What was your first electric guitar?

[MikeW]

I'd been bumping around on my Dad's old nylon string acoustic for a few months, and so my parents got me a1982 Squire Strat and a Gorilla amp as a Christmas present. It was a Blackie replica and sounded great for the level of parts that were in it. I've been a Strat guy ever since then really.

There were several of us in high school that played and we had a tendency to swap guitars, so I got to play an LP Junior, an SG, my Strat, and a couple off-brand hollow bodies. I had a good set of tools back then so I wound up being the go-to guy to fix or set up guitars in the group too. Fun times.

 

[supertruper1988]

This was my first guitar. My dad also plays and had built a few guitars so I learned on his guitars then we built this one together for my 16th birthday.

https://imgur.com/ZZrgTIq

 

[NedRyerson]

Mine was just your standard Squier Stratocaster starter pack, Black with white pickguard, maple neck/fretboard. Wasn't anything fancy, but as a young kid it was like "Hey! This looks like Claptons." Loved that thing. After about 4 years of daily practice with that, and saving money up once I was old enough to get a job at the local grocery, I ordered from Warmoth and put together the Strat I still play today.

As for why Stratocasters, I have a vivid memory of that. When I started 4th grade at a new school, the music teacher had a Sonic Blue Fender Stratocaster in the classroom that he would sometimes play on for us if we were well behaved. I loved that guitar at first sight. The whole aesthetic of it just... spoke to me.

Amazing how these childhood influences alter the trajectory of one's life.

My 2nd grade teacher played the piano, so she had one in her room and every day, she'd play and we'd sing songs. And that was outside of the formal music class. In 3rd grade, we had the option of participating in instrumental music, so I wanted to play cello. My teacher said "no." Cello would cut into library time. so I had to go with violin instead.

Fast forward decades later and I work in public K-12 now. While "library" is now known as "media center," looking from the curriculum and standards point of view, I still don't understand the rationale of why I had to go to library class in place of more music instruction. I already read voraciously at that age and learning the Dewey Decimal system was not exactly a one-class-and-done experience; I had been going to "library" for two years before that and would continue to do so while I was in elementary school.

But anyway....I didn't last long in violin, either. About two years.

 

[mayfly]

I had a black Harmony les paul copy which looked at lot like this one:

I didn't appreciate just how good an instrument this was.

 

[stratamania]

As I recall, my first electric was a second hand Jedson Tele type, in cream. It was not long before I had dressed the end of the frets with emery boards that were in the house intended for nails. Also it was taken apart fairly frequently for new paint jobs, I can remember it being blue and then gold, back to a white and then I made a new body out of cedar for it with hand tools.

 

[averageG]

Neck said Sorina Telecaster by Gibson. Still have it somewhere. Neck was bowed like mad and no way to adjust it that I saw. I've tried finding info on them but haven't found much yet.

 

[bagman67]

First electric was one of these here Ibanez Roadstar RS315 jobs. I bought in Houston in 1986, along with a Peavey Backstage Plus amp.

This guitar coupled with the cruddy little amp was a fine introduction to what Zappa called "the blasphemous honk." Took me a few years to figure out that MOAR DISTOARTION does not mean better sound, but even so, the gritty scuzz of that amp was a fun noise to make.

 

[MoreSpaceEcho]

What was the cheapest Kramer circa 1985, the Focus or the Striker? I can't remember which, but that was it. Black, one angled humbucker. Don't remember anything else about it but I played that for a year then traded up for whichever was the second cheapest. That one was white, HSS. Don't remember anything else about that one either. After those it was a succession of Ibanez RGs. I really liked those a lot, which is interesting because whenever I pick up an Ibanez now the necks feel sooo thin and flat and uncomfortable I don't know how anyone who doesn't have giant Steve Vai hands plays one.

 

[Wizard of Wailing]

My first is seen in my profile pic. Essentially a Cort (without the name brand, had no name on it actually), 3/4 size black S style with 2 single coils and a hardtail. Got that and a used Peavey amp for Christmas '88. Hated that amp for weeks until I realized pulling out a knob would give me the sweet distortion I craved. First song I learned was Devil Inside by INXS. Tried to learn Way Cool Jr. by RATT next, but that didn't go well. After a couple years of practice my parents took me to the local store and let me pick out whatever guitar I wanted. Came out with a midnight blue Tele.

 

[Scab Pickens]

I don't have any actual photos of it, but ... it was this one (I'm pretty sure) ...



If I remember correctly, it was about $400-450 range new. Add the 10w Crate amp and it was the best Christmas present of my life! Played it for a bit learning standard "hair rock" riffs of the time. Then I got into thrash and punk and painted the pearl pickguard neon green and stuck some "A.S.D." lettering on it (Atomic Slaves of Death - my 9th grade first band project - D.R.I., Ramones, Dead Kennedys, etc.).

Eventually cleaned it up and traded it in on a wine red Les Paul Studio. I could go on and on from there ... uggh. So many guitars I wish I still owned .

