Do You Play Any Musical Instruments?

[Zixar]

P-Mosh: It's an electric, a Silvertone Fastback, to be exact. My mandolin is an acoustic-electric Alvarez A-Style, so I already had a small practice amp. A local store had the guitar on sale for $99, so I figured it must be a piece of crap. I looked around on the Net and found it was surprisingly well-reviewed for a cheap guitar, so I figured it might be worth a hundred bucks to see what all the fuss was about. I was expecting it to be like the $40 mandolins on eBay--technically a guitar, but with a warped neck, or a finger-slicing high action, or some other corner-cutting.

Well, not being a guitar expert, I can't say for sure, but judging it against my other instruments, it's surprisingly well-made. A solid rock maple neck, with truss rod, a fully-bound quilted-maple top stained a nice dark blue, a solid alder body, fully-enclosed chrome tuning machines, dual humbucker pickups, and a vintage tremolo system.

I expected it to go out of tune quickly, or not be tuned on the 12th-fret harmonics, or have the tremolo bar throw the whole thing out of tune, you know--it's a hundred-dollar guitar, it has to suck, right?

Surprisingly, no. The only problems are a slight buzz on the 6th string (too low to the frets), which was a minor adjustment to fix, and the pickups do have a bit of 60Hz hum if played too close to the amp, although that may be a normal thing for electric guitars, I just don't know. It stays in tune, has a lot of sustain, sounds pretty good, looks pretty good. So, yes, it was certainly worth a hundred bucks.

I'm starting to figure out the major scales on it, so I'm encouraged, but the chords are really alien to me so far. Take a basic G major, for instance. On the mandolin, that's a two-finger open chord, 0023. On the banjo, it's even easier, since it's tuned to an open G. On the guitar, it's 320022 or 320002. Now that's not so difficult after you practice it awhile, but it looks like in order to switch back and forth quickly between G, C, and F, you need to use your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th fingers and leave your index finger open. Weird. Then there's the chords that exclude some strings...

Oh well, every instrument is different, with their own strengths and weaknesses. You play a mandolin for speed, a banjo for self-harmonizing, and I suppose a guitar for its range. Might as well learn to play them all, just in case!