Your First Guitar

[MrNylon]

Trumpet here too. French Horn also.

[Kimbabig]

Playing trumpet did not get me females....I was 12 so had to make the switch as I started to notice them n such

 

That also happens to be the age where I made the switch.

[stevef]

I was a bit lucky. I played keyboards in a "garage band" for a couple of years.

I "picked up" a little of this and that along the way. Plus my folks' basement made a wonderful

"storage area" for all kinds of equipment (Fender Jazz Bass/Ampeg B-12, Ludwig & Slingerland drum kits, my old Fender Tremolux, Hagstrom Viking guitar/Standel 4x10 solid state--That kit was my closest friend's and the person I learned quite a bit from, a Gretsch 6118 Anniversary, Domino/Farfisa keyboards).

By the time I actually bought my own guitar (Gibson LG-12)

I could handle, barely, a few chords and a couple of simple songs.

[FirstMeasure]

I was 6 or 8 (I thought 8 but my Mom swears it was 6, I'll trust her on that). I couldn't do anything on any instrument back then.

[rocketman]

I also played piano before taking up guitar so I had all the theory down. My uncle and aunt gave my brother and me a Takamine acoustic. I still have it to this day! My first electric was a Gibson Sonex and I still have that too. I guess I'm sentimental with my guitars...

[Andy R]

Started on snare drum. First "Guitar" was a Sears Harmony POS pretty much unplayable. Next year got a little better Montgomery Wards Harmony Les Paul Style guitar and got started pretty well with it.

[EvanPC]

First guitar was a black yamaha pacifica (strat-style) electric about 16 years ago. Had to make a deal with my mom that I'd take lessons if she were going to buy it for me (for Christmas). Still have it, but it's not in working order.

 

Second guitar was also a Pacifica, but a more premium model. Still have that too. I've only recently decided I was comfortable with selling these guitars. Too expensive to keep buying and never selling...

[canon_mutant]

Though I started on keyboards clear back in gradeschool which is just a cool way to say "I took piano lessons for 4 years", I started playing sax in Jr. High which became and still is the instrument I am pretty good on, tenor and soprano. Got a cheap acoustic in 8th or 9th grade mom found at a garage sale but the action and intonation were so horrible I didn't play it much. But, then a I bought myself a Peavey T60 and a Peavey Classic as a graduation present to myself my senior year and then I could play. I knew enough about reading music but more importantly was born with my mom's ear for music so picking up the guitar was easy enough. Took lessons for about 6 months but gave them up because I was learning new songs faster/easier than my instructor though he certainly was and probably still is a better guitar player. My only limitations to date have been my lack of sustained soloing speed [or coordination] and that I broke a couple of key bones in my left hand playing football that never healed right so I also have just some physical limitations - certain chords I literally cannot do, etc. I manage to keep improving by improvising what I physically cannot do the conventional way by doing it through unconventional means. If there's a will there's a way . . .

[dbreslauer]

My first "real" guitar was an Ibanez Roadstar II, circa 1984. I started formal lessons on that guitar, and most of the guitar players in my various HS rock bands also played it (I played drums in most of those bands.) I used to play my guitar players' guitars all the time before I got my own.

 

I did play that guitar in my HS Jazz Band, so I guess I could play a little: how well is another matter... ;-)

 

Don

[PP_CS336]

My first guitar was a Silvertone (manufactured for Sears & Roebuck)acoustic guitar c. $25.00. My mother got it for me after much begging that I wanted to

learn how to play guitar. I guess you can gather by what she bought me that she wasn't rich (single parent family after my father and shortly after, my

step-father dying). My best friend, at the time, showed me the riff to "Secret Agent Man" (Johnny Rivers version). After learning some chords I was able to

play "House of the Rising Son" and "As Tears Go By". My lessons were short lived, but eventually I went to an electric guitar and started playing in my first

band. I liked to sing (still do) and mostly played rhythm guitar to start with. Over the years I picked up a lot of things here and there and have made quite

a bit of progress and have had and played various guitars, both acoustic and electric.

[duane v]

Got my first geetar the Christmas of 1974 (see SG200 in sig)... I was 10 years old, and already had been playing trumpet for 3 years and piano four years.

 

One thing about the guitar, it was a breakaway instrument that allowed me to move outside of the regiment of playing trumpet and piano, especially since I studied privately on those two instruments for many years.

