Buying used guitars is actually a thing pretty much all guitarists can easily understand. The guitar buying bug can be hard to fight. At times, you simply get the impulse to buy just one more. Buying a used guitar can be extremely exhilarating particularly if you recognize you're getting a good deal. You'll find deals to be found and there are lots of different spots to discover them.

Buying Used Guitars – where you should look

The 2 basic locations to target your search will be off-line or in the area and on the web.

While old-fashioned local approaches might not be as popular or maybe useful as they once were, several can nevertheless land a good deal every now and then. When you are the kind that has to examine as well as feel instruments in person before you purchase, pairing off-line and internet-based approaches is normally the best bet.

You can search online for nearby classified listings near you as well as utilizing online websites like craigslist, Ebay, and other sites pertaining to nearby instruments that are close enough so that you can drive and look at them.

Beyond just the popular offline places regarding guitars such as music stores in addition to pawnshops, other sorts of fantastic methods are music schools, colleges, community night clubs (band guitar players are normally buying guitars or even have leads on who may be selling used guitars).

If you have a luthier or instrument build/repairman in your area, he may be considered a wonderful source to be able to tap for used guitar deals. At times people get instruments repaired but they do not come to pick them up and they get sold for the cost of the repair service. Leaving your name, cell phone number as well as the type or style of instrument you are searching for with the luthier can cause all sorts of deals to come your way.

Buying Used Guitars – is it necessary to physically see the guitar?

The greatest method for locating and buying used guitars is on-line. There's no store in the world that has as massive a selection, more suitable prices or more negotiating power compared to online world, when looking for the best used guitars.

Sure you can not evaluate and touch the guitar in the event the seller is far away, however, you can look at their feedback levels, previous sales plus the photos in their advertising to collect the knowledge you need to evaluate if the guitar they're selling will work for you. You should also look at vendor's return policy, how much time you will need to evaluate if you want to keep the guitar, whether it's covered by insurance once they ship it, and also who will pay for the insurance along with other shipping expenses in the event you ask for a refund.

A number of web sites additionally let you have a look at finished listings for auctions which have already taken place. This allows you to observe precisely what the market price of the guitar is so you have some form of guide as to what you may be spending. A great trick will be to distinguish guitars that have been listed previously yet didn't sell. That doesn't mean they are junk and might end up being as elementary as a improperly written advertisement or even an ad that appeared within the incorrect category.

Buying Used Guitars – loyal customer information

Several guitar manufacturers likewise have a users message board on their site. This can be a goldmine regarding deals since these players are usually pretty faithful and devoted to their preferred brand and model of guitar and they often have a list of particular guitars on sale from all around the world.

It's really a lot easier on your banking account should you take a look at buying used guitars as opposed to new ones all the time. No matter what strategies you determine to obtain your dream guitar, you can bet it's out there. Be patient, look all around you and most importantly, let other players know what exactly you're looking for and you will be rewarded for the efforts. Getting great deals when buying used guitars is half the fun. Do your homework and soon you could be adding another guitar to your collection.

Moving to intermediate guitar lessons from the beginner stage is very rewarding. For putting in the time it takes to get to this point, you should pat yourself on the back. Maybe go out and buy a new guitar or amp. Seriously, rewarding yourself for reaching a milestone, such as moving on to intermediate guitar lessons, is a great motivator and will keep you learning.

As you know, sticking with beginner guitar lessons takes mental toughness, especially on those days when your fingers are hurting, you have to look down at your hand to check your fingering, and the sounds you're producing don't sound very musical. Learning to play guitar can be frustrating on days like that, especially if you expect to get better immediately. But, working through the challenges and continuing to learn to play the guitar will give you a great sense of accomplishment.

You already know it takes time and effort to become proficient (or get “good”) at anything. It may be taking more time and effort than you expected to get good at playing the guitar. Despite this knowledge, deep down inside, we all just want to be awesome guitarists and we want to get there fast. Right? There are no shortcuts to get from beginner guitar lessons to intermediate guitar lessons, but I would like to share with you a little tip that can accelerate your guitar playing rapidly if you work it into your practicing the guitar routine and your guitar playing. This tip can get you moving down that path to being an awesome guitarist. It will help you stand out from other guitarists. You will be creating your own new sounding riffs and enhancing your own sound. Your guitar-playing friends won't be doing this – until they learn it from you.

