If you want to know more about the Alvarez brand which is owned by the St Louis Music Co then this video is insightful and features Chris Meikle their Senior Vice President who funny enough is from Durham.
Thats the Captain!
Lee is usually fairly unbiased in his recommendations and Andertons don't simply try to sell you the dearest item that you're after. Fairly sound shop in my experience and never a hassle.
echo that - they are good to deal with
I never bar an F chord I play it the same way I play a C chord just move it to the lower/higher strings and add my index finger.
Scales are great but need to be used musically not just robotically and you need all the positions and how to join them up
Get the best guitar you can afford is my tip. Nowt worse that trying to learn on a crappy thing with strings like cheesewire and an.action that needs a G clamp to hold down a chord. Get an electronic guitar tuner, and tune your guitar properly every time you pick it up. Final tip would be to practive every day, even if it's just for 15 minutes. This is better than once a week for a couple of hours. 43 is ok to start learning. Just keep at it and don't get hung up with things like strum patterns, that will come later. Juat try playing a chlrd, the changing to the next one at ypur own pace. You'll be amazed at how quickly you can do it after a short while. Good luck, and enjoy yourself.
Very few of those about these days, you can get a very good guitar for £100, playable straight out of the box, back when I started, there were no light gauge strings and cheap guitars were just that, cheap, it was hell on the fingers, most companies do a 30 day return too, so if you're not happy with the instrument, you can return it and buy something else.
I'm trying to remember the name of the guitar and amp combo my mate bought from the pages of NME. Cost £39. Unplayable.
Yes there were bags of cheap crap about then, to be honest, Gibson's and Fender's hadn't been in the country that long when I first started, most British bands were using stuff like Burns, futurama, Hofners, Guild, etc, and strings were heavy gauge, you can hear on early 60s records how they struggle to bend them, I think it was in the late 60s, when people started to use Banjo strings for a top E, throw away the low E and string it with the A replacing the low E and so on, and all Bass guitars had flat wound strings, John Entwistle was responsible for the invention of round wounds IIRC. Different world now, so easy to learn how to play, what with YouTube and Tabs. Back then, you were lucky If you knew anyone that played.
YouTube has created legions of bedroom widdlers who can play amazing licks and runs but could not cut it in a band live on stage with a crowd. There is so much more to being in a band than just being able to play guitar drums or bass.
They'll be lucky to find a stage or a crowd now, man.
