Here's the deal (I think), there's so much good music out there written for guitar, and so many good guitars, from cheap to unimaginatively expensive, you can't go wrong==as long as you know what kind of music you want to play and match that to the guitar. Most people don't really want an electric, they want an acoustic because what they want to do is have as couple of beers and sing a couple of songs while treating the guitar like a drum--which is a great way to treat a guitar. HH's Seagull is a great acoustic at a great price. Every rock song you know has that acoustic drumbeat at its background, even if it's played on an electric guitar. You can get some lessons, or you can learn some chords and do it yourself, but either way it's in the music you choose, and more likely than not an acoustic is the place to start. Once you get there, you can decide whether it's time to move to an electric .
Now I will tell one of my three great guitar buying stories.
We were in Spain, and I had been to the Rameriz shop in Madrid and had looked up the guy who made my guitar. Then we took the overnight train to Granada.
In Granada, when you come down the mountain from the Alhambra, there's a street of guitar makers. Each shop is maybe 12' by 20', and in that space the luthier has a big work bench and some forms and he stands there building guitars. When you come through the door there are maybe 15 guitars hanging on racks, 10 of which are Flamencos, and 5 of which are classicals. There is always a picture of Tarrega who wrote the Recuerdos de Alhambra hanging on the wall. The guy builds the classicals because they sell, but what he loves are the Flamencos, and one night I walked by a shop and looked through a window and saw the luthier and his wife and a friend playing--the wife was standing and clapping while the friend sang. So for one day I ran off Kris and the kids and went from guitar shop to guitar shop looking at guitars.
Now the thing was, the shops were so small that only one guitarist could play at a time, and the guy in front of me, going the same route shop to shop, was Japanese. I played classical--the one song I can always remember and always like to play in shops because it uses the whole guital is the Villa Lobos Choros 1--but the Japanese guy was playing Flamenco and honest to God, he was good, like you expect some 25 year-old whack Japanese kid who thinks he's Spanish to be. He was really good. So I'd walk into a shop, wait for the kid to finish, and just be stunned at how good he was. He and I travelled the shops, me following him, for an afternoon.
Then Kris and I spent two days more in Granada, and took a train to Sevilla. We stayed in the Jewish quarter of Sevilla, and to get to our hotel the cab dropped us off at an alleyway and we had to walk a block because the street was too narrow for cars. We took off and walked maybe a mile or so to the Cathedral--Sevilla may be the most beautiful city on earth, I think, with bullfights just like baseball. We toured the Cathedral, then got lost going back through the Jewish quarter. We were going down this random street, and my kids pointed out a guitar shop.
The Japanese kid was there, 150 miles and 3 days from where we started. He looked up at me and yelled the only words I can remember us exchanging: I bought one! And then he held up the guitar and just grinned. I have liked that guitar more than any guitar I ever bought.
