How old were you when you picked your first guitar up and what kind was it?

[stingx]

1981 when I was 14. The very first guitar was a Cort Les Paul Jr. copy that my father picked up somewhere for about $50. It was god awefull to play - the action was extremely high and the fret ends were quite sharp. I played that thing constantly though. I think I traded it for a Les Paul Custom knockoff. It wasn't until my 16th birthday that my dad surprised me with an '83 Kramer Pacer Imperial. The first quality guitar I owned. I took a trip with him to the factory in Neptune, NJ a month or so after getting the guitar because I wanted something changed on it (can't remember now) and ended up meeting Eddie Van Halen there. Very brief meeting where he spoke a few words over the duration of a cigarette. I recall him being quite pleasant.

 

[Robert]

I think the first electric I ever tried was a Cort Les Paul copy. I was 12 or 13. My buddy had one, and I wanted one so bad after that. He could also play better than me so I was determined to practice and get better than him...

 

[stingx]

I think the first electric I ever tried was a Cort Les Paul copy. I was 12 or 13. My buddy had one, and I wanted one so bad after that. He could also play better than me so I was determined to practice and get better than him...

You would still sound great on the biggest POS guitar around.

 

[Fingers]

How old was I........?

Well, I remember being in a lovely warm, dark place......and I found that there was a cord coming out of my tummy...and if I pulled it tight and plucked it.....it made a note. After a while I could play a tune on it.........

Then one day I was grabbed by my ankles, hauled out into a very bright place, hung upside down and someone smacked me on the arse..................

 

[Justaguyin_nc]

I dunno how young I first tried... 6-8 with a Woolworth Acoustic.. very first then put down.
At 46-47 got a Sigma Acoustic and been trying ever since. First Electric was a Epiphone Strat Copy.


I am in a fickled state of mind...
How young can they be to learn or hold one...
I always have told the girlfriend, When the Kids and Grandbabies are around they can do as they please
with my guitars etc...
it's all just material things and might spark an interest for them.


Well, My Jimmie Vaughan is a pretty nice guitar that I really enjoy..
But it seems this little one who has been bottle feed from birth, has decided she enjoys it to.

I like to leave the guitar in the stand to grab at will so I keep practicing.
However, although this is just a material Item...
I think she is getting overly excited lately on her new found love of guitar playing.
As you can see from the picture.. she is really starting to
get a grip on the barr chord thing...
She likes the higher end of the neck much better.

Question:
should I make her wear the shoulder strap this early in learning..
or let her do as she wishes?

 

[R_of_G]

my cat likes to climb up and sit on my amp when i have all my stuff piled up by the door ready to go out and play. unfortuantely by the time i grab a camera he is usally gone.

 

[Big_Rob]

My first guitar was an old Multivox Strad-O-Lin I bought back in the day for 30.00 when I was 13

 

[havenfun0001]

Great question. I was 15 and had played drums for 1.5 years. My mate introduced me to hsi friend that had his dads 72 American Strat and a 69? Rickenbacker bass that we used to jam on. Talk about spoiled! The strat has been gigged and re fretted so many times now that it cannot handle a new fret job and the neck needs to be replaced, or it has to be retired to keep it from mods. My mate is now a drummer in a hot band and is saving enough to get another guitar to compare as he can't go to a cheap copy after being raised on such a fine axe. I don't know what he will get, but he is looking at saving a few grand before he walks into a music store as a guitarist again. He is a Fender man and now realises how lucky he was. So do I.

 

[ibanezjunkie]

erm, i think i was about 7?

played a classical guitar my cousin gave to my dad.

been heavily influenced into blues by my cousin, and his USA strat that he never plays any more (he plays a washburn acoustic mostly...)

 

[Auriemma]

I was 6. My elementary school principal told my parents I had to much energy and I should have a hobby (yes, I was THAT much trouble). My grandfather said he would take care of it. We went to a music store (under a furniture store and looked around.

I came home with a 3/4 scale Kingston Folk guitar and lessons. I still have it in my closet. How I played it is beyond me.

