So true it hurts. I'm a guitarist of three decades and I worked as a recording engineer through college and occasionally as a hobby since then (I went to school for audio engineering). The number of times I've had to beg, plead, cajole, and threaten a guitarist to cut the distortion is huge.

The hallmark of an amateur guitarist is mosquito tone. There's a belief that it masks errors, and it does, but it's such a glaring error in and of itself that it's not worth the trade-off.

"Mosquito" just means buzzy and lacking clarity.

In the video, he's using good quality gear and is a pretty good player, so even when he does everything wrong it doesn't sound as bad as this problem can sound. Then again, his "good" example is still too distorted to record well even for the style of music he's playing (metal uses much more distortion than any other genre), and if I were recording him, I'd be begging him to take it down a couple more notches.

I've gladly done this for several friends over the years. And, it's surprising what you can find on the very low end of the market these days. Yamaha has some fantastic cheap guitars, for example. $200-$300 will get you a new, entirely playable, acoustic or electric guitar. I have a $2000+ Gibson J45, and I often play my girlfriend's $250 Yamaha...it's really not a bad guitar, at all. I have no real complaints about it; it obviously isn't as nice as my J45, but hell, it cost a 9th as much (she actually got it free...someone who moved out of an apartment left it behind).

Having an experienced friend with you will help make sure the instrument is setup correctly (that can be an issue, and you shouldn't buy a new instrument that isn't), that it sounds nice and plays comfortably, etc. There is some variability in quality across instruments, and they're made of natural materials with variable densities and characteristics, so even if you read a bunch of reviews and go buy the best reviewed one, an experienced friend can help pick the best one of that model in the store.

This happened to me with skating. $35 Wal-Mart board, 2x as thick and heavy, junk bearings and wheels. When I stood on it and it barely rolled, I decided skating wasn't my thing.

So I suppose the lesson is: if you're serious, have someone who knows what a guitar is supposed to feel and play like if you're going to pick one up used. I've bought a 30$ electric that I still own and play, and a $100 one that was total junk because I hadn't handled enough guitars at the time to know better.

I don't think that's true for a beginner who can't really tell the difference, and I think that's also a discouraging sentence for people who are wondering if they should try learning guitar.

Yup. My first (and only!) guitar is an Ibanez Gio. I paid $55 for it and a practice amp. The amp sounded like garbage, but piped through a $100 Peavey Vyper or through Rocksmith and it sounds pretty good.

But I'm an extreme noob. I imagine an experienced player could pick up on all the shitty sounds it produces. The only time I ever notice it sounding bad is when the strings need replacing and the pitch of a note wobbles all over the place and they go out of tune in 15 minutes of playing.

This x1000

Far too often I've seen people try to learn on a ghastly cheap acoustic because they were "building up to" an electric, the thing they wanted to play in the first place.

There's a weird kind of asceticism around the notion of paying-ones-dues on an acoustic first, which ends up just discouraging the learner and preventing them from actually enjoying the instrument.

And good instruments don't have to cost a fortune, either. If someone wanted to learn electric, I'd say just buy a new Squier (by Fender). They're crazy good guitars. And at the $500 or so mark, modern Chinese-made acoustics start getting really, really good.

I second this, a buddy of mine ended up selling his American Strat because he was playing his custom vibe so much.

Used mexi strat is a pretty great option too.

When you are just starting, it's really difficult to tell why you sound bad. It is really discouraging that even when you are doing it right, it still sounds terrible.

My rules of thumb:

1. Start with a decent guitar. Good tuners, action, and intonation are much more important than pick-ups, pedals or amps. A lot of times a used $80 guitar with brand new quality tuners is good enough.

2. Before you even learn to play, learn basic maintenance. E.g., how to change strings, how to tune.

3. Buy a tuner. It takes time to learn to tune by ear. Help yourself out by doing this tool assisted. Also, learn to tune all the time. Many beginners make the mistake of only tuning at the beginning of practice. The act of playing detunes your guitar--especially on cheaper instruments. Re-tune frequently.

This is probably mostly financial. Just about everyone knows someone with an old acoustic they can borrow. Picking up even a budget guitar like an entry-level squire and a budget amp is easily a $500+ commitment. Worse, if you end up not liking guitar playing, the resale value is especially terrible. Doubly worse, that 15 watt practice amp isn't going to cut it when you want to jam with a buddy who owns a drum kit or a real bass amp, so now you've sunk $250+ on something you keep in your bedroom and shortly will need to start pricing out 'real' amps and eyeballing pricetags at $1,000 or more with cabinet.

Don't get me started when you outgrow that Squire. Suddenly, $1500+ Fenders go from 'who buys that expensive stuff' to 'I should get one.'

So true. They are really two different instruments due to the avaliability of much more sustain on the electric, and the dimensions of the neck and frets. Also on the electric the use of a pick is pretty much a given if you want the most speed.

