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I'm sure this has been asked before but I'm struggling to seach the forum!!
My young lad (8yr old) is quite keen to play the guitar, he's had some lessons at school and now wants his own. I've had a look on-line and I'm a bit bewildered at the choice. Given that he will grow out of it (or lose interest) fairly quickly, are there any reasons not just to buy a £20 ebay special? Will he notice the difference between a cheap one or a £100 one? The main critera at the moment are 38" and ideally blue!
Any pearls of wisdom will be appreciated.
buying a super cheap guitar is a great way to guarantee he gives up interest unfortunately :(. Definitely at least 100 and better finding someone that knows about guitars to help you so you get something playable. You might be lucky and get something ok at 20 but you might also get something trashed. If you are buying second hand then budget for new strings as well as that will make a huge difference to how good it sounds if the strings were dead
Asked a mate who is a guitar teacher for kids
"Buy second hand and get a better deal than anything new. It won’t really lose value if it gets sold on, too. If the distance between the string and the 12th fret is a good deal less than a cm then it’ll probably do well.
New stuff that cheap is a bit of a game of roulette. If you can see it in person and check the string height then it might be fine but no way to tell without seeing it."
I set my high E at 1.8mm and the low E around 2.2mm on my electrics and my acoustic low E is at 2.5mm. I've posted enough vids on here for people to know that none of my guitars buzz.
There's a long list of things to check if you want a playable guitar, more than just string height anyhow. the first thing to decide is classical, folk or electric. A 3/4 Squier Strat would be my choice.
A £20 guitar is not a musical instrument, it's a toy, as above it will just ruin his interest.
You don't mention if he's playing electric or acoustic, or classical acoustic, but Yamaha, Epiphone and Takamine have some good offerings for beginners on a budget.
it's like kids bikes. We in STWland all know that a pig-iron toys-r-us special with brakes that are impossble to squeeze is going to make getting junior into cycling that much harder.
Same is true for musical (especially stringed) instruments -small hands doing harder work than a 'proper' instrument for grownups is not a recipie for success.
So as above, 2nd hand 3/4 size electric (soooo much easier to set up right and to play than an acoustic) from squier or yamaha will be sold in a couple of years for near enough what you bought it for. Think of it as a much cheaper version of a s/h islabike or frog investment. Squier mini strat is what guitarists buy their kids. We bought one for £50, sold it for £50 years later.
My 10 year old lad is learning with one of these, but not a blue one.
https://www.rimmersmusic.co.uk/berkeley-rbc3-blue-3-4-size-classical-guitar-used-p197