 

[ScottDR]

My first guitar was a Fender Mustang with a Gibson amp. Both have long been gone. Out of a feeling of nostalgia in my old age, I just ordered a Warmoth Mustang body and neck.

 

[Tipperman]

My first guitar was a Fender Mustang with a Gibson amp. Both have long been gone. Out of a feeling of nostalgia in my old age, I just ordered a Warmoth Mustang body and neck.

I have been considering a Mustang build of late; hope to see this posted here. Mustangs are HECKA cool.

 

[musicispeace]

My first guitar was a sunburst Ibanez ST-50. I didn't change a thing in the time I owned it. I had wanted a black Ibanez LP copy but the lawsuit put an end to that by the time I had money for a guitar. After I quit for several years and got back into things I started with a secondhand Yamaha Pacific but once I was hooked I ordered the parts from Warmoth for a black stratocaster with maple neck/rosewood fretboard and did it as HSS with Klein pickups.

 

[rauchman]

In 1984 or so, I was 14/15 and my aunt had gotten me a $125 Vantage bass. I was a huge Beatles fan and loved Paul McCartney

Then, I got into the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin and wanted to play guitar. My buddy and also budding musician, wanted to play bass. His cousin had "acquired" a 1975 Gibson LP Deluxe routed for HB's.

My buddy and I swapped the Vantage bass, for the LPD, and the rest is history. I still have that LP, haven't played it a while, and recently pulled it out. Tonally, it is different from the '92 LPC I had purchased in '92 and has since been my # 1.

For the '75 LPD, a 3/4" of treble side binding on the neck was broken off around the 9th fret, when a friend had dropped the guitar against a corner of furniture. When I was 16 or so, I sanded off the lacquer on the back of the neck for speedier neck travel. I also saw that guitar fall of out it's case and bounce down a flight of metal stairs on the headstock (have to love the Nolin era LP's, with a 3pc maple neck and volute), and aside from chips in the finish on the top of the head stock, no other ills occurred. A long winded way to say, I beat the hell out of that guitar. By the way, the '92 LPC, using a 1 pc mahogany neck without volume, had the headstock crack 3 times from, ....not having a 3pc maple neck with volute.

Since building 3 Warmoths and doing my own fret work, I'm going to attempt to change the frets on this guitar and fix the binding. The frets on it, are the true super low "jumbo" for what Gibson used to use eons ago. Since the value of it is so compromised already, I may also do my own recontouring around the neck heel to make upper fret access a little easier....crazy, I know.

 

[Joepro182]

A 2005 Epiphone Les Paul Custom

 

[rockandroller]

My first electric guitar was a "Toledo" brand MIJ bolt-neck 335-style thing, which I bought off an eight-fingered guy who was trying to flog it at a local used guitar store I was window-shopping at. I quickly sold it at a profit to a school mate who "had to have it" and invested the proceeds into a pretty nice no-name MIJ bolt-neck Beatle Bass copy.

My first guitar obsession was a pawnshop find a few months later, it was a MIJ "Pyramid" branded copy of an EKO 500. Very good copy with the vinyl back, the piping between the body halves, mutiple pickups with a bank of pushbuttons. It had a Tiesco-style 4+2 headstock and was gold sparkle front with the diamond-patterned MOT back.
I was lusting after it for some time and bought it for myself a few days before Christmas (I was about 14 years old but had some spare cash from my summer job still...) I secretly took it BACK to the pawn shop the very next day after my brother revealed to me that my parents had bought me a brand new "National" tele-deluxe copy in Walnut ("Mocha")

Pyramid had body just like this, but Teisco-style headstock... https://www.vintageandrare.com/product/Eko-700-MUSEUM-QUALITY-1963-Gold-Sparkle-75457
(In retrospect, it may have well been an EKO body mated with a Pyramid-branded Teisco neck...)

 

[Floyd_Argus]

The first two years i learned to play in the mid 1980s, my Dad let me use his Eagle brand dreadnought style acoustic and his mid-1980s Telecaster that featured a hideous looking finish color: metallic flake, rust-magenta type color hue. Anybody remember these? Both guitars were fine as far as playability. I was only allowed to use them at home, i.e. not take them out of the house.

After a couple years of playing and taking lessons, I asked for and got an electric guitar for Christmas. It was a mid-to-late 80s blue colored Ovation Ultra GS, which featured a Strat body shape but no pickguard and rear mounted controls and pickups, two feedback prone humbuckers, a maple neck and maple fretboard, a Kahler locking trem, and a locking nut on a headatock with six-line tuners design. The guitar was a decent player but I was so disappointed inside when I saw it that morning because my father had taken my guitar shopping a week earlier and asked me what kind of features I wanted in a guitar, and this Ovation had so few of what I had mentioned (e.g. black finish but if not that, then at least not blue cause i hate blue, 24 frets (the ovation only had 21), and rosewood fretboard cause I disliked the aesthetic look of maple fretboards). I did pretty quickly progress to not minding these missing aesthetic and functional features, cuz I got down to actually playing and practicing, and it turned out to be a decent player at least, except for those crappy stock humbuckers that started to feedback the second you stopped strumming/picking when playing loud with high gain.