Show us your first proper electric guitar

JookyChap

My first guitar was the red one on this sorry advert - £39 out of melody maker iirc

http://i629.photobucket.com/albums/uu15/erikryman/Axe-Guitar-Advert.jpg

Soon after was an Epi SG with a bolt on neck like this one...which was a massive step forward

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-htXsVN24zNE/Ul5biyfp7_I/AAAAAAAAGdU/ZIBQ5Aggqe8/s1600/028.JPG

That isn't it, as I loaned it to a smack head with hilarious results, but bought that last year as a trip down memory crescent

littlegreenman

IanSavage said:

thermionic said:

Not mine, but identical:

Considering how crap it was, I'm amazed I stuck to it!

I had one of those, bought to tide me over when I couldn't get at my first 'proper' guitar for a while (long story) - Satellite? My first guitar was a Peavey International Series Falcon, bog-standard sunburst Strat copy - I actually augmented it with the Telecaster copy from the same series a few years later, decent little guitars! 

Yep, I had one of those too. Egg-slicer action, totally surprised I didn't give up too!

littlegreenman

I did then get one of these, which served me well until it was stolen in a burglary

https://scontent-b-lhr.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/20932_1297944920942_2513134_n.jpg?lvh=1

DiscoStu

JookyChap said:

My first guitar was the red one on this sorry advert - £39 out of melody maker iirc

http://i629.photobucket.com/albums/uu15/erikryman/Axe-Guitar-Advert.jpg

Bucket

randomhandclaps said:

This -

http://www.vintage-guitars.se/1984-1987_Fender_Stratocaster_Paisley_E941732.jpg

Purchased from Tooting exchange centre for £275 in 1991.

That's the best thing literally ever.

Here's mine, a Dean Baby ML which I still have (doesn't see much use admittedly, but it's not a bad guitar for £100). Quite a nice neck, and surprisingly good, shouty stock pickups. It's tuned to open C.

http://i1022.photobucket.com/albums/af347/ConnorF1995/My gear/2012-01-29215652.jpg

Served me well as a 12 year-old Dimebag fanboy. I then changed the black pickup rings for cream ones, and put burnt chrome pickup covers on it and it looks significantly worse. I'd quite like to strip the finish and oil it, never liked the sparkly silver.

DulcetJones

This isn't mine but it was almost the same, mine had a "Canora" label on the headstock.  Most of my guitar minded pals said it was probably a Kent made under contract for Canora.  It was actually a playable guitar.

A funny thing about the names on guitars happened to my buddy.  His Mom worked at Zellers, a big department store that sold appliances made by "Bradford", so when he got after her to get him a guitar she bought one from "Zellers" because she got a discount.  Displayed in big letters on the headstock was "Bradford", in the same lettering everybodies washers, driers and fridges had....., it also looked like a Kent.

thumpingrug

Squire strat,  this one

http://i1186.photobucket.com/albums/z367/Thumpingrug/Guitars/DSCF0267.jpg

monquixote

Mine was one of these (not this exact one)

http://guitar-auctions.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/lot0160-1-980x400.jpg

Hohner MTB1. 

Total piece of shit, never stayed in tune (even though it had a locking trem) muddy ceramic pickups, horrible neck, stupid red binding and fret dots. 

I think I sold it, or left it somewhere and I don't miss it at all. 

A couple of years later I got this in Nottingham for £200 

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b197/monquixote/IMAG0066_zps234ef8a0.jpg

Fender "Strat". It was my only guitar for the next ten plus years and it's ace. Bashed to all hell before relics were cool.

dogload

littlegreenman said: IanSavage said: thermionic said: Not mine, but identical:


Considering how crap it was, I'm amazed I stuck to it! I had one of those, bought to tide me over when I couldn't get at my first 'proper' guitar for a while (long story) - Satellite? My first guitar was a Peavey International Series Falcon, bog-standard sunburst Strat copy - I actually augmented it with the Telecaster copy from the same series a few years later, decent little guitars! 

Yep, I had one of those too. Egg-slicer action, totally surprised I didn't give up too!
Another one for the Satellite here. I managed to learn how to play NOTHING on this thing in the year and a half before I went out and bought one of these:

And it was wonderful in comparison. My next electric guitar was a Westbury Standard, and that was the business, but the Hondo is the guilty party for keeping me interested.

thermionic

After the Satellite I got a Vantage Les paul copy, also in wine red. Much nicer guitar.

Those slide switches on the Satellite were a right pain, as "off" was "down" so I often found myself knocking them off when strumming, causing embarrassing silences mid-song. There was another silence when I snapped the pickguard when the other guitarist stepped on my lead and I turned round quickly. I managed to do a workable repair though.

