I'm an inexperienced guitarist currently learning on a single coil Godin Session.
I've recently started having nonsensical urges to buy another guitar, specifically a humbuckerry one. This has been prompted by hearing this sort of thing:
Whilst I recognise that me buying a Les Paul is rather akin to a car enthusiast without a driving licence buying a Ferrari could I please ask you to park your ridicule for a moment and let me have your thoughts on how I would go about choosing a guitar that would give me the foundations to achieve the sort of tone on the video.
Having been through the whole cycle of buying a beginner machine, selling and progressing, selling and progressing with cameras, I would very much like to save time, aggravation and ultimately money by just getting a decent guitar first time. Here is the photographic equivalent of what I'm trying to avoid:
I have tried some guitars in stores but i) I'm a little (a lot) intimidated by the environment; and ii) don't understand enough about tone to understand the relative contributions of the amp, the guitar and the player. If a player like me picked up the gear of the guy in video, would the tone sound even vaguely similar?
Please can you advise me on getting a Les Paul or similar that I can grow into and with which I can be pretty sure that any poorness of tone is down to me and not the instrument. If I get a good guitar, I've nowwhere to hide. My budget would be up to around £2k.
Many thanks
(Ducks to avoid incoming abuse)
Comments
There are loads of Les Paul options within your budget, and many people who know more about them than me, who will be along any time now...but a Gibson Les Paul Standard - or Traditional if you like the weight - will do you fine, if you want to skip the < £1K category and get the real thing.
You could easily get a Custom Shop jobby second hand too, but I'd be spending a good chunk of your money on an amp (assuming you need one).
With Les Pauls there are two main ones. 60s neck which is fairly thin and wide, and 50s neck which is wide and quite deep. Your first step, if you want a Les Paul, is to work out which of the two you find most comfortable. They really do feel significantly different and people who like one don't always like the other.
Any decent les paul (either by gibson or by one of the good quality copy companies- e.g. japanese-made Tokais and the like) will get a tone like that if you can play like that and use a suitable amp (I'd say valve ideally, but even in that vid it's a modeller, so even that mightn't be super-important... though I still say go valve if you can at all and don't have to play at whisper volume all the time).
EDIT: I don't know anything about cameras. >:D< I suspect a valve amp versus a non-valve amp is a bit like the difference between an SLR and a point-and-shoot camera, but I could be completely wrong on that.
The pod hd300 can clearly help get the tone you're hearing in the clip, which sounds like a lightish overdrive with some reverb to me. Wouldn't take too much from your budget.
I'm guessing that your Godin is already a pretty decent guitar compared to what many people learn on, and spending around £500 on a used twin humbucker type guitar will get you something of at least comparable quality.
Then you'll have plenty of budget left for ongoing gas, such as a tele, SG etc etc...
I personally don't think you need to spend 2K to get a sweet tone, no matter on your experience level - but if you do want buy a dream guitar then don't let anybody tell you that you shouldn't!
I suspect he would sound very similar using a less expensive guitar.
That said, if you want to spend some serious money on a better guitar, I see no reason why you shouldn't.
I hope this doesn't sound patronising, but if you lived in my part of the country, I'd be happy to accompany you on a guitar buying expedition. Maybe a forumite nearer to you could assist?
WTF?
For example, if I want a tele, I'll buy a decent tele. And play it and be happy with it. That's not to say I'll necessarily stop shopping- I might decide, a while down the line, that I'd like a LP, say. But I won't buy that tele and then decide I need a very slightly better tele etc. etc.