I got my first electric (Toyota Barney Kessel semi-hollow) a year later after my instructor said I needed a better guitar.

I have been playing ever since (38 years)... and still SUCK! :thwap:

 

[ShootTheGlass]

28, which was last year. It was a PRS Tremonti SE, which I still have and now has PRS USA pickups and a push pull pot.

 

[djmcconnell]

When I was about 3 or 4, my mom let me play her guitar laying across my lap. In 3rd grade, I got my own no-name classical guitar and took lessons for about 2 years from a cool hippie guy named Michele.

After that, I pretty much only tinkered with the guitar until my wife bought me my Takamine in 1984 so I could sing and play at a friend's wedding (the Paul Stookey "Wedding Song." Yecch!) I put a pickup on it and it's my only acoustic guitar.

I only took the guitar out once or twice a year after that to let our kids play and to noodle around.

I started playing again in earnest almost 3 years ago when my youngest went off to college. I've been playing constantly since then, taking lessons on and off (back on now) and playing with our church worship band.

I love the guitar — it's officially my passion.

 

[street music]

I'm too old to remember that, I was very young , it was an acoustic of some sort that's been about 47 years ago.

 

[markb]

I was about 13 and had a fried who had several guitars. The one I made noises on most was a Klira strat-like instrument with a strange red vinyl finish. In fact it was more like a cheaper Hofner Galaxie.
I got my own first guitar for my 14th birthday, a horrid Jedson tele look-alike. http://jedsonguitars.net/ scroll down to "Tele-style B" to see one in its full horrific glory.

 

[Perfect Stranger]

I was probably 14 and it was a Silvertone and the case was an amp.

 

[EmmaLovesJak]

For my 14th birthday my mum hunted down the cheapest guitar she could find on the internet, I played it without knowing what the hell I was doing for a while, and didnt touch it again until about a month ago. God I can't wait 'till I get a new guitar.. :S

 

[ibanezjunkie]

For my 14th birthday my mum hunted down the cheapest guitar she could find on the internet, I played it without knowing what the hell I was doing for a while, and didnt touch it again until about a month ago. God I can't wait 'till I get a new guitar.. :S

you mean you didnt touch it again till i let you play on my gear and you want to get into it now?

=]

ahh im getting you your new amp for your bday =] cus im so awesome to you.

 

[just strum]

I took a stab at it when I was about 12 or 13 with a guitar my parents purchased from Western Auto (it was more on line with a hardware store)

It looked just like this.

Equal it weight to this

 

[hubberjub]

I started playing my dad's Yamaha classical when I was 11. I bought my first electric at 13. It was a Series 10 Strat copy that I bought from this 16 year old skater kid for $50. I played it for a year until it was stolen (by the skater kid I bought it from).

 

[mapka]

1969 or 70 Framus Acoustic (still have). I was 8 and influenced by my fathers music taste (country) and more specific, Johnny Cash. Got the guitar from mom and dad for Christmas. First teacher was very good except for the dreaded Mel Bay torture! Got my first electric from my parents a year later. Heit with a Checkmate amp (still have also). I had found The Doors! Went away to school in 74 and the playing fell silent till the late 80's. Got the bug again, bought a 1979 ES335 and got acquainted to the blues. Been playing ever since!

 

[riverrick]

Think I was 11 or 12. Had a plastic Roy Rogers guitar I think it had nylon strings. Then one year my Dad got me a cheapie electric (Sorrento). I was hooked after that.

 

[jpfeifer]

I'm always late to these threads ....

I was 13 when I first started playing. My first guitar (that I owned) was a Fender acoustic. It was a crappy guitar but I played it all the time. I also borrowed guitars from other people. The school where I went would lend out classical guitars over the summer break. I did that a few times.

Then I saved up and bought a used Ibanez Les Paul copy after I had played for a couple of years. It was my first electric. I played that guitar all through high school. It was also a crappy guitar. It wasn't one of the really "good" Les Paul copies that Ibanez had made in the early 70s.

