I had somehow overlooked this thread before... a lot of excellent comments here. I guess I'd boil it down to two issues: what kind of music does he want to play, and is the guitar physically easy to play. When I started out, I jumped from a Stella, which doubled as a cheese slicer, to a Fender. Talk about a quantum leap! I went from the Fender to a Gibson classical guitar... another totally different feel and sound.

In the years that I taught guitar, I found that the two greatest barriers to kids sticking with their lessons were the difficulty in playing a cheap guitar with high action (and a lousy sound) and their not wanting to play the kind of music that I could teach. Kids get discouraged easily for both reasons.

Like anything you set out to learn, you need some immediate payback. If you're playing a guitar that's hard to play, playing music you don't like, payback can seem mighty far down the line.

Jerry