I tend to noodle around and play metal, but I want to find a guitar that has some versatility. I’d just buy a Jackson otherwise.
Full disclosure I’m 36 and haven’t played since I was a teenager. However, my friend let me borrow his Fender resonator acoustic recently and I reallllllllly want to get an electric now.
As looking at the Yamaha Pacifica but it seems like the tone might not be what I’m looking for. I do however love the look of the guitar.
In the lower price points what you lose out on is setup from the factory, and QC on the electronics. So you should expect to have to check/adjust the truss rod, action, nut height, and intonation. Easy to deal with, and If you bring it to a local shop/luthier could cost anywhere from $50-100. Other things might include fret level and smooth fret ends. Those are more costly to deal with. If you can go to a local shop to get your hands on instruments, that’s going to be the best thing for you. See if any of the fret ends scrape your hand/fingers/thumb as you slide your hand along the neck. Make sure the neck and fretboard feel good in your hand.
An Epiphone SG can get into your price range and the QC on Epiphone, especially the Inspired By line, has been really good lately. And an SG, especially if you later upgrade the pickups to have coil tap or coil split, can be pretty versatile.
If you’re willing to learn how to do a good chunk of that work yourself you can dramatically cut costs. I’d just be wary of leveling and crowning frets, took me a while to learn that and it does require specialized tools and practice. Truss rod adjustments, sharp fret ends, string height (at the bridge, not at the nut) and intonation are well within the realm of reasonable for someone willing to learn a bit and take a few precautions and they take minimal tools - you can sand or file the edge of a cheap mini file to make a safe edge, I did mine on a belt sander. A cheap set of harbor freight feeler gages works perfectly fine for truss rod adjustments. You can get a pretty reasonable string action ruler off the big “A”, but I went with the planet waves one, the dark background with light increments is easier on my eyes. A basic multimeter is really all you need to track down most electrical issues, and the ones you need a better multimeter for are either because you have active electronics or the pickups are bad. Investing around 30 bucks in tools that should last you a lifetime (unless you’re me and misplace them constantly) and some time and research on the YT is well worth it IMHO
Absolutely. I had intended to convey it as such but I guess I only said it costs more. These days you can buy a pretty good maintenance kit to cover the basics from Nomad or StewMac for a pretty reasonable price.
Honestly the cheap kits on “A” are good enough, stewmac makes / sells great tools, but unless you’re going to make a living with them or truly go professional, I’d say save the money. I got quite a few of my tools from cbgitty and mgbguitars, once I got bitten by the cigar box guitar bug. Building one, especially if you go through building the neck, fretting it and doing the electronics really gives you a lot of respect for what actually goes into a guitar. I highly recommend it if you have the means, and you get another guitar out of it to boot!