The secret tip is to play things backward. Sound simple, doesn't it? It is simple once you get used to it. And, you'll be amazed at how quickly you'll move right through the intermediate guitar lessons stage. For every scale, finger exercise, and riff that you play in practice, play it backwards, not just forwards. At first, it will seem difficult. But, you'll get the hang of it and the results will blow you away.

Intermediate guitar lessons – example

Here's an example. Assume you are playing a guitar warm up exercise that starts on the 1st fret of the 6th string and moves to the 2nd fret, then 3rd fret, and then the 4th fret. Then the exercise repeats on the 5th string , then the 4th, 3rd, 2nd and finally the first string.

In a diagram, the exercise would look like this…

E|1234
B|1234
G|1234
D|1234
A|1234
E|1234

Using this new tip, you are going to start on the 6th string and play the exercise backward, starting with the 4th fret on the 6th string, the G#, and descend each string down to the 1st fret before moving onto the 5th string and so on. The new diagram looks like this…

E|4321
B|4321
G|4321
D|4321
A|4321
E|4321

Intermediate guitar lessons – another exercise

What's next? An excellent follow-on exercise if you were doing the regular 1234 exercise would be to move up the neck and do the same exercise starting on the 2nd fret of the sixth string, or F#. But, using our secret tip, there's a better exercise. You're going to do the exercise upside down and backwards!

Right after playing the 4321 run from the 6th string through the 1st string, your finger is going to end up on the 1st fret of the 1st string, or F note. At this point, don't shift back to the 6th string. Instead of jumping back up to the 6th string on the guitar, simply slide your index finger from the 1st fret, 1st string to the 2nd fret on the first string (F#). Then, place your middle finger, ring finger and pinkie on the next three frets. With your four fingers in this position, play the next run descending down the fretboard, starting with the pinkie on the 5th fret of the first string or A note. So, playing down that string on the fretboard will be fret number 5432. Then, move up to the next string (B string), etc. So, it is going to look like this…

E|5432
B|5432
G|5432
D|5432
A|5432
E|5432

Keep doing this intermediate guitar lessons exercise until you’ve worked your way up to or beyond the 12th fret. You may wonder how something so seemingly simple can accelerate your playing. The answer is simple. This will will teach your fingers to move way more independently of each other and make it easier to play challenging runs with weird fingerings. Most local guitarists are not even thinking about going backward in order to move forward! When practicing the guitar this way, the strength, agility and independent movement you develop in your fingers and in your muscle memory will accelerate your playing. These  intermediate guitar lessons will improve your playing in no time at all.

There are two lines of thinking when developing your own sound. The first is that to some degree, you ARE going to sound like everyone else. If you were to take all of your influences, the guitar players you admire and have been learning from, and mix them all together the sound that comes out would be you plus your own flavor.

To take this and develop your own sound from it, you’ve got to be open to new things. You’re going to start out emulating all of the guitarists who’s playing you enjoy and you’ll learn all of their songs and licks. Without realizing it, you automatically be putting your own twist on things which will lead to developing your own style and sound.

As you go through some lead passages, the original guitarist might have used all down strokes with the pick will you might decide to alternate pick and this will create a slightly different sound. Developing your own sound comes from your preferences and the choices you make including picking as mentioned above but also how you hold the pick, how aggressive you pick the strings and even how you hold the pick.

If you take one of the guitar greats and make him play on a totally different guitar and amp setup, it’s still going to sound like him with his signature sound and playing style. While you may not notice it right away, the same will be true for you. If you play anyone else’s gear, it will still sound like you.

To develop your style, listen to players in other genres and decide what you like or think might work for you. A country guitarist can take ideas from a rock guitarist, or jazz, or blues even. As you build your bag of tricks based on what sounds and licks sound good to your ears, you’ll start to hear your own sound come around and it will be made up of all of the preference you’ve had over the years.

