What is your cheapest guitar

Subject: What is your cheapest guitar
From: Bert
Date: 08 Sep 14 - 12:23 AM

I have one sitting around here that cost me $5 at Goodwill. It cost a further $5 to put strings on it. Surprisingly it is not too bad.

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 08 Sep 14 - 01:29 AM

You've got me beat. My cheapest cost $37.50 at the antique mall. I like it. It can hold a tune for months.

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: GUEST,Ian
Date: 08 Sep 14 - 03:52 AM

Horner President bought off a friend of my dads for £5. Action so high you could almost walk under the strings. I didn't know any better at the time.

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 08 Sep 14 - 04:01 AM

Gibson Les Paul Junior - GBP550 in 1987 (Spanish airport lounge keyboard - where is the pound key?)

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Sep 14 - 04:06 AM

Kalamazoo in junk stall 3gbp. Warped neck but excellent slide guitar.

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: Newport Boy
Date: 08 Sep 14 - 05:02 AM

Alfredo Albertini spanish-style guitar, c 1900, bought for £2/10/0 in 1960. Albertini was mainly a mandolin maker, so the guitar has a metal tailpiece and a loose bridge. It also has typical mandolin-style decoration.

It was originally black, but I took it back to the bare wood in about 1973. It has travelled in a soft case through the Soviet Union in 1978, East Africa in 2005 and many shorter trips. It needs some TLC - a cracked back as a result of being dropped in Johannesburg - but still sounds good.

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: Musket
Date: 08 Sep 14 - 05:08 AM

My youngest son gets lots of expensive guitars for nothing.

Occasionally I visit him to repatriate the buggers!

Grr

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 08 Sep 14 - 08:44 AM

I have a Hohner that I got off ebay for £33 delivered, and it has only needed a bit of fixing up and it sounds GORGEOUS. At about the same time I got for £38 delivered (for a young lad)an Ashton with a built-in tuner which sounds pretty damned good and needed NOTHING doing to it (apart from better strings)

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 08 Sep 14 - 09:37 AM

My first guitar was a Sears Silvertone that cost $24.00. High action. I had it for a year before I moved up to a $65.00 Harmony, which sounded very good for the price. The Silvertone is one of those guitars that makes you appreciate better guitars, once you get some idea of what better is. When I taught beginning guitar classes, sometimes I'd see a rank beginning with his dad's or grand-dad's Martin. Some of those students didn't seem to appreciate how playable those guitars were, and didn't practice.

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 08 Sep 14 - 10:13 AM

Bill Howard made me two guitars and gave them me for free.

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 08 Sep 14 - 10:18 AM

A derelict MiM Strat that I got for a song and have slowly transformed into a real beast and a Lowden bought new in '87.

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: banjoman
Date: 08 Sep 14 - 10:30 AM

£2 10s in a pawn shop in Stanley Rd Liverpool in 1962. No makers name but I learned a lot on it. Sold it to a friend for £5 in 1967.

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: Mark Ross
Date: 08 Sep 14 - 01:08 PM

10 bucks for a Mexican nylon string at the St. Vincent dePaul here in Eugene, Oregon.

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 08 Sep 14 - 01:11 PM

Oh, I forgot about two! I have an Encore plank that I was given - the bolt-on neck had been snapped off the body but it did have a MONSTROUS Hz pickup. I re-attached the neck and built up the chips off it with epoxy resin, put a new nut on, and got a coil tap working, and it roars.   I also have a Futurama electric bass (Hagstrom) that I was given as a pile of bits from the bottom of a mate's wardrobe. Stripped, refinished, set-up, and modified badass bridge installed, as the Hagstrom one was missing.

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: alex s
Date: 08 Sep 14 - 01:40 PM

£37.50 from ebay for an "unknown 12 string" which Mudcatters identified as a 1962 Harmony Sovereign.

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: Sean Belt
Date: 08 Sep 14 - 03:46 PM

I paid $15 once for a Sears Silvertone electric in the early 1970's. It sounded like a car horn and I loved it. Current "cheapest" guitar in my home is a Gibson LG-O circa 1964 that I paid $400 for a couple of years ago. It sounds great for old-time stringband music and plays better.

