Thinking about private guitar lessons? What kind of guitar should I purchase? How much should I spend on my first guitar? These are questions that come from all of my beginning students. The photograph attached to this blog is my 1973 Gibson J 45 deluxe. It was a pawn shop rescue: it needed some major repair. But one of my friends purchased it from a pawnshop in Nashville, Tenn. Got the J45 into a shop, repaired it and sold it to me. It still has some cracks and scratches, but has...

This is a picture of one of my favorite guitars: 1983 Gibson ES 335. Made famous by the Doobie Brothers, Eric Clapton during his Cream era, and Larry Carlton among others. This guitar can cover rock, blues, country and jazz. Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters has his own custom model. Gibson gets a lot of bad raps on the construction of their high end guitars. I agree, to a certain point. But if you find a good guitar teacher and take some lessons, the guitar shouldn't matter. The...