If you’ve ever tried to play fast and just weren’t ready, it would have been very obvious right from the start as all of the notes would sound jumbled together and just sound like a horrid mess.

The question of you mind right now is most likely “well, then how do I get to play fast too?” Have you ever heard the saying “you’ve got to walk before you can run”? Well, like it or not that is true in this case as well but there are a couple little shortcuts you can take to make sure you get shredding sooner rather than later.

The first thing you’ll need is a metronome. These come in many different styles but the easiest one to operate is the simple electronic one that has a small speaker built in whose speed or BPM (beats per minute) can be increased and decreased one BPM at a time.

Next you’ll take a super simple exercise like the standard 1234 warm up exercise where the 1234 represents playing the first, then second, then third and then forth note on each string starting with the 6th string and then moving onto the 5th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd and finally the first.

Now, rather than playing this exercise using all down strokes of the pick, you’ll want to incorporate alternate picking. As you may recall, alternate picking is where you pick one note using a down stroke and then the next with an upstroke and then you simply alternate back and forth. This is a very efficient picking method and is a must to master if you want to play fast.
Start with a slow metronome setting like 80 BPM or so and see how it feels and work your way up from there.

You should be picking a note every time the metronome ticks. Do this perfectly and adhere strictly to the alternate picking…down-up-down-up-down-up etc. making sure to stay exactly in time and being careful to avoid playing sloppily. When you’re comfortable that you can easily pick every note clearly and perfectly at that speed, write it in a notebook and increase the metronome BPM slightly. Keep repeating this process and before long, you’ll notice you’re ripping up the notes at a high rate of speed of 150 BPM or more!

Repeat the exact same exercise on any scales you may know as well as the 7 modes. Clean, deliberate alternate picking is what will help you become a fast player that people also want to listen to.

Buying used guitars can allow you to grow your collection faster for less money but you want to be careful not to buy lemons or guitars that have too much wrong with them to make them worthwhile to fix up.

There are many different places to find used guitars to buy including online places such as eBay, Craigslist, and Kijiji but I would highly recommend you buy your first couple of used guitars locally so you can see, hold and play the instrument first so you can be sure what you’re getting.

Used guitars can be found in local music shops, pawn shops, flea markets and the local classifieds so start there and go see as many of them as you can.  To become great finding the best used guitars for the best prices, you need to know what people put them through before they sell them and then you can move your used guitar buying to the online world.

You want to assess the guitar's wear and condition in case you have to make repairs to it or have it repaired in order to play it or resell it.

Check the body for dings, chips and scratches in the paint.  While some people love the vintage guitars and actually pay more for that rough road worn look, it’s not usually a desirable feature for a guitar that’s only a few years old to have Uncle Ted’s belt buckle gouges in the back of an otherwise killer looking guitar.

Check the neck for warping and other damage.  Hold the guitar up with the end of the body on your chin so you can look up the neck toward the headstock and tuning keys.  What you’re doing here is called “sighting the neck” and you’re looking for high spots which will appear as shiny spots on the frets.  If one area of the frets appears to stick out from the rest as being extra shiny, then the neck likely has a high spot there. If there is a dark area, that would be a low spot.  A neck can be adjusted to bend backward or frontward by adjusting the truss rod inside the neck but it cannot be adjusted side to side.  If it’s warped, it’s junk.

Check the frets themselves for wear.  Fret wear can appear as dents or pits in the fret metal, flat spots, rust and burrs or sharp spots.  Rust can be removed with steel wool and sharp spots can be filed down, but dents, pits, and flat spots will indicate that the guitar needs new frets which will run over $100 so make sure you really want to invest that kind of money if the guitar needs frets.

Most everything else on a guitar can easily be repaired.  Small scratches can be buffed out with automotive scratch remover or rubbing compound.  Wires can be re-soldered or pickups replaced and strings are cheap.  Your main concern is the neck followed by the condition of the body and lastly by whether or not the instrument feels good in your hands.

As you learn to play guitar, and get better and better, you'll definitely have the desire to get another guitar (and, if you're like me – another and another and another).  Buying a used guitar is the way to go, if you know how to weed out the lemons.  Use this article to help you do so.

