My first electric for 45 years! The right choice?

Steve922

   So, I've just bought my first electric guitar since retiring from gigging at the grand old age of 19. It was my grandson's fault. He wanted a drum kit and whilst looking for the ideal kit, I had to walk past rows and rows of lovely strings and a strange kind of desire just happened.

    Searching the Internet, I decided on a Squier Affinity Strat + Fender Frontman 15 amp 'starter pack'.   After reading and heeding lots of advice here and elsewhere, I've ended up buying a used but good condition 2-year-old Yamaha Pacifica 112 from a dealer (Hardy Smith in Sutton-in-Ashfield.)  Tomorrow, I intend to order a Blackstar Fly 3 with the extra box.  At £145 for the Pacifica + cable and £80 for the amp, it comes out at a shade less than the Squier pack.

    The gear is for bedroom use only unless/until my grandson takes to the drumkit, then I intend to by a more suitable amp to play along with him - again bedroom only.

    A good choice? The right route? A bad choice? Any comments will be most welcome.

guitarcookie1

Can't go wrong with a Pacifica & the Fly sounds good too

bazxkr

Seems a good fit for a starter set up...pacificas are highly thought of for the money and the fly 3 is an excellent practice amp. I have the fly stack myself. Might be worth seeing what is out there for £80 or so that has more built in effects possibilities like the Fender Mustang 1 or 2 for example and more bite. The great thing which the fly 3 is that it sounds good and takes up no space which is great for bedroom plus you can put yr ipod or aux device through it and use it as speakers for music or backing tracks or use headphones through it. Great pcs of kit for the money the Fly 3 setup. The gain and delay for me are more than acceptable on a little fella and the sound is much bigger than you would expect

kjdowd

That will all do the job rather nicely. Happy playing. 

skunkwerx

If you were looking at blackstar practice amps, the Id:core ones might also be worth a little look, as coda music currently have the id core 10 at £73! 

http://www.coda-music.com/blackstar-core-p-18240.html

I used to have one, then got the 20 for the added footswitch ability for bedroom use. Some cool lil stereo effects built in, with a tuner too. I believe the 10 has a built in tuner as well. 

The fly 3 gets a good rep though, but I dont know much about them to compare! 

Thought that may be of interest though man, happy playing! 

McToot

I'd have a Pacifica over an Affinity any day of the week. I don't know so much about the little Blackstars, but I'd say that you're good to go. Have fun with the grandson...!

Sporky

You made a fine choice.

DrBob

Yep, I'd have to agree that the Pacifica and the Fly 3 will be a great starting point..

Although if you intend spending any time around these parts it will probably be a starting point, things tend to escalate awfully quickly round here....

mburekenge

Awesome! Enjoy getting back to the guitar

BintyTwanger77

Wonderful to read this. Hope you're having a blast playing again.

scrumhalf

Welcome back to the brotherhood.

You do know that it won't end with just the Pacifica and the Fly3, don't you?

slacker

It wont end with a Pacifica but it is a good choice. Both my of nephew in law and sort of son in law have Pacifica's and strangely they are both white with maple necks (the guitar not the in laws). I've had a tootle on both and they are fine guitars.

Also strangely they both have Yamaha FG acoustics, so if you are looking for some folk music action...

BRISTOL86

I've only had it a week but I bloody love my Pacifica and it's 10+ years old. 

BRISTOL86

If you can stretch the amp budget to a used THR10 amp (£150-175) you won't be disappointed. It's a truly amazing bit of kit. 

Steve922

Thanks for the welcomes and comments chaps.

The Mustang and Core amps are what put me off the Squier Kit with the simple Frontman amp. I actually had a tryout of the Core ID-10 amp and was amazed at the volume, quality and all the effects in such a small (and light) amp! In my gigging days, all amps were just simple valve amps, big and heavy. Effects were limited to a fuzz box and a Wah-Wah pedal! Pretty much the only other thing in general use was an echo chamber; yes an endless loop of tape running past a record and several playback heads.  Now I see we can get all this and a lot more in a tiny box and costing peanuts!

At the moment, I'm still with the Fly 3 'stack' mainly due to its size but I have a couple more hours of Internet browsing before I need to order so....

My first worry is that when my grandson is a fan of Ozzy, Iron Maiden, Slipknot, etc. and when he spots the electric guitar, he'll be expecting to hear some instant heavy metal thrash and a shredding session which is quite different to the Country Bluegrass I'm more familiar with.  :-)   Now I'm on a search for some quick to learn stuff of those genres - any suggestions welcome :-)

Rocker

The Yamaha is a good choice, I had one - I gave it to a guitar playing friend. Get yourself an electronic tuner, clip on to the headstock type is fine. Spend more time playing than tuning up. Enjoy and welcome to the fold...

ennspek

Out if the two you've definitely made the right choice in my opinion.
Enjoy them!

skunkwerx

Steve922 said:

My first worry is that when my grandson is a fan of Ozzy, Iron Maiden, Slipknot, etc. and when he spots the electric guitar, he'll be expecting to hear some instant heavy metal thrash and a shredding session which is quite different to the Country Bluegrass I'm more familiar with.  :-)   Now I'm on a search for some quick to learn stuff of those genres - any suggestions welcome :-)

Check out guitarlessons365 on youtube. He has a fair amount of full song lessons that cover a wide range of music.

justinguitar too, but I've found Carls of guitarlessons365 pretty awesome
for the more thrash or metal stuff! 

BRISTOL86

Steve - take a serious look at the THR amp - it's absolutely bloody amazing. I'm so glad I got it instead of the Fly and other small amps that I considered. 

The tonal variety that you can get out of it is absolutely staggering. And the software you can use to fine tune the tone is brilliant. 

They have a very small footprint but have a fantastic sound and go much much louder than you would want in a bedroom but still sounds amazing at low volume and through headphones. 

The Aux In (which has a selerately controllable output volume to the guitar output volume) means it's a doddle to play backing tracks etc through it and get the volume just right to match your playing volume. Also means you can hear both your guitar and whatever you're playing on (for example) a laptop at the same time through headphones which was a big plus for me. 

Also by hooking up the laptop to it and using GarageBand I've been able to essentially use it as a loop pedal, making a recording in GarageBand and then playing back through the aux in. Magic! Also means you can have a seperate tone for each part of your loop. 

I've barely scratched the surface of GarageBand but the direct USB recording is a massive massive plus for me as a beginner. 

As a bedroom only player (and likely to be for some considerable years....) I can't imagine what else I could want an amp to do that this doesn't. 

rivercider

I have to second the Yamaha THR10 recommendation.  I currently have the THR10X model and have owned the THR10C as well, I'm thinking of selling the X to buy the C again and/or a plain THR10 - they're great amps.  The X is ok but has a little more gain than I truly need, hence will probably sell it on eventually, but I want at least a couple of these amps, one upstairs for the bedroom and one in the lounge (where the wife is actually OK with it being on a bookshelf in plain view) - the concept and execution on these boxes is second to none and whilst I do also own a Bassbreaker combo for when I want a bigger sound, 90% of the time the little Yamaha gets used in preference.  I only sold the 10C when a fit of GAS overtook me and I had to grab a Baja tele just before the recent Fender price increases, so money was tight, but I will at some stage want it back as I'm missing the sounds on that little amp more than I thought I would....

BRISTOL86

Yea I meant to say mine is a 10C but I'm sure I'd have been equally happy with the normal 10.