I started on the electric and can play acoustic correctly, however if somebody wants to play electric, should start with electric, and viceversa.

I'm a guitar player as well, been playing for about 20 years. Completely agree with all your points, especially that it's a "deep instrument". Many people think there's a progress bar for learning it which maxes out, but that progress bar's max is ever increasing (or it should be if you're doing it right).

Shameless plug for my guitar videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFFBlI__po2CBLrtynTNbIA

The playing style is at least as responsible for the gentleness of the sound as any of the effects or the guitar itself. The spacey/shimmery sounds come from the big reverb and maybe chorus.

You can replicate those effects with lots of free or low-priced VSTs. Ableton probably includes reverb, a delay, and chorus plugin, as they're very simple to implement and pretty low overhead.

http://www.metalsucks.net/2011/10/07/rigged-devin-townsends-...

Though at the very end, he says:

"At home, I use a Blues Jr. and a delay pedal. :)"

In terms of software, I'm not sure if reverb VSTs will help for that sound, but I've heard rave reviews for the Valhalla Vintage Verb (and Room Verb). They're $50 each, but often favorably compared with expensive reverbs on professional recordings like the Lexicon 480L. There's a free demo so you can try it out.

https://valhalladsp.com/shop/reverb/valhalla-vintage-verb/

Watch some YouTube videos about working with reverb, delay, and other time domain effects, as well as general EQ and mixing techniques, and you can get great results without spending a dime. (Training your ear to recognize good results and getting familiar enough with the tools to achieve the sounds you want can take a lot of practice, though. No YouTube video can hone your taste...you have to listen critically to a lot of great recordings and learn to discern how they were made, by ear.)

Go to a guitar store with a lot of pedals or check out the Knobs videos on youtube. Find one with a long reverb time and a tone control.

This could work too: https://www.eventideaudio.com/products/plugins/pitch-delay-m...

https://www.positivegrid.com/bias-fx/

I agree with your assessment and comments! I play drums, guitar, keyboard and some bass. Guitar is the easiest by far. From the list, drums is the hardest. With regards to technique, bass is straightforward if you know how to play guitar; however the mindset or approach to bass playing within a band is way different than guitar's.

> There's a reason it's the most popular instrument in the world.

... also because it was way cheaper (and portable) than a piano or a drumset. It is cheaper than even a trumpet or sax.

My favorite hard, hard instrument is the tambourine. It's amazing something so small and simple can present such challenges, but it does. And played well, it's extremely expressive.

The only instrument that ever actually defeated me was pedal steel guitar. I quit and sold it. Becoming an accomplished player on pedal steel would have taken about three years as my primary instrument, in bands so I could get lots of stage time. This, after decades of guitar! On the other hand, there are things that can be played on pedal steel that cannot be played on any other instrument! The ability to change a chord to another chord by bending the pitches of some, but not all of the notes - wow. It's glorious.

There's the brazilian "pandeiro"; it's amazing. I've seen some demostrations of skilled pandeiro players and they can sort-of emulate a full drumset with that toy-like instrument.

Is it? I've been playing classical and folk for a long time and I think picking is far, far easier.

Maybe picking is harder in other styles, like electric guitar?

I guess for different people it's different.

Months?! With an auto-harp, one can be playing in an hour. Auto-harp is instant gratification; I just wish it had a fuller sound. Inventors, work on that.

I tried learning guitar from Youtube vids, and my fingers were sore. They don't bend that way, at least not without pain. Will the pain go away? I'm not young.

Is it, really? I'm a lefty who plays righty guitars and found I had a small advantage with learning and playing because my dexterous hand was given the 'hard' part already. I never learned classical and stay with rock-ish music so picking never got terribly complex for me.

I also wonder at the reasoning for hand placement is. We're talking about a 2,500+ year old instrument and I imagine there's a lot of arbitrary decisions and tradition we just carry through. These ancient guitars had much, much simpler fretboards so it probably made sense to focus the dominant hand on the strumming/rhythm part. Nowadays its probably a wash, if not just a little wrong.

That said, its not remotely an ergonomic setup and fret handling is going to be a challenge for just about anyone at first. Guitar is an "easy" instrument but that first month or two is a real pain.

Guitars are made of wood, an organic material, which is very susceptible to environment changes (humidity and temperature). So, after time passes, the wood may expand or contract, which changes the physical parameters of the guitar.

There are two forces at play: when tuned, the strings exert force pulling the fretboard "up". In most guitars, there's a long screw inside the fretboard, which pulls it "down".

"Tuning" a guitar means that the strings produce the right frequencies when plucked "open" (i.e. no fret pressed). Correct intonation means that the notes are still "in tune" (producing the right frequencies) along the frets of a same string. "Action" is the height between the string and the fret in different places at the fretboard (so, if you want to be precise, you'd say "6th string action at the 12th fret").

