My son has just started playing classical guitar after playing mostly electric guitar for the last few years. He intends to go to music college after his A levels in 18 months time and so needed to do his grades in preparation. He got his grade 8 on electric guitar (with a 95% distinction) in December and is now doing classical guitar with the aim of picking up a grade 6-8 over the next year or so. One of the things that his tutor thinks is that classical guitar will also have benefits on his electric playing in terms of rhythm and expression.

Very different to his electric playing (most of his interests are in the rock/Vai/Satriani area and jazz) where his prime interest is in writing and improvisation. It will be interesting to see where it all ends up but he is a fine player already and loves it all. I think it's great to have a hobby that you love so much - it was his 17th birthday on Saturday and he had three friends round playing music (and chess) for most of the day.

He has an interesting range of techniques from a (growing) classical one to tapping and legato techniques which are more applicable to an electric but the fluidity and the speed that he can play at is very much from his electric playing. His current tutor is very much technique based and my son practices his arpeggios and scales and runs with his metronome so his fundamental technique is solid even though he started as an electric player.

And yes his guitars (compared with mine) are much more expensive. He plays an Ibanez JEM7V and a seven string Ibanez RGB and that pretty much put paid to all the pocket money.