Best Beginners Bass Guitar. Period.

Advantages: Great Looking, Smooth Neck, Good Sound.
Disadvantages: No Active Pickups

...I bought this electric bass about a year ago, along with a Fender Rumble amp, as my first proper instrument, and let me say this - I couldn't have been happier with it. First, lets go through some specs. My model is an older style that the one Ibanez now advertise and sell, so mine doesnt have the Phat II EQ Bass Boost control that newer models now come eqipt with. The body is Agathis, which is not a great wood for guitar bodies, but ibanez use it well to get the best out of it. All basses/guitars in this price range use it, as it is the cheapest musical wood. This wood is a relative of true mahogany and gives nearly the same tonal characterists. Warm lows with a fairly strong sustain. The neck is made out of maple, and the finish is just perfect for my tastes. It is very thinly varnished, so you don't get the stickiness...

janestone 22.01.2006 · Read review
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Review of Ibanez GSR200 Electric Bass

THE best electro acoustic guitar!

Advantages: Sound, build, playability
Disadvantages: Rounded back can be awkward at first.

...If you have read some of my other guitar reviews, you will know im a bit of a collector of guitars. In fact, you could almost say its an obsession. Therfore no collection would be complete without an axe from one of the world's finest and best known acoustic producers. Ovation. I own the Ovation Celebrity Deluxe which i believe is the finest looking in the Ovation range. However, you will also know that from my other reviews, Im left handed with the guitar which narrows your choice in colour. For a Right hander, the choices include, Black, Natural, Wine, Green and a sunburst effect top and also available in vasious mapel finishes. Im afraid to say my only choice was Black. Still it does look rather fetching and contrasts well with the Marquetry effect leaves around the multiple sound holes. Being an Ovation, it does come...

andycharger 31.10.2007 · Read review
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Review of Ovation Celebrity Deluxe CS257-RRB Acoustic Electric Guitar

Fender Deluxe Nashville Telecaster

Advantages: Amazing value for money!
Disadvantages: None, unless you want a guitar with a tremolo arm.

...the pickups individually. Positions 2 and 4 give combinations of the "bridge and middle" / "neck and middle" pickups in humbucking configuration. This allows you to go from standard Telecaster tones to meaty humbucking tones at a flick of the switch. Disadvantages are few - there is no tremolo arm, but if you were looking for a guitar with a tremolo, you would not usually consider a Telecaster. Thirty or forty years ago it was common to fit a Bigsby arm to a Telecaster in Nashville, and you can still buy a suitable Bigsby today! When I was young, a lot of the older players used to say "If you can only afford one good guitar, buy a Telecaster". I actually preferred Gibsons, and my first five electric guitars were Gibsons. But now I have one of these, I would say "If you can only afford one good guitar, buy a Nashville Telecaster...

TheBax 31.10.2007 (11.11.2007) · Read review
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Review of Fender Deluxe Nashville Telecaster Electric Guitar

While my Guitar gentle weeps

Advantages: Great sound, easy to play
Disadvantages: None at all

...on the designs of the day, which was hollowed body acoustic guitars, with some form of microphone inside, he did! In 1951, he introduced the Broadcaster, the prototype solid-body guitar that would eventually become the legendary Telecaster®. The Tele®, as it became affectionately known, was the first solid-body electric Spanish-style guitar ever to go into commercial production. Soon to follow the Tele were the revolutionary Precision Bass® guitar in 1951, and the Stratocaster® in 1954. So quite a pedigree I think! ~~~ Where do you get them ~~~ Any good music shop will generally stock Fender guitars, yes you can get them on-line, but I've always found when buying guitars you really need to be touchy feely, I can pick up 3 identical guitars in a shop, one plays like a dream, the other two don't suit me at all. Also the staff in music shops...

lazza123 21.02.2006 · Read review
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Review of Fender Deluxe Super Strat Electric Guitar

Getting back to Bass-ics

Advantages: Good quality budget guitar
Disadvantages: none really

...I have been hankering for a Bass guitar to fiddle with as a project and when I earned a few extra quid for a private job I started to browse eBay for a likely candidate. I found a Yamaha RBX170 4 string bass on a pick up only deal in Ringwood, a place that I pass through regularly. This bass retails between £120 - £150, putting it in the higher end of the beginners' market. When I collected it, along with the 30 Watt amplifier which I got with it for a very reasonable £73, it was a bit grubby and looked as though it had been used for serving pizza. There were several torn and grubby stickers on it and I feared that I had bought a pup. I got it home and plugged it in. The first thing I noticed was the weight, for a full scale bass guitar it is very light, I can hold it out at arm's length with ease. The range of tones is...

