New Toys

Chirstmas holiday is over a week long now and boredom has crept in a little. My best cure for boredom is usually to build a new PC but I’ve already done one of those this week. My girlfriend Lou has bought her son a starter electric guitar pack for Christmas and I think this led to me deciding that I wanted to learn how to play one too. As is my way, this involved hours on the Internet researching all the recommended bits and pieces. The result was:
Squier – Standard Strat-ATB-MN
That (I hope) is an electric guitar made by Fender. Squier is the name they use for the cheap guitars in their range. Standard Strat means it’s a Stratocaster style guitar. Don’t know much about them but if it’s good enough for David Gilmour then it’ll do me. ATB I assume means Antique Burst. This represents the colour scheme on the body of the thing. No idea what MN means. I suspect I’ll find out one day.

The reviews about this guitar cover the complete spectrum from complete crap to great value for money. After having read a few hundred reviews a trend started to emerge. People who have been playing for 1 or 2 years and live in America say it’s crap. Many others make critical comments about it but in general are far more constructive. Strange that veteran guitarists of 10 and 20 years say it’s a good bit of kit, whilst the relative newcomers don’t like it. I think the American trend is probably because the “real” Fender Stratocaster is made there and they are understandably proud of it. Anyway, guess I’ll find out for myself in time.

Along with the guitar I bought an amplifier. These are devided into Transistorised/Solid State and Valve models. Nobody disputes that valves sound best, but they cost 5 times as much and require delicate handling. Hey, I don’t know an E string from a G string at this point in time! A solid-state one will do me nicely, and a small one even fits in beside my nice new king-size bed. I went for a:
Orange CR30R Crush 30R Practice Guitar Amplifier Combo
Orange is the make, CR30R is the model number, the 30 indicating that it handles 30Watts of power. Combo is short for combination, meaning it is an amp and speaker combined. Neat little box; it turned up today after I only ordered it yesterday afternoon. Nice going IMuso. Shame I’m not due to get the guitar until the 7th of January but I’ll just have to be patient.

That’s about it for now, this blog entry will hopefully be the first of many as I figure out how to play. Then again I might instantly lose interest in it. Apparently 9 out of 10 new guitarists give up in the first year.