Honest Reviews & Expert Advice for UK Musicians
Somewhere in a guitar shop right now, someone is standing between two identical-looking guitars, squinting at the headstock logo like it’s going to whisper the answer. Fender vs Squier Stratocaster is one of those debates that sounds simple until you actually try to answer it — because “which is better” depends entirely on who’s asking … Read more
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