Here are 7 methods to practice effectively and take your playing to a whole new level:

1) Always follow a plan.  You didn’t go to school and just kind of “wing it”.  The nice people that taught you how to read and write and do arithmetic had a plan or a curriculum for you.  To become an excellent guitarist you need to develop a plan to follow, master it and then modify it so it challenges you and keeps you moving forward.

2) Never put off practicing.  To learn to play the guitar you’ve got to practice and the more you practice, the better you’ll get.  When you set up your plan, you most likely set specific times to practice.  Never assume you’ll “get around to it” because most people will never come back to it and will have missed their session for the day.  Make it a habit to just get into your practice time when you’re supposed to.

3) Don’t limit yourself to one genre of music.  A rock guitarist can learn an awful lot by checking out what great players in other genres are doing.  Learning a few jazz or country licks will really spice up your playing.

4) Do have a great place to practice.  While it doesn’t have to be anything fancy, it should be comfortable enough to allow you to practice in peace and quiet.  It also needs to have the proper tools like a music stand and light, a metronome, a stool or something to sit on and a TV and DVD player if you’re learning from a DVD program.  Avoid the TV unless it is being used to learn from.

5) Change up your curriculum.  This is not boot camp and it needs to be fun.  Some people do not enjoy learning and memorizing scales and modes so it’s nice to slip in some fun break time playing in between the more tedious tasks just make sure to get back on track after a short break.

6) Warm up your hands.  Many people overlook this when learning to play the guitar but it’s very important.  There are light hand stretches you can do before you ever touch the guitar that will limber up your hands and get blood flowing to the finger tips.

7) Share your skills.  The best way to learn is to teach as it tests what you know.  You can either hook up with another guitarist once in a while or you can even give lessons to someone else.  This will make it very clear what you do and do not know and you can adjust your learning from there.

Follow this roadmap to use your practice time wisely and improve your guitar playing.

Many people will tell you to go down to your local music shop and try what they have and we will get to that point but there is some fun and easy legwork you need to do before you ever set foot in a music store, especially if it’s one of the one’s crawling with commissioned sales people.

You’ll need to narrow down what type of guitar it is you’re looking for.  The two basics types of guitars are acoustic (hollow body) and electric (solid body).  After you’ve picked the basic type, you also need to consider what you want the guitar to look like.  While this makes absolutely no difference in what the instrument will sound like, you’re going to have it for a long time and you want to be proud of it.  What the guitar looks like is an extension of your personality so don’t be ashamed to make the look of an instrument a priority.

Guitar magazines can be great sources of information as they usually have monthly reviews of guitars and equipment.  Be careful with these though.  While most guitar magazines will give honest and unbiased reviews of instruments, if you flip through the magazine you’ll also notice that the magazine has full page ads for most of the top companies.  The companies pay the magazines big bucks to run those ads.  So, obviously, saying their instruments are junk in a review wouldn’t be good for business, would it?  One good thing is that most companies now make entry level guitars and many levels above, so a magazine is not likely going to bother reviewing guitars that are likely to be terrible.

Next you’ll want to check out the web.  Go to google and type in forum:guitar and you will get a whole list of forums that are based on guitars.  Of course this will cover all aspects of guitar playing, guitar lessons, and even guitar players but it will give you a starting point to find forums that contain honest user reviews.  You can also check out the different guitars at zZounds or other web-based guitar sellers.

After you’ve trolled the forums and other websites and found some reviews and a range of guitars you like, you should be narrowing down the choices and reading up on a few models.  Before you head to the music shop to try them out, check out what your favorite guitarists are playing.  Many have signature models which generally cost more, but they’ve customized them based on years of experience and trial and error.

Armed with all of this knowledge you’ll be able to make a very informed purchase and buy a guitar that you’ll be happy with for years to come and help you learn to play guitar that much faster!

Starting up at your shoulder, cross one arm over your chest, place the other hand on the outside of that shoulder and gently stretch the arm.  This should relieve tension in your back near your shoulder blade.  Repeat the same action for the opposite arm.

