interesting situation...
 

first of all, hello music banter. this is a great and informative forum. ive gotten myself in a bit of a pickle. ive been playing acoustic and classical guitar for about 17 years, recently ive been asked to join a local rock band to play rhythm guitar. dream come true, one problem. ive never played an electric guitar!!!!! dont know the first thing about them, let alone amps and pedals. our first practice was last sunday and i borrowed some gear. need help finding a electric guitar for rhythm, a decent amp, and pedal. ive got about $1000 to spend. please help, thanks in advance.

For a good starter electric guitar, you can't go wrong with a Fender Strat. I think the new Mexican-made Strats run about $400. But you could find a good used one for probably close to half that price.

As far as amps go, a combo amp would probably be the way to go, particularly if you're playing small clubs, bars, etc. A good combo amp is a Fender Frontman 2x12, and it's only about $300.
If you're playing larger venues, you're probably gonna need some more serious gear, and that's gonna be more costly ($1000+) just for the amp.

Pedals? Believe it or not the Mark Tremonti wah pedal sounds great. A good cheap wah is an Ibanez Weeping demon. Or you could just go with the standard CryBaby Wah. Boss, Danelectro, Ibanez and ElectroHarmonix make good, decent-priced pedals.

Hope this helps you out!

Godin
 

Hi there,

I play a Godin Solidac which is the most versatile guitar I've ever played. I think it's an old model now but if you check out Godin's website, I'm sure they do a modern equivalent. What makes it sooo good is the fact it has three pick ups to get a huge choice of electric sounds and then within the bridge are piezos which gives a really convincing acoustic sound. I know it's a rock band but even rock bands might need an acoustic sound from time to time.

The good thing, it has two seperate outputs so the acoustic can go straight into a clean channel and the electric side through an FX pedal to get all the other sounds. Best thing, - you can mix the acoustic and electric together.

When it comes to effects I would go for a decent multi FX that will provide loads of different sounds that you can pre-programme given a little time and just call each sound up as you need it. Danger of just buying one fixed pedal is that you might over use it which might get a bit boring and limiting.

As for amps, can't help. I use the Bose L1 and before that I had an old Carvin combo and a Roland JC 120, a classic amp but not really rock gear.

Hope this is of some help, Gordon.

Pedals are great fun but are you sure you need one just yet? If it's a want then go for it but it isn't mandatory to playing guitar. Is there any type of effects you want?

EXACTLY.

pedals are not necessary to playing an electric guitar. what style are you going to be playing? are there specific songs that require both the lead and rhythm guitar player to use effects?

also if you're just considering a distortion effect most combo amps have some gain built in. it's not necessarily the best sounding fuzz out there but it's enough to give you some crunch for heavier songs.

A fender telecaster is perhaps the most obvious rhythm guitar, they just seem to sit well wherever you put them.

Amp-wise I like the Peavey valve amps, particularly the Delta Blues and the Peavey Classic. If you're going to spend $1000 though, whatever guitar you buy, buy a valve amplifier. (Also, this may just be personal taste but steer clear of line six amplifiers, or for that matter anything else that offers tonnes of features and digitally modelled sounds, they're generally, with a few exceptions, arse-gravy)

one other thing to remember when buying an electric guitar rig on a budget.

a cheap guitar will sound infinitely better through a good amp than a good guitar through a cheap amp.

When I first started playing in bands, one bloke had a Squire, and one had a Epiphone Les Paul- the Epiphone was just as cheap, and the sound was far superior.
Also, like mr_dave said, forking out more for an amp rather than the guitar, will be far better than the other way around.