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: Gurney
Date: 08 Sep 14 - 05:09 PM

NZ$82 from Trademe, our EBay. A Jack and Danny Brothers. My favourite, with quality on a par with my Taylor.

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: PHJim
Date: 08 Sep 14 - 05:35 PM

I have a $20 Framus thin line arch top with very high action that is tuned GBDGBD and I practise Dobro licks on it.
The cheapest that I've gigged on is a $75 Yamaha that is set up in Nashville tuning. I don't use it often, but have taken it out a few times.

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: Nick
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 09:04 AM

I think my sister has my old Spanish guitar that I bought in Majorca for c£10 in the 1960s.

My Yamaha FG180 cost £54 in 1972 and I still play sometimes. I just find the neck quite chunky compared with the Tanglewood I play. The neck is straight and true and the action is pretty decent. I have strung it with much lighter strings than I usually do (normally use 013s and have put 010s on) as my hands are getting a bit arthritic and sore. So it's kinder on both the instrument and me. The 13s seems to make the action a bit higher so is presumably putting quite a bit more of a strain on the neck. It's never had anything done to it so has stayed pretty consistent for the 42 years I've owned it

I go through phases of rather liking the tone off the Yamaha which is different to the Tanglewood I usually play. My wife comments that it sounds nice so I may go back to playing it more.

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 09:06 AM

Mine's a Crafter cost £400 my first was an Aria which cost £90. This is the kind of question usually asked by someone with some super dooper state of the art Hand made multi £thousands guitar,. right?

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: Midchuck
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 09:33 AM

At the moment, a VoyageAir VAOM-04 that I bought used for $350. I usually have a much cheaper one, or a couple, around, but I tend to fix them up to the extent possible, and resell them, or give them away.

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 10:05 AM

Hi, Newport Boy. You mentioned a guitar with a crack in the back. When my guitar got cracked, I asked my brother, the expert what to do. He asked if the cracks went over a glued joint. They did not. Then he told me to drill holes in the ends of the cracks to keep them from propagating. Make the holes as small as possible to do the job.

My cracks were simply folliwing the delicate grain lines of my wood, so we used the smallest drill bit there is - a sewing machine needle. I bought some wood putty and filled them in, but I didn't have to.

The cracks have not grown in 20 years.

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: Musket
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 12:00 PM

Nick. I started with an FG180 and my son still has it. It sounds lovely even now, despite a huge dint in the top where the thread end of a mic stand said hello... By sound and neck action alone, I would place it against anything up to a grand even now.

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: Jamie McC
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 12:51 PM

I started on a three-quarter size spanish guitar that had been lying around, sans strings or saddle a friend's student house for years with no-one claiming ownership. I got it for nothing and a 50p saddle and a set of nylon strings gave an very nice instrument which served me well for many years until someone pointed out the visual absurdity of a six-foot-twoer playing such a small instrument. It's still in action though, having been passed on to a little girl who proudly showed me the grade 1 guitar certificate she'd earned playing on it a few months back. More than I ever managed on it!

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: Wesley S
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 12:52 PM

My cheapest is a 1967 Martin D-18. I paid about $250.00 for it. Back in 1969. My Collings cost a little more than that. But I bought those about 6 or 7 years ago.

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: Don Firth
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 02:01 PM

Kinda hard to say, depending on how you look at it.

My first guitar, bought in 1952, cost me a massive $9.95, plus a fiberboard case for an additional $5.00. The store generously tossed in a free pick and a "Nick Manoloff patented chord wheel." Clever gadget. A sort of cardboard circular slide rule. Dial a key and it shows you what chords to play. Maybe six, eight months later, I sold the guitar for $5.00 and bought a Martin 00-18 steel string. I felt like a junior executive with his first BMW.

A few months after that, I started taking classic guitar lessons. The teacher knew Ed McCurdy (whom I had never heard of at the time), who'd stayed with him in Seattle for a few weeks—McCurdy played a Martin classic, so the teacher knew right off where I was coming from. He took my Martin 00-18 in trade for full retail price and sold me a Martin 00-28-G. Beautiful instrument! $175.00 (in the mid-Fifties).

