I had an astonishingly bad guitar when I was around 16, and never got anywhere with it. It was worse than those Kent guitars they used to sell in places like Woolworth's. Some bastard of a salesman in Auburn, New York sold it to my parents. All you could do with the f##king thing was tune it to an open string chord (very tinny at that) and play it like a drum. The intonation was totally off, the frets were bad, the action was an inch off the fretboard...it was totally, utterly useless except for firewood.Five years later I got a decent guitar from a real guitar teacher (an American draft-dodger, and a very cool guy) in Toronto, Canada...and I have never looked back. I love a good guitar. It makes a really BIG difference!!!