Honest Reviews & Expert Advice for UK Musicians
Ask ten guitarists what the best Squier Stratocaster is and you’ll get eleven answers, half a dozen strong opinions about neck profiles, and at least one heated debate about whether “budget” and “brilliant” can ever share a sentence. They can. That’s the whole point of this guide. Squier has spent over four decades building the … Read more
Ask ten guitarists which electric guitar they’d grab if the house was on fire, and at least six will say a Stratocaster. There’s a reason that double-cutaway silhouette has outlived disco, grunge, and three separate decades of “is the guitar dead?” think-pieces: it just works. The best Fender Stratocaster for you, though, depends enormously on … Read more
There’s a particular kind of dread that hits about four songs into a set, right when your guitar decides the G string has had enough for the evening. A gigging electric guitar is, in the simplest terms, an instrument built to survive repeated load-ins, temperature swings, sweaty stage lights and three sets a night without … Read more
Here’s a confession most gear guides won’t make: the guitar sitting in your mate’s spare-room studio, the one that sounds like a million quid on his SoundCloud, probably cost less than his audio interface. An electric guitar for recording is any solid-body or semi-hollow instrument whose pickups, intonation and electronics translate cleanly into a DI … Read more
Buying your first proper professional electric guitar feels a bit like buying your first car with a manual gearbox after years of automatics — everything responds differently, and suddenly you notice things you never had to think about before. Fret edges. Neck joints. Whether a pickup barks or purrs. A professional electric guitar is a … Read more
So you’ve decided you want to play guitar, or you’re upgrading from whatever dusty first instrument got you started, and now you’re staring down a wall of options wondering whether an electric guitar under £400 can actually hold its own. Here’s the short answer: yes, emphatically, and the reasons why are more interesting than you’d … Read more
There’s a specific moment every guitarist recognises, even if nobody warned them it was coming. You’re three chords into a song you’ve played a hundred times, and suddenly your beginner guitar just feels… small. The neck fights you on bar chords. The pickups sound thin through anything louder than a bedroom amp. That’s not you … Read more
Let’s get the awkward bit out of the way first: yes, you can get a genuinely decent electric guitar under £150. Not a toy. Not a paperweight with strings. An instrument you could realistically learn on for years, gig with in a school hall, or hand to a curious teenager without immediately regretting it. That … Read more
So, you’ve decided to learn electric guitar. Maybe it was watching someone absolutely shred at a gig. Maybe it was a rainy Sunday, a YouTube rabbit hole, and a sudden conviction that this is the year. Whatever it was — welcome to one of the most rewarding decisions you’ll make, provided you don’t spend the … Read more
So, you’ve decided to learn the electric guitar. Brilliant. Welcome to what might very well become the most rewarding — and occasionally frustrating — hobby of your life. Whether you’re drawn to the brooding atmosphere of a Radiohead chord progression, the bluesy swagger of Gary Moore, or simply the idea of looking effortlessly cool in … Read more