At a Seattle Classic Guitar Society meeting (I attended regularly, they tolerated the occasional folkie, and seemed to enjoy it when I would sing a couple of songs or ballads at them), Bill James showed me the Flamenco guitar he had made for him on a recent trip to Madrid. I tried a couple of riffs on it and when berserk!

Knowing full well I could never afford one, I asked Bill what he had paid for it. Made to order by Arcangel Fernandez for the pesetas equivalent of $100.00. Then I really went berserk!! I may have invented GAS (if you don't know what it means, ask someone with a lot of guitars.).

A year later, it arrived from Madrid, air freight. Once played in for a couple of weeks, it had it ALL, and it just kept getting better and better. I subsequently learned that Carlos Montoya and several others had retired their Marcello Barbaro's and bought Fernandez's. Not surprising, since Fernandez had started out as one of Barbaro's apprentices.

I've owned a couple of other top rate classic guitars and one other Flamenco since, two nice travel guitars, and a Yamaha Guitalele—not to mention a Vega "Seeger Model" long-necked 5-string banjo.

I learned a couple of years ago that a guitar salon—a broker in top quality instruments—sold an Arcangel Fernandez Flamenco guitar which, according to the date on the label, was made a few weeks after he complete mine for—$18,000!!

I have a good classic that I play a lot (José Oribé), but I use the "Arcangel" a lot, too. Both guitars are a real pleasure to play.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: GUEST,MikeL2
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 03:10 PM

Hi Ian

<" Horner President bought off a friend of my dads for £5. Action so high you could almost walk under the strings. I didn't know any better at the time. ">.

I don't know if "Horner" is a typo. There are (or were) Hofner Guitars and Hohner guitars.

I had a Hofner President 1958/9 version. Thin Body electric version.
I paid about £45 for it new. i have had a number of far more expensive guitars since then but that one was great and had a great action.

There were very few American guitars around at this time so the choice for electric guitars was quite limited.

Don't know what £45 would convert to nowadays but then it was a lot of money. I "lost" my President when one very stormy night it blew off the roof-rack of my van coming home from a gig. A car coming behind ran over it...bo hoo.

I still miss her.

Cheers

MikeL2

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: Rusty Dobro
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 05:02 PM

My brother bought me a twelve-string at a car-boot sale for GBP2! No strings, and gears for two machine-heads missing, as well as a three-inch split on the top. GBP15 put the first two problems right, but the split, which is stable, will have to wait its turn. I keep it tuned down a full tone to lessen the strain.

At the time the name -Mugen- meant nothing to me, but now I know it's rather special - it's a 70's Martin replica but I can't imagine that the original plays any better than this. Our esteemed front-man, once universally reviled as Ivor Biggun, plays a Simon & Patrick bought for GBP7, which now seems positively extravagant.

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: GUEST,FloraG
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 03:33 AM

Surely the cheepest is the one that costs a £1M but you play 10 million times.
FloraG.

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: Musket
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 05:22 AM

Ah Flora, but that leads us onto bargain rather than price.

I recently paid well over a grand for a guitar that was hand made for me, yet my reference for basing tone, action etc was a Lowden at three times that. As the guitar was a success in my view, that's a bargain.

Yet will it hold value as it would with Lowden written on the headstock?

Easier to stick to cheapest in pounds or dollars on this thread I reckon!

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 05:32 AM

Hi Rusty, I'm a Mugen (Daion) nut as well. I have a THE78, a THE78/12, and one of the twin-neck THE80Ws.

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: kendall
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 07:54 PM

A Samick. made in Indonesia. Sounds like your typical plywood guitar.
I bought it at a yard sale along with a cheap fiddle for $30.00.
I'll find a needy child as I have done before. Probably put it in the auction at the Getaway.

Subject: RE: What is your cheapest guitar
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 09:20 PM

I would guess the Gibson...in a hardwood case....circ 1938 - 1959 mandolin shape but full guitar body. How about some banjo pieces? Can't cover the rent? Leave the goat-skin behind...return with cash...no interest charged.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle,

value=worthless....I play keyboards.