Your first guitar: What was it and do you still have it?

[jjracer]

Can't remember what make my first guitar was, got it in 1964 for Christmas and no don't still have it.
My wife, had an all mahogny Harmony that I managed to buy at a garage sale at her parent's house. (long story)
My first Taylor is a Dan Creary Signature Model I purchased in 1995 and I do still have it.

[Nicky Midss]

1st guitar was a yamaha dreadnought starter pack that i got for christmas in 2000. by the time i got better 2 years later, i ended up giving it to my music teacher at my high school. i doubt its still there.

-yamaha starter pack
-washburn black cutaway acoustic electric
-epiphone chet atkins
-gibson chet atkins
-taylor 214
-gibson chet atkins
-taylor 114
-taylor 314
-taylor gs mini

thats all the guitars ive owned. right now, i kept the second gibson chet and just purchased a no frills 314 from 2006. got the gs mini for xmas this past year. the 314 right now is my favorite. the african mahogony gloss is stunning. taylor really does make a fantastic instrument

[Nicky Midss]

im not in a band or anything, i play for myself for a hobby. my dream guitar would be a no frills 714 but since they are expensive and basically hard to find at this point im content with my 314. its a fine instrument and for the cash it was a steal.

oh and a 614ce maple guitar is also very striking.

[cigarfan]

1975 Yamaha F-160

My son took it when he moved out and still has it. I borrow it for camping trips now and again. Still sounds good!

[mgap]

My first guitar was a Fender F-35 acoustic.  bought it for a college elective course.  played it for a couple of years then I had a family and I let life take me over.  When I met my wife she was just getting out of school and she had taken the same course( she was a couple of years behind me(but much more mature than me LOL))and had bought the same kind of guitar as I did. 

after a couple of years of the wild life we met and got married.  Neither one of us played our guitars and they sat in the garage(oops).  Well several years later I sold my guitar at a yard sale, we kept hers because she had a better case than I. 

Both of the guitars were purchased in 1978, all solid wood, and they sound ok.  I don't play it much at all because of the Taylors that I have are far superior. 

[Blackfield]

My first guitar was Yamaha classical guitar, I got it when I was 14 years old.
I don't quite remember what happened to it..I think I sold it one of my friends then.

I then switched to electric guitar and only got to appreciate acoustic guitar back in 2000.
That's when I found and fell in love with Taylor 414ce.

Since then, the GAS took over for the worse... ..

[M19]

Whatever Sears was selling in 1965. It was red and black. The strings were 3/4" from the fretboard, which was (became!) blood red. No still have.

[Von Beerhofen]

It was a cheap spanish study guitar. Bought a pickup for it, replaced the nylon strings with steel and tried to mimic Roger Daltry in my first band. I split the guitar wide open at wich point I no longer had a guitar. My sister's boyfriend then gave me a toy guitar made out of the cheapest materials and with a 1 1/2 CM stringaction I decided to customise it myself with the components I had bought for the spanish guitar.
I took a chisel and a saw, sawed right through the reinforcement bar in the body, adding another 1/2 CM to the stringaction, drilled a few holes in it and added the electronics, whammy bar and a pickguard (didn't want any scratches on it!).
It had a bolt on neck and the screws tended to come loose all the time, but with a permanent screwdriver in the pocket a strip of wood was added to change the neck angle for lower action, a method which is still in use today,
I named it 'CRAPSON', it had a potentiometer and switches just for show because I had no idea on how to wire them. Those were probably more expensive then the guitar itself.
Here is the result on which I played for about 2 years before the thing broke in 1/2 during a blues gig (pressing down on two CM of action just requires brute force). What you see is not really a binding and purfling (it had none) but a pinstripe. It was truely an amazing guitar, amazing that it stayed in one piece for two years and amazing that it produced a lot of sound too (not music). My endeavors to become a luthier died with the demise of that guitar.



When a friend lend me his Teisco after this event, I found out how easy it was to play fast and accurate and almost bought one myself recently to remember this significant event in my life.

BTW the 'gear' in the background was build from all the loudpeakers we could find from old radios at the garbage dump, using several tuberadios in line as amp, with a selfbuild 9V transistor preamp in a black wooden pencil box, with sticky paper labels on it  marking in and out, just to make sure we'd have enough smoke effects to escape from our fans.
I don't think it would live up to today's standard of safety as I had several near death experiences when my lips touched a microphone. That also ended my endeavours to become a singer.

Ludwig

[desertdave]

The first one was a Garrison AG 400 CE...Still have it...I play the taylor a lot more though...Easy to say because the Garrison is back home in FL...The Taylor is w/ me here in AFG.

[oatordeal]

my first guitar was a yamaha fx-310 dread. used it for a solid 7 years of gigging and learning a lot.  it's currently used by our local church choir. way back then, my mom made a deal with me that if she was to buy me a new one, i would let the 'ol yamaha go. she decided to donate it to our local choir. always brings me to smile everytime i see it played.

[Brian]

Great thread.  My first electric was a candy apple red Gibson Flying V2 from the early 80's.  In retrospect it was not the wisest choice to learn to play on because it was not very easy to play while sitting but it was a fun guitar to have, esp as I was a huge UFO fan, and it was pretty nice too... with gold plated hardware and kind of scalloped / grooved sides.  I cut lawns all summer saving up for that guitar.  I really wish I still had it.  But I wanted an acoustic and a new amp, so I traded it in several years later at a music shop for an Alvarez acoustic and a Fender amp to go along with a strat I was playing more than the V at the time.  My first acoustic guitar was that Alvarez, a 5020s sunburst dreadnought from the late 80's or early 90s.  I've played it a lot over the years and still have it.  It plays well and sounds pretty good.  I don't play it as much anymore but I think I'll play it some this weekend.