MasterKtulu
New member
The (Long) Tale Of My First Electric Guitar…
When I first started playing guitar at the age of 13 (back in good old 1991), I started with my father’s old Vibra acoustic. It played horrible with an inch high string action and probably sounded worse than what my untrained ears could detect at the time. But what I really wanted to play was the electric guitar, just like all my guitar heroes were playing in there music videos on TV (You know, back in the good old days of when they actually played music videos on TV). So my father made me a deal; If I stuck with playing guitar for a whole year, he would buy me an reasonably priced electric guitar and amp.
So I played that old Vibra acoustic till I got blisters on my fingers, and then I continued playing until my blisters bleed… I did this for a year, then I went to my father to remind him of our deal. So he tell me if I can find a guitar and amp for under 300$ (Canadian), he would buy them for me (For our American friends, that was about +/- 200$ US, witch even back in 1992 wasn’t a lot for a guitar and amp). I lived in a small village in the middle of nowhere and the closest town’s guitar shop had about enough room for 15 guitars and 5 amps… And all of witch cost more than 300$ for there cheapest guitar and amp. Then I hear about an older guy who lived near by that had a guitar and amp that he wasn’t playing anymore. So I call him up and ask how much he would sell them to me. He says 350$ but he’s a nice guy and let me haggled him down to 275$ for both, with 25$ left for strings and picks…
So here I am, 13 years old and knowing nothing about electric guitars and I just bought a new to me electric guitar and amp for 275$ without even trying them out. The amp was an Aria 1x8” transistor combo (Yeah it sounded as bad as you can imagine), and the guitar was a single pickup white Ibanez. I would learn years later that it was a 1986 Roadstar II Series RG110WH that looked something like this.
Not an actual picture of my old guitar, but looked something like this (Although I had to modify the picture a bit to make it resemble my old Ibanez)
I owned that guitar for the next two years and simply fell in love with it. I thought it sounded great and the neck felt especially great in my small hands and was really easy to play after playing that cheap acoustic for a year. The only thing I didn’t like about it was that it only had one pickup, but was content with it anyway. For those two years I was perfectly happy with my white Ibanez and didn’t even think about getting a better guitar (Although I did buy a better amp as soon as I could). Then I started noticing than some of the strings started buzzing a little bit, then a bit more, then more than I could endure. And although I loved my Ibanez, I decided to sell it for 225$ to fund a guitar that didn’t buzz (If I had known then that the frets could be fixed or even replaced, I know I would still have that guitar). So I sold it and started playing the old Vibra acoustic again until I could save enough money to buy another Ibanez. So months later when I was able to gather around 400$ I went to buy the best brand new Ibanez I could afford… A lovely 1994 Ibanez RX170EG.
Not an actual picture of my old guitar, but looked something like this.
But although my new Ibanez looked a lot cooler than my old one and had a few more pickups, something about it felt wrong… The neck didn’t feel as good, the action was higher and although it had more pickups, none of them sounded as good as the other single one. I sold that guitar too six months later to finance a better guitar again but I never forgot about my first, that one had been special…
When I first started playing guitar at the age of 13 (back in good old 1991), I started with my father’s old Vibra acoustic. It played horrible with an inch high string action and probably sounded worse than what my untrained ears could detect at the time. But what I really wanted to play was the electric guitar, just like all my guitar heroes were playing in there music videos on TV (You know, back in the good old days of when they actually played music videos on TV). So my father made me a deal; If I stuck with playing guitar for a whole year, he would buy me an reasonably priced electric guitar and amp.
So I played that old Vibra acoustic till I got blisters on my fingers, and then I continued playing until my blisters bleed… I did this for a year, then I went to my father to remind him of our deal. So he tell me if I can find a guitar and amp for under 300$ (Canadian), he would buy them for me (For our American friends, that was about +/- 200$ US, witch even back in 1992 wasn’t a lot for a guitar and amp). I lived in a small village in the middle of nowhere and the closest town’s guitar shop had about enough room for 15 guitars and 5 amps… And all of witch cost more than 300$ for there cheapest guitar and amp. Then I hear about an older guy who lived near by that had a guitar and amp that he wasn’t playing anymore. So I call him up and ask how much he would sell them to me. He says 350$ but he’s a nice guy and let me haggled him down to 275$ for both, with 25$ left for strings and picks…
So here I am, 13 years old and knowing nothing about electric guitars and I just bought a new to me electric guitar and amp for 275$ without even trying them out. The amp was an Aria 1x8” transistor combo (Yeah it sounded as bad as you can imagine), and the guitar was a single pickup white Ibanez. I would learn years later that it was a 1986 Roadstar II Series RG110WH that looked something like this.
Not an actual picture of my old guitar, but looked something like this (Although I had to modify the picture a bit to make it resemble my old Ibanez)
I owned that guitar for the next two years and simply fell in love with it. I thought it sounded great and the neck felt especially great in my small hands and was really easy to play after playing that cheap acoustic for a year. The only thing I didn’t like about it was that it only had one pickup, but was content with it anyway. For those two years I was perfectly happy with my white Ibanez and didn’t even think about getting a better guitar (Although I did buy a better amp as soon as I could). Then I started noticing than some of the strings started buzzing a little bit, then a bit more, then more than I could endure. And although I loved my Ibanez, I decided to sell it for 225$ to fund a guitar that didn’t buzz (If I had known then that the frets could be fixed or even replaced, I know I would still have that guitar). So I sold it and started playing the old Vibra acoustic again until I could save enough money to buy another Ibanez. So months later when I was able to gather around 400$ I went to buy the best brand new Ibanez I could afford… A lovely 1994 Ibanez RX170EG.
Not an actual picture of my old guitar, but looked something like this.
But although my new Ibanez looked a lot cooler than my old one and had a few more pickups, something about it felt wrong… The neck didn’t feel as good, the action was higher and although it had more pickups, none of them sounded as good as the other single one. I sold that guitar too six months later to finance a better guitar again but I never forgot about my first, that one had been special…
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