Dave Holmes
New member
I've been playing my acoustic a fair bit recently and would like to get more guitar into my recordings (I use a lot of samples and synths).
My oldest (12) has been having lessons and has a cheap strat copy (Shine) which I've borrowed and frankly - it sounds bloody horrible plugged in so I'm in the market for 2 electric guitars. One for him and one for me.
Working on a budget of around £500 (just under actually) for both...
Looked in store at an Ibanez GAX30 for him... Sounded at least as good to my ears than the Squire Affinity telecaster and possibly better than the Epiphone LP Special II. All 3 sounded much better than the Shine...
Shown him some pictures online and he likes the look of it... We're going to check it out together next weekend along with an Epiphone SG copy he likes the look of.
For myself - I'd quite like a hollow (or semi-hollow) bodied guitar... I'm unlikely to use any fx (distortion etc) other than reverb and wanting a nice jazzy type, clean tone.
The Epiphone Dot (was a 335 that I tried) is the obvious choice and it sounded nice in the shop...
However when I got home and checked their website I realised that I'd not tried any of the Ibanez hollow bodies... The AM53 (cheapest in the Artcore range) sits right in my budget and although I can't find many reviews of the model itself the Artcore range seems to be quite well thought of...
How do you think the Ibanez HB's compare to the Epi Dot?
Anything else in the £300ish price bracket I should check out?
I've always had acoustics in the house... More of a strummer than a player but I've improved since I took a load of Bass lessons a couple years back - so gonna book myself a chunk of Guitar lessons as well.
The boy's been having lessons for about a year now (and classical guitar lessons in his last school), the Shine was gifted to him by one of my mates and he has a little practice amp (Blackstar?).
I've got a really old 10w Yamaha amp but I'll probably go through a software amp-sim for the most part anyway.
I'd appreciate your thoughts.
My oldest (12) has been having lessons and has a cheap strat copy (Shine) which I've borrowed and frankly - it sounds bloody horrible plugged in so I'm in the market for 2 electric guitars. One for him and one for me.
Working on a budget of around £500 (just under actually) for both...
Looked in store at an Ibanez GAX30 for him... Sounded at least as good to my ears than the Squire Affinity telecaster and possibly better than the Epiphone LP Special II. All 3 sounded much better than the Shine...
Shown him some pictures online and he likes the look of it... We're going to check it out together next weekend along with an Epiphone SG copy he likes the look of.
For myself - I'd quite like a hollow (or semi-hollow) bodied guitar... I'm unlikely to use any fx (distortion etc) other than reverb and wanting a nice jazzy type, clean tone.
The Epiphone Dot (was a 335 that I tried) is the obvious choice and it sounded nice in the shop...
However when I got home and checked their website I realised that I'd not tried any of the Ibanez hollow bodies... The AM53 (cheapest in the Artcore range) sits right in my budget and although I can't find many reviews of the model itself the Artcore range seems to be quite well thought of...
How do you think the Ibanez HB's compare to the Epi Dot?
Anything else in the £300ish price bracket I should check out?
I've always had acoustics in the house... More of a strummer than a player but I've improved since I took a load of Bass lessons a couple years back - so gonna book myself a chunk of Guitar lessons as well.
The boy's been having lessons for about a year now (and classical guitar lessons in his last school), the Shine was gifted to him by one of my mates and he has a little practice amp (Blackstar?).
I've got a really old 10w Yamaha amp but I'll probably go through a software amp-sim for the most part anyway.
I'd appreciate your thoughts.