DiscoStu

JookyChap said:

My first guitar was the red one on this sorry advert - £39 out of melody maker iirc

http://i629.photobucket.com/albums/uu15/erikryman/Axe-Guitar-Advert.jpg

My first guitar was an Axe too, except mine was the first version. White with 'Axe' in big black writing across the body, it was a plywood abomination but it got me started! I think it was £89 from an advert in Kerrang and came with a tiny practice amp (probably 1W) whose tone can best be described as 'a bee in a jam jar'.

So @JookyChap, we both started with plywood crap and we've both now built our own guitars. Coincidence?

impmann

Mine was a god-awful Woolworths special (now somehow lauded on Ebay as being a Teisco... no they were utter shit). I bought it in Andy's Guitar Workshop where it had been hung up for a while and used as a dartboard - I think I paid £10 and this would have been 1985(ish). After trying unsuccessfully to make it in any way cool or playable - including repainting it silver and doing my first attempt at a stoning job (the first of many!!), and fitting a tune-o-matic bridge (worth more than the guitar), I palmed it off on someone else and bought an Antoria Les Paul GoldTop copy that I kept for many years. This gained black Grover machine heads, Gotoh tune-o-matic and tailpiece, Gibson and 'Double Eagle' humbuckers with many mini switches - it sounded the bomb and played like a dream... I swapped it for a Sound City 50w head and 4x12 cab - and regretted doing so ever since. Every day, I check ebay to see if it has come up for sale... somehow, I doubt it will ever come back to me but you never know...

No pics, as I didn't take pics of my guitars (too expensive) and as a spotty teenager no-one wanted to take pics of me. 

boogieman

Chuffola;124120" said:

One of the ubiquitous.... 

http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k7/andys_01/Teiscoguitarfront.jpg



Photo's not mine but they all looked the same. 

And it served me well for about 3 years from 14-17.  I loved it - into a home made solid state amp combo made by my dad (an engineer) with a cheapo distortion pedal. 

If it's a Top Twenty, I had one of those...certainly looks similar. Awful things. It got replaced by a black Colombus LP copy which was equally dire, followed by an Eko semi, which was actually nice. Until the day the neck parted company with the body

equalsql

I started out on bass so picked up a Silvertone from one of the dodgy second-hand shops in St Mary's, Southampton in 1976.
(These are not my pictures but are the exact same models)

My first proper 6 string was a Satellite LP copy that I bought on the knock from my mother's 'John Noble' home shopping catalogue in about '77.

Not stunning instruments.

DannyP

One of these

JookyChap

DiscoStu said:

My first guitar was an Axe too, except mine was the first version. White with 'Axe' in big black writing across the body, it was a plywood abomination but it got me started! I think it was £89 from an advert in Kerrang and came with a tiny practice amp (probably 1W) whose tone can best be described as 'a bee in a jam jar'.

So @JookyChap, we both started with plywood crap and we've both now built our own guitars. Coincidence?

@DiscoStu You are probably right - I think I knew from the start that surely I could make something better than that. I'd forgotten the amp - but I think the see-thru 'gig bag' was probably the cruelest part

RedRabbit

I started out on one of these

http://i.ebayimg.com/t/Kay-Guitar-1970-Vintage-Strat-/00/s/MTAwMFg3NTA=/z/upMAAOxy4t1Skn7r/$_58.JPG

I wasn't great but was enough to get me going.

After a few months my brother lent me his Fender Bullet which remained my only guitar until I bought an Ibanez RG at uni

http://www.vintage-guitars.se/1981_Fender_Bullet_103711.jpg

Had to hand it back a few years ago and I keep toying with the idea of picking up another one.

Lukeage

I had one of these (except it was 3 single-coils and the scratch plate was white as opposed to the pearl on display here...) 

But essentially it was the same guitar.

Nice finish, actually. The finish is very similar. I don't know what the bodies are actually made of if you can still get them but the grains in the wood usually looked pretty darn good through the finish on all the examples I've seen (with the bursts anyway).

I had meant to fix it up really (wanted to get some new machine heads and stuff and make a bit of a parts-a-caster out of it but it got to a "can't be bothered" stage and the remains got disposed of)  

RocknRollDave

I had (and still have, in fact) a 1989 Squier Strat.

In red, maple neck...I don't think I need to post a photo, you guys know what these things look like.


As starter electrics go, don't think I could have done much better, really.
I could never get it to stay in tune if i used the vibrato, which is probably why my style developed to prefer hard-tails - and why I block off the trems on any trem-equipped guitar I have (save for the Bigsby on my Gretsch)

More user error than dodgy guitar, of course, and if I knew then what I know now, I could set the guitar up a hell of a lot better.. On the rare occasion I do pick it up, it does feel like the neck is ridiculously flimsy mind and it never wants to stay in tune. I reckon a decent bit of TLC would sort it out, but that's on my long-term to do list.

dafuzz

A Fender Strat MIM around '93 I think - no need for a pic I reckon. Two tone sunburst, rosewood fretboard, still have it but I need to replace some of the lectrics