When did you get your very first guitar and what was it?

tovo
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Tue Feb 12, 2013 5:58 pm

I'd like to hear about your very first guitar, what it was and anything else you would like to say about it.


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neverfoundthetime
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Tue Feb 12, 2013 7:06 pm

Tony, I wish I knew. I have no idea what it was nor where it came from. I know where t went.... smashed to smithereens by a petulant young and impatient man.... just like his first 3 tennis rackets!! Thank goodness the temperament is now under control ;-)


dennisg
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Tue Feb 12, 2013 7:27 pm

I got into a bit of trouble as a kid, and my mother thought that learning the guitar would be just the ticket to put me on the straight and narrow. She had my brother Ken go to Sears (an American department store) and buy a $20 Silvertone guitar. I learned a few chords, then hardly played at all for the next, oh, 45 or so years. I don't remember what happened to that guitar. But I'm sure if it were still around, as a collector's item, it'd be worth at least $23.


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daryl
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Tue Feb 12, 2013 7:51 pm

I got my 1st guitar when I was in 2nd grade. I think it was on my 7th birthday. It came in a cardboard box. I was so excited. I probably started taking lessons immediately after that (learning to read and play notes with the Mel Bay method). I think my next guitar was a beautiful double cut-a-way semi-hollow Guild (probably when I was in 6th grade). I have no idea what happened to the 1st guitar.


BobR
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Tue Feb 12, 2013 8:31 pm

All I can remember was I was in the 7th grade and I borrowed my cousin's Silvertone Electric guitar. So technically it was not really mine. Anyway, along with a couple other guys we entered a talent contest at school. Man what was I thinking, I was lucky to know two or three chords. The small amp that came with the guitar would warm up and sometime go into some bad distortion and for some reason everyone thought I did it on purpose and really enjoyed it. Who was I to say anything :laugh:


NKenny
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Tue Feb 12, 2013 8:49 pm

It was 1963, I was about 14. It was a white Hagstrom electric guitar. Had to be electric back then, thats all the kids wanted. The Beates,Stones and all the British groups were comming and we had to be like them. I had that guitar untill the late 90ties. It sat in the closet untouched and one day I got rid of it, cant remember what I did with it. Now I wish I still had it, it was part of my youth.


suziko
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Tue Feb 12, 2013 9:07 pm

Well, like Bob, my first guitar wasn't really "my own." My husband was given a guitar for his 30th birthday and then never really played it. I picked it up and started learning on my own, then took a few classes. It was an Alvarez dreadnought, no idea what make. Laminate back and sides, I think. I played it in my first video that I posted here on TG. When I turned 37 I got what I consider to be MY first guitar: a Taylor GC3, which I still own and love. That was 3 years ago and I've since owned a few other guitars, but this is still very much my "go-to" guitar. The Alvarez I gave away to a friend whose husband wanted to learn to play. From what I've heard from her, I think it's mostly just gathering dust these days.

Suzi


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Music Junkie
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Tue Feb 12, 2013 10:02 pm

I was 30 and it was a Ventura Guitar, model V-12. My wife's mother gave it to me, because she knew I had wanted to learn to play. It used to be my wife's grandmothers. It was a right handed guitar and I tried for a while to learn, but just could not get anything right and it felt so darn cumbersome to me. I tried to restring the darn thing to a lefty, but soon realized you don't just switch the strings around.... :blink: I then took it to the local store and asked if they could switch it for me. They just said "learn to play right handed"..... So I gave up and put it back in the case and back into the closet. Seven years later, I bought a used Fender Strat (lefty) and a cheap crate amp from another local store and gave it a go again. I bought a Hal Leonard book called "Left-handed Guitar, A Complete Method". I learned a bit from that book. Enough to pique my interest enough to sign up for lessons. The rest is history. I still have both guitars, and will probably keep them forever, The Ventura guitar is now my oldest son's and my Strat holds a lot of sentimental value for me. I did my first mods to that guitar as well. I replaced the single coil pick-ups with stacked humbuckers and wired in a switch to cut the humbucking. I don't play it much, if ever, since I am really on more of an acoustic ride for the time being. Plus, I have purchased MANY more guitars and have a few that are my "Go To" models.

Image


BigBear
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Tue Feb 12, 2013 11:07 pm

Tony- I got my first acoustic in 1967. It was a Harmony sold by Sears and Roebuck, a large national chain. It had an action about an inch off the fret board and it was complete piece of crap. But you could tell the girls you "played guitar" (like that helped!!).

Soon thereafter I got a Yamaha electric guitar, fire engine red and white, and one of the first solid state amps and I was in Heaven. I could make real noise, if not music.

Then in 1972 I bought a Yamaha acoustic 12-string which I had all through college. I had that guitar until I bought my first Taylor, a 710, in 1992. It's been all downhill since then! LOL!


haoli25
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Wed Feb 13, 2013 2:16 am

Thanks for the question, Tony.

In the Spring of '65 I decided to give this guitar thing a try. A friend of mine (that had been playing for over a year) told me that I should keep saving my pennies to buy a better guitar, but I didn't listen. It was Now or Never. The Beatles, the Stones, and the Beach Boys weren't going to wait forever for me to learn to play.
I don't remember the name of the little neighborhood store, but I do remember that they sold EVERYTHING. Appliances, plumbing parts, tires, .........and guitars too. While I could have bought a "cheap" guitar at this store, I decided to spend the full $39.95 on this really cool DELUXE model. :) :silly: This little two-pickup electric had a sunburst finish. I was sold immediately! After I got it home is when I noticed that it did not have a name or model number of any kind on it. That must be a common feature on 'deluxe' guitars.

I took this puppy home and Mel began to teach me how to play. Mind you, learning to play was rather quiet because I didn't have an amp. I had priced some Fender amps at a guitar store, but even the smallest Fender amps were far beyond my budget. I played quietly for a little over a year before I came across a small, second-hand, Silvertone amp at a price I could afford. I couldn't get home quickly enough so I could finally plug in and 'rock the rafters'. Turns out, neither of the pickups on my 'deluxe' guitar worked. It took another couple of months before I could fix the pickups. At last I was ROCKIN'!!!!!!

Me, the 'deluxe' guitar, and the Silvertone amp played on for about another year and a half. I had left it over at a friend's house and his house was broken into and robbed one day. Many valuables were taken in the theft....and a not-so-valuable 'deluxe' guitar. I still feel sorry for the person that stole that little piece of crap!!!!

Never under-estimate the power of sympathy. As I mourned my loss, my parents took pity and bought me a Telecaster. I still have it.

In my life I have owned many, many guitars, but I have never bought another one with a sunburst finish. :) :)

Bill


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