Action is mostly a matter of preference - lower means it's easier to fret the notes, higher means the strings ring out more freely, and therefore the notes sustain better. Can't go too low, or you'll start to experience "fretting" - the strings hit neighbor frets while vibrating for a note, producing an unpleasant metallic buzz.

The actual physical parameters which influence intonation and action are basically neck bow/relief and string length (via small metal pieces in the bridge of the guitar which can be moved, if you guitar has them). This is what the luthier (the professional who sets up instruments) interferes with.

This is a general view - some guitars may have additional factors to consider. For example, in floating bridge electric guitars, you'd need to consider the bridge springs tension as well, for they will influence both string action and the whammy bar travel.

The 'screw' that counterbalances the pulling force on the neck exerted by the strings is the "truss rod" which sits inside the neck (on an electric guitar and some acoustics); this rod is adjustable.

This adjustment influences the 'action'. But the 'action' is also set by the bridge saddles' height, which is adjustable. Most often this height is adjustable independently for each string.

Each time the action is changed (raised or lowered), intonation should be adjusted again, accordingly.

It sounds very complex but it isn't, it just takes a bit of patience and experience (for making a good judgement of what an ideal action would be).

To be honest, much more laborious and difficult is to tune a drum set so it sounds great. There are more adjustment points...

I also second the opinion that it's quite approachable if you're patient and methodical.

Another tip (to _keep_ the setup working) would be to have the guitar professionally set up, then carefully measuring and writing down the parameters, so they can be reproduced later.

The hardest one is neck relief, but even this can be approached in a reproducible way by pressing the first and last frets on a string and measuring space left at the 12th fret with a "feeler gauge" or some other width reference (credit cards, stacked sheets of paper, etc).

A good setup should also make sure the tuners are moving freely and accurately, that no more substantial repairs are needed (fretwork or major neck adjustments), etc. For a beginning player, these differences can be hard to discern, but they do help. For an advanced player, a poorly set up guitar is a pain in the butt to play.

Acoustic set up can also include filing down the nut slots to make it easier to fret. The issue is that a mistake is not as easy to reverse as a truss rod adjustment. If one is not willing to do a DIY nut replacement[1], you'd have to pay a repair shop ~$100 to fix the mistake. Same pitfalls can happen if one tries to polish frets with steel wool and gets over aggressive causing unwanted buzzing.

Electric guitars set up will include individual string intonation, string heights, tension on springs if it's a floating whammy bar, pickup height, etc. It has more hardware machinery to tweak.

https://www.google.com/search?q=acoustic+guitar+nut+replacem...

You grab a guitar off the shelf and you can find it has buzzes, or the action is a bit high, or it sounds right open and with chords near the nut but sounds off as you move up the neck.

I always thought my string buzz issues were due to my inexperience but since getting the guitar back, I haven't had anywhere near the problems with fret buzz.

Is it worth while to get a lefty guitar? Will picking ability limit me in a big way? I have noticed that being rhythmic in licking with my right hand can be tricky, but I figured it’s something I can learn through...

If electric, you can just use the regular "righty" guitar, just fit the strings accordingly. Jimi Hendrix, probably the most famous electric guitar player ever, did this way. He was a lefty. If you haven't seen him on video, please do it right now. Your mind will be blown!

If acoustic, they are often totally symmetrical, so no difference.

> I have noticed that being rhythmic in licking with my right hand can be tricky, but I figured it’s something I can learn through...

I think lefties are more likely to be able to play guitar "ambidextrously", an impressive sight.

The rhythmic hand (strumming hand) is the most difficult to train, IMO. Pressing the frets is learned way quicker than picking properly.

Excellent points by @beat. One other aspect for new guitarist is neck size: if you have small hands buying a guitar with a 'baseball bat' style rounded neck makes it very hard to play barre chords and difficult stretched chords. Conversely large hands and fingers need a longer fret board and deeper neck.

I think that the key beginner mistake is gripping the neck like a baseball bat, rather than simply using the neck as a place to rest your thumb. The wonderful Toone/Strandberg trapezoid neck profile suggests that the conventional wisdom on neck profile might be utterly wrong.

I do strongly advocate short scale lengths - most women and teenagers should at the very least lean towards a Gibson-scale instrument and may be better off with something in the 22" to 24" range. IME a lot of female guitarists gravitate towards using a capo on the 3rd to 5th fret, partly because it brings the guitar into a more appropriate register to accompany the female voice but primarily because it gives them a shorter effective scale length.

A tradeoff I've noticed is "fast" versus comfortable. Fatter necks tend to be more comfortable to play, as are necks with more pronounced fretboard radius (like vintage-style Fender necks). Flatter, thinner necks are easier to play faster on, but make my hands sore after a while.