 

I vowed to never take any private lessons on guitar.... My teachers were the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and Eddie Van Halen

[Jesse Reed]

My first guitar was a cheap Baja Strat knock off... After I got my SG I gave the Baja away to a friend

[retrosurfer1959]

Yep - dad had a guitar so I had been taking lessons for a year or so before I got my first guitar I also took piano lessons for several years before my parents let be abandon the piano for guitar.

[LarryUK]

I learnt to play on my 'Eko' acoustic. Still got it. Great neck. So it'd be about 42 years old now.

I wish I'd had lessons though. Self taught. I've had a 26 year break from playing and I want to study now. I'm going to get

some lessons in the new year.

It's funny when you look back. How stupid you were as a kid.You should 'grasp' things and run with them.

[cabba2203]

I was already familiar with music having played Trumpet & French Horn in concert band in school.

So, where the guitar was a new instrument for me and I was teaching myself the mechanics of physically playing it

as well as learning chords and such (thank you Mel Bay). I was able to make what I was doing while learning sound "ok" due to already having an ear for music.

 

My first guitar was a white Vantage flying-v that had yellowed nicely in the music store window over the previous summer.

[zigzag]

Got my first guitar when I was 12 back in 1965 inspired to play by George Harrison. It was a handmade Flamenco guitar made by the father of my teacher. I'm sure that it was one of his experiments. Don't know where it is today, probably turned to dust. I got my first electric two years later. It was a single pick-up, Strat-style Kent. I got an adapter and plugged it in to the parent's Magnavox record player.

[Rocky4]

Found a pic of a Westbury. minus the Badass

 

 

 

[Californiaman]

[DCDetector]

My first guitar, and I taught myself. I didn't even know anyone that played a guitar.

 

[milod]

My first was in the summer of '63. A horrid no-name "classical" guitar. But the neck was relatively straight and in retrospect the action wasn't all that bad, considering.

 

I'd come from a folkie "thing" back east my last two years of high school and wanted a guitar going into college. I'd played music before, four or five years of piano lessons in the immediate post-diaper days, then that quickly dropped for the trumpet that got played through high school including an early "rock" and jazz combo. The trumpet even came out for a few pieces in the first college rock band three years later, but... went back in the case after I lost my upper front teeth.

 

I'd never touched a guitar before - okay, I'd touched one, but that's all. Within a couple weeks I was doing basic folkie stuff with some root chords. By the end of the following year it was a lotta fingerpickin' stuff like "freight train" and "cocaine" and "railroad bill," even a version of "down and out" that ain't all that much different from what I do now. Didn't do all that well at school that year. Might have had to do with no less than 4 hours a day pickin'. <grin>

 

m

[rockman82]

My first guitar was a Peavey T60. I had only played a few songs my friend taught me on his guitar before hand. I played for a year or two and then switched to a left handed guitar, which is when i got my Epiphone sg. I've used it to this day.

[guitargreg1993]

my first guitar was the strat that I got for Christmas 3 years ago... I had no clue what I was doing at all (still don't) but I had been reading guitar magazines for a few months prior to that, so I thought I could teach myself... hahaha. This past summer I got my Ibanez Exotic Wood acoustic and took guitar class this past semester at school, realizing I hadn't really taught myself anything because I was trying to learn it a much harder way than how I learned it at school. Now I know most of the basic chords and a few scales, so I'm somewhat decent (good enough to get by and play some easy to mid-level songs and also good enough where my parents thinks I'm pretty good) but my ability level is nothing special or anything....

[rjay777]

My first guitar was the old Stella acoustic sitting around the house. You know the drill.... rusty strings a mile away from the fret board.

And I got to take lessons with that beast.

 

I believe the first electric was a Montaya (toya?) SG copy I bought from a friend for 6 bucks. lol

[drumrnmuzik]

I got my first drums at 15. Some no name cheap ones that I covered with yellow contact paper. I played em for years, I did however collect a nice selection of cymbals though.

 

Later when I left home for the Navy, I knew that I couldn't bring my drums so I traded them in and got my Suzuki acoustic. I still have her too. I traveled the world with this guitar and the old wood sings like an angel.

[wineredrich]

my first guitar was an cheap old acoustic. Not sure of the brand. BUT I remember my first electric...it was black double cutaway Les Paul Junior copy complete with dogeared pickup made by Hondo II. The fingerboard was painted black and after a few years of bending strings, I wore off most of the paint. Ah memories. I was 12. I was a lucky kid though. At 15, my folks bought me my life partner...my 1980 Gibson Les Paul Custom.