Sunday, August 31, 2008

Choosing a new guitar..

Is the hardest thing to do!
On the 23rd of September I will finally become 24 years old, and about 6 months ago I decided that this should be the date where I will finally buy myself a new guitar.
My Yamaha RGX 112p served my well in the past 4 years, but now I`m ready for the real stuff. And this I`ve been scouring the internet to find something I would like.

I finally fell in love with two different models. The Fender Jaguar and the Gibson Firebird. Both not the cheapest of guitars, but incredible beautiful. Ater reading on about them, I found out that the JAguar was actually meant as a bit of a surf-guitar, and not as a heavy rock guitar. Since I mostly play alternative/rock'n roll music, it thus dropped of the radar pretty quickly. Fenders also have the tendensy to sound a bit "squilly" and thin. At least, I`ve never really been impressed by the starocasters sound, and altough the Telecaster has a nice buzz to it, it never sounded as powerful as for instance Gary Moore's Les Paul or Neil Young's "Old Black". So I decided that it was going to be a Gibson.

But why the Firebird? Well, the Les Paul is just a boring old design if you ask me. Everybody has them, they are ordinary. I`m looking for something special. The real Gibson are a tad bit too expensive for me (starting at 3000 euro's and up), thus you end up getting awe-struck by the beauty that is a Firebird.

It's unusual body design, it's long neck, it's unqie pick-ups. In every picture I see it looks like a piece of art. Just look at this model:



A true beauty. The sad thing is that this color is not in production anymore. And this is the Firebird VII; the most expensive model. Costing somewhere in between 1700 and 2000 euro's. That's why he Firebird V, which is still available in a stunning sunburst paintjob, is catching my attention now. This one however as two mini-humbucker pick-ups which give this guitar a very special sound. Some folks on the internet say it does not match the sound of full Humbuckers, and this is were the Firebird Studio omes in. The sad thing about the studio is, is that it only comes in black, and misses some of the characteristics that make the Firebird so special. So I might as well go for the Firebird V, sunburst then hey? Well..we`ll see when I get one in my hands.