If you wish to learn and master guitar playing, you should consider buying your own guitar.

As a beginner, buying your own instrument can be difficult if you do not know what to look for.

Getting the help of a good player or teacher will make it a lot easier, as very often salespeople do not have adequate knowledge themselves to help you make the right choice.

The following is a guide to purchasing your first guitar:

• If you are starting out to learn and master guitar playing and you do not want to spend a lot of money on buying a guitar, you might want to consider buying a mass produced guitar, which can be of a high standard.  Very little machinery is utilized in producing these guitars. More usually the guitars are made by piece work, each workman making a few parts only and leaving the final assembly to others. Quality controls more often than not ensure that the workmanship is of a high standard.

• The best guitars are made from a variety of wood, the most common being cedar or mahogany for the neck of the guitar, rosewood for the back and sides, alpine spruce for the top, and ebony or rosewood for the fingerboard. With less expensive guitars the fingerboard is sometimes made from rosewood as an alternative to ebony.

• The final finish to a guitar has a noticeable effect on its tone. Those which have a heavy lacquer or plastic finish usually sound much duller and deader because of this only.

• All good guitars are braced under the table. This is called fan-strutting. These struts produce a noticeable improvement in tone quality. By reaching inside the soundhole you will be able to check if the guitar has these struts.

• The fingerboard needs to be flat as well as wide enough. Some guitars have a slight bow on the fingerboard, so that it is a little higher in the center and tapers off at the sides. Playing a guitar with a fingerboard that is too narrow is difficult.

• The relative height of the guitar strings above the fingerboard affects the playing action of the guitar. The action for the left hand will be stiff if the strings are too high off the fingerboard, making it difficult to play. Strings which are too low will cause a vibrating noise on the fingerboard frets.

To avoid frustration and disappointment when starting to learn and master the guitar, it is essential to purchase a quality guitar.

Learn and Master Guitar by Steve Krenz

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