JeffFromPoole 14.02.2009 · Read review
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Review of Yamaha RBX170 Bass Guitar

Funky Bass Guitar

Advantages: Better options of sound
Disadvantages: none

...This is the Fender bass that I own and swear by. It cost me £370 last month and it is to replace my battered Marlin Bass that is 11 years old. The reason i bought it is because im limited to what I can have. Im left handed so my choice in Basses is limited as they dont make all models. I wanted the slightly cheaper Precision bass but they dont make it in Left hand. I had to opt for the Jazz bass. Im glad I did as it has more flexibility in sound than the precision. It has 2 different pick ups, Selectable by a switch. It has a deep sound on the rear pick up while the front pick up has a punchy, crisp sound. Great for playing funk. Also, this guitar is becoming ever more popular with the 70's feel coming back into guitars in a big way. I bought a Metallic Purple one. Again your colours are limited by being left handed...

andycharger 12.02.2001 · Read review
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Review of Fender Standard Jazz Electric Bass

Applause AE64 Acoustic Electric Guitar

Advantages: Beautiful sound, playability and look
Disadvantages: Disadvantages?!

...So I'm sat here in my room at my halls of residence playing on my acoustic electric guitar, when it hit me..."could I review this on Ciao?"...yes, I could!! Applause Guitars are the younger brother of guitar manufacturers Ovation, who have been making trustworthy guitars for over 30 years now, and here have used this experience to make a guitar that doesn't sound like a guitar that is as cheap as this, but is a high-quality product. My model number is actually the AE 28, rather than the 64, but trust me, from what I know about Ovations and what else I can work out, there are no differences here except the numbers! I brought it in November last year from a local music retailers, who I purchased my two other guitars (both electric), so trusted them fully when they recommended me this offering, and they've not let me down...

carl.mcqueen 19.03.2006 · Read review
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Review of Applause AE64 Acoustic Electric Guitar

Seiko SAT100 Guitar and Bass Tuner

Advantages: Economical, Easy to use, Great for beginners, Comes with batteries! Input and output sockets.
Disadvantages: Won't tune cheap acoustics properly.

...I bought this item for £15 from a specialist guitar shop and I have to say it was well worth every penny! I have an electric guitar, one of which was terribly out of tune. It corrected the tuning perfectly and now my guitar doesn't sound in pain every time I play it. This tuner can be used on acoustic guitars, as well as electric ones, also for bass guitars, but I do not own a bass so I don't know how it performs in that area. Electric guitars can be plugged into the side of the tuner for more precise tuning. It does have a built-in microphone, so connecting it to your guitar isn't completely necessary. Due to the microphone, this allows acoustic guitars to be tuned as well. It has a very simple interface, and as a beginner to the world of guitars, I found it extremely easy to operate. It has a digital display (two AAA batteries are...

shadysladyangela 20.08.2007 (19.07.2007) · Read review
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Review of Seiko SAT100 Guitar and Bass Tuner

My luvverly cherry red Washburn bass.

Advantages: *
Disadvantages: *

...Having started playing bass with a cheapo Fender Precision copy, after a year I decided it was time to move up to a better make. It was a toss up between a classic jazz bass with all the tuning pegs lined up a la the Fender or one of the newer "Gothic" style ones like this. In true Mr Pink fashion a beer or six was consumed whilst I perused the choices avaliable, finally deciding to take a chance on this beaut and the deed was done! The purchase was made from a firm in South Bend, Indiana, USA (isn't the internet wonderful) for a total of $303, approx £165, of which the actual bass cost $202 around about £110, pretty good considering the going price for this make in the UK is around £150-£200, and it arrived in less than a week so I was very pleased. A quick run through the scales showed that it was tuned up nicely too...

pinkmatchstick 23.02.2006 · Read review
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Review of Washburn XB120, Bass guitar

Semi hollow, but a whole guitar!

Advantages: Extremely versatile and gorgeous too!
Disadvantages: People with tiny hands need not apply.

...I've owned an Epiphone Dot for over a year now, so I know it intimately. Well, as intimately as a man can get with a guitar anyway! I guess I'll start with the basics for anyone who's just starting out. The Dot is a semi hollow electric guitar, This means thats it has a solid block of wood running lengthways through the body, but has hollow chambers on either side. This means it is more audible than a standard solid electric guitar unplugged, but plugged in has the added bonus it is less prone to unwanted feedback than fully hollows. It has 2 humbucker pickups, a 3 way selector switch which lets you use youre different pickups at different time, and 2 independant tone and volume controls. Humbuckers give a more earthy, full sound than single coil pick ups, and are perfect fodder for some overdrive, yet are equally at home with clean...

monkeybutler100 15.12.2007 (16.12.2007) · Read review
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Review of Epiphone The Dot Electric Guitar