Next, bend one arm at the elbow and touch your back between the shoulder blades.  Your elbow should be pointing in the air and you can grab it with the opposite hand.  Gently pull the elbow toward your back which will allow you to reach further down your back.   Hold for a few seconds and release and then repeat with the other arm.

Now, grab your bicep and wipe down your arm as if you were wiping water off the skin.  Do this right down to the finger tips and be sure to do it 3 or 4 times on each side.

Moving onto the actual hands and fingers, reach your arm straight out in front of you with your fingers together and pointing straight up.  Grab the fingers with the opposite have and VERY gently pull them back.  This will stretch the muscles and small tendons in your forearm.

After removing any rings you may have on, wring your hands out a few times like Mr. Burns from the Simpsons.  You can even say aloud “Smithers, release the hounds” if you like, but it’s not a requirement.  Each time you wring the hands, end up by going down a finger or thumb as if wiping water off.  This will bring blood to the surface and warm up the finger tips.

Finish up by washing your hands in warm water with soap and drying them off.  This removes sweat and oil from your hands which will make your strings last longer and it helps to warm up the core of your hands.

You can repeat any or all of the exercises part way through your practice session or gig and should take frequent breaks to shake out your hands and give them a rest.

These simple exercises will keep you playing the guitar longer and without fatigue.

I've gotten quite a bit of feedback from many people asking me to provide more information.  Some want simpler information, some want more advanced.  So, I'll try to mix it up a bit.  Today, I'm going to talk about identifying the different guitar parts.

To begin playing the guitar, you must be able to identify the various parts of the guitar.  The body and the neck should be pretty obvious as they form the basic shape of the guitar and are what everything else mounts to.

Headstock – On the ends of the neck furthest from the body we have the headstock.  Although headstocks are all shaped differently depending on the company that built the guitar, they all serve the same purpose which is to hold the machine heads or tuning pegs.

Machine heads – These are the devices that you turn to make the strings tighter or looser.  Machine heads can be laid out in a number of different ways depending on the shape of the headstock but will typically be all along one side, half on one side and half on the other or even four on one side and 2 on the other.

Frets – The frets are the little metal bars that sit on the fingerboard or fretboard on the front of the neck.  The frets break the neck up into smaller areas.  As you push the string down onto the frets you are shortening the distance from the bridge to the point that stops the string length.  The shorter the distance between the two points, the higher the pitch.

Bridge – This is the point on the body that is furthest from the headstock and it fastens the strings to the body.  The bridge can be fixed or floating and can be made of metal or wood.  Acoustic guitars generally have wooden bridges while electric guitars have metal bridges.   A floating bridge will be suspended off of the guitar body by two metal bolts and may have springs attached to the back of the bridge.  This allows the bridge to be moved up and down to raise or lower the pitch of the strings for some really cool effects.

Pickups – Are the magnetic devices that are mounted to the guitar body under the strings.  They transform the vibration of the strings into a changing magnetic field which causes an electric field to be set up in the wire of the pickup which makes current flow and is transformed into sound.  A single pick up is called a “single coil” while a double wide pickup is called a “humbucker”.

Acoustic guitars can also have pickups and they are usually either mounted in the sound hole of the guitar and visible from the front or they are thin metal strips mounted under the saddle of the bridge where the strings rest.  These pickups are called “piezo” pickups.

Thanks for reading.  Look for more guitar lessons in the future.

Lots of weak eBooks.  Lots of fuzzy videos with bad sound.  Don’t search for  FREE GUITAR LESSONS.  Trust me.  It’s even worse.

That’s why I came up with a solution.

I’ve been playing for over 20 years.  I’ve played several musical styles.  Folk, rock, country, blues…you name it, I’ve played it.

About 5 years ago, I started teaching guitar.  I started with friends of mine who wanted to learn.  Now, we play together.  I’ve even taken on some paying students.

I hoped to create an online course so my students could practice better when they’re not in a lesson with me.  But, after looking into it, I realized it would take way more time than I have right now.

So, I decided to check out what was available online and rate the courses that are already out there.  I hope I can help you decide what’s the right course for you, in the least amount of time.

There are several courses out there for beginner guitar players.

I'll post my thoughts on the pros and cons of each one here on the blog.