEI.jpg

TwoSpellWizard

One of these, about 15 years ago:
 

It was actually alright!

oskal682

Encore strat copy. Pickups ok, body is made out of what feels like balsa wood. Still have it. 

Skipped

As a child I was taken to a guitar shop where my dad carefully examined a variety of budget electric guitars.
With his Engineers hat on he concluded that all of the cheap plywood guitars (Egmond etc...) were terrible and poorly constructed - even though he was not a guitar player.
He said - surely they must have something better? Maybe second hand?
The guy went and found a 1950s Roger guitar, exactly like this one, but the 2 pickup version.

I didn't know it at the time, but the neck was incredible. A crazy low action that my guitar teacher could not believe when I had my next lesson. I also did not know that the neck was huge. This was a good thing as the vintage Gibsons that came later all felt "right".

Thanks Dad.

http://www.guitaraficionado.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/RogerAllset1.jpg

57Deluxe

guitars4you said:

http://i65.tinypic.com/2akfnzr.jpg

I remember those Kay pedals as well - rubber base plate which just peeled of to get access to the battery and you'd see very little components in there - I can remember my granddad selling them for around 20 odd pounds

I paid £7.50 for mine. I rushed to the shop (ABC Music in Addlestone) after school on my FS1e as was last day of their sale... brought it home bungee strapped to the passenger seat!

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/f3/8b/1a/f38b1a142037935e737a8ebf392849f9.jpg

jeztone2

guitars4you said:

My first electric was a Grant LP Copy - effectively the same as Columbus, Avon, Satellite and Eros  with a bolt on neck and a black finish - Imported and branded by a small chain of stores in Scotland - @ICBM will know him/them

At the time I thought it was okay and I suppose that whatever were its short comings, allowed me to start to learn how to set-up a guitar to maximise its playing performance - Can't recall adding any hotrods options - partly as little around then and more as I saved to get something better asap

Today the budget end of the market has never been so good - entry level players are spoilt as to the quality of guitars available today

My middle brother had a Sunburst Grant they weren't bad from memory.

i inherited a Sakai one pickup thing. Eventually giving way to a Kramer Striker with the plywood body. Eeeeek!

ICBM

Skipped said:

As a child I was taken to a guitar shop where my dad carefully examined a variety of budget electric guitars.
With his Engineers hat on he concluded that all of the cheap plywood guitars (Egmond etc...) were terrible and poorly constructed - even though he was not a guitar player.
He said - surely they must have something better? Maybe second hand?
The guy went and found a 1950s Roger guitar, exactly like this one, but the 2 pickup version.

I didn't know it at the time, but the neck was incredible. A crazy low action that my guitar teacher could not believe when I had my next lesson. I also did not know that the neck was huge. This was a good thing as the vintage Gibsons that came later all felt "right".

Thanks Dad.

[Roger guitar]

These are very good guitars, built by Wenzel Rossmeisl in Germany and named after his son Roger, who went on to work for Rickenbacker and Fender.

(I'm guessing you may know that already if you found that pic!)

Boromedic

Like a few others here a Hondo Les Paul copy that I technically didn't own as I borrowed it from my best mate as he had picked up a Yamaha super strat with floyd copy. I then bought my own Ibanez RG507 from Coda Music (1996 I think), in jewel blue which was actually a nice guitar but I chopped it for a Gibson Les Paul 3 years later....

Fez

Mine was a no name Les Paul copy which was hollow but had no sound holes. The pick ups weren't great. I had one of those Kay Wah pedals which I got from Mamelocks on Deansgate in Manchester.

Dan86

Squire strat in 2002 when I was 16, wasn't bad for £100 I suppose!

kt66

Westone Rainbow II, it was superb, regret letting it go, but I swapped it for a 63 AC30 top boost so I did Ok. This was about 86 

Telejester

That reminds me of a Westone thunder 1 I once had, wish I still had it.

Nitefly

I remember Guitarist mag doing an offer of a beginner's guitar in the 90's, possibly made by Encore - did anyone here buy one?  

(Did anyone at all buy one?)

sticker

My first guitar was a Hondo 335 copy in cherry sunburst ,mainly because I didn't want a guitar like Hank Marvin played and I was heavy influenced by the Johnny B Goode scene in Back to The Future and the Hondo looked similar !

Telejester

Go on, who bought a guitar out of their mums kays catalogue ?

Handsome_Chris

Charvel Model 4.  It was a great guitar for the price. A Kahler wang bar, reasonable pickups, mid boost, and compound radius fretboard. 

It was well worth the hours I put in saving up for it.