Come to think of it. I owned low-budget guitars until I graduated from college. This is when I bought my Martin and my Fender Eric Clapton model. These were the first "good" guitars I owned.

The one lesson I learned is that you will never regret buying quality guitars. But I do have some low budget ones that I regret owning, they seemed like a good idea at the time

--Jim

 

[M29]

Hey K! I was 16 and the git was a 59 I think, Les Paul Junior.

M

 

[Eric]

Well, as long as the thread is being revived anyway...

I think I was about 15 or 16, and I found my mom's old classical guitar somewhere. Man did that thing suck! I kid you not, it must have had about 1/2" clearance at the 12th fret.

I tried to play whatever I could on that thing, mostly my favorite rock tunes at the time (on a classical guitar...). I bought an acoustic through a mail-order catalog that was 36" from end to end and had horrific fretwork. Somewhere in there my parents bought me a Fender acoustic for my birthday, which was my only guitar until I was ~24. Its primary function involved sitting in corners.

I bought a Squier strat off of ebay, started playing a bunch more, bought a Seagull, bought an Agile, sold the Squier, and I was off to the races. That probably started around age 26.

Wow...5 years gone since then??

 

[Katastrophe]

I got hooked on the guitar by looking in the Sears catalog when I was about 8 years old. All those Strat, Explorer, and LP copies!

My Dad bought me a little Hondo nylon string acoustic that same Christmas. I got bored and didn't touch it for a long time, because I couldn't make sense of the instructional books at the time (especially with no instruction).

Fast forward to age 15. I ran into more people who played, and had a buddy at school that had a Les Paul who let me play, and showed me a few things. My Dad had a buddy who played in his own country band professionally, and he showed me my first chords, using the Roy Clark Guitar Method book.

It was all downhill from there. My mom got me a Strat copy from the Sears catalog, along with a solid state amph that weighed a ton, and had a switch for fuzz tone.

I don't have the old Hondo anymore. I had put regular acoustic strings on instead of nylons, and pretty much destroyed it over the years.

 

[guitarhack]

About 15 when my parents bought me a cheapo no-name acoustic guitar with baling wire for strings and that good high action I've seen mentioned above. Talk about callouses! I eventully saved up some money and bought a Harmony Sovereign when I was 18. That was my only guitar until about ten years ago when I traded my truck for some cash and and a couple of electric guitars and an amp. Then I bought my Taylor 310 and pretty much retired the Harmony.

 

[Kazz]

Well since we are digging up threads from a year ago I will chime in. I was about 7 and my Grandmother bought me a really cheap red acoustic guitar. My aunt put me through classical lessons for a couple of years. I hated it. I wanted to play like Ace Frehley. I still have the guitar under the bed. Thank goodness for my Washburn D46 because it is so much easier to play than that old piece of crap.

 

[Monkus]

Holy resurrection Batman ! I was 13/14 and I had to play for a chick that had to sing for a wedding with guitar accompaniment. She was hot though much older so I learnt Peter, Paul and Mary's "the wedding song'. Twas on a palmer acoustic nylon that my dad had gotten for Christmas one year.

 

[otaypanky]

Does this count? 1958, 6 years old, a Gene Autry plastic guitar made by Emenee. It had a block with buttons on it that you attached to the neck with rubber bands. When you pressed on a button it fretted a chord.
Then for my 10th birthday my folks rented a Stella acoustic for me that looked like the one in the next photo. They also gave me the gift of some guitar lessons ~ gifts I will always treasure :thankyou

 

[deeaa]

I *think* I must have been 15 and my two first guitars I built myself.

Here's how it looked:

I later built a black V shaped guitar as well, sadly no pictures remain I think. It was a very ambitious build as well, I built it hollow like an acoustic with thick maple sides and I forget what for tops...light as a feather, but those home-made birch necks sadly had no truss rod so it was impossible to get them to play very well.

I actually didn't know _anything_ about playing a guitar when I built my first one, I had never even tried one in my hand properly at that stage...so it was a complete learning experience.

My first 'real' guitar was a horrid 'Musima' branded sunburst strat copy.