Beginner Guitars for Dummies

Acoustic guitar

When the topic of "wannabe" comes up, at least one of our staffers will always become wistful about the guitar. It seems he's tried, a couple of times (at least), to learn to play the guitar; but to no avail. He does, however, have a few guitars around the house, so when he ran across the Wizzley.com article, "Best Guitar for Beginners," he was curious. Curious, that is, until he recognized the name of Mary F., an inveterate content farmer on the website. He read it anyway, and shared his notes at the next staff meeting.

Based on Mary's previous appearance on these pages, we were pretty certain she'd just cobbled together a fake review of the Amazon best-seller in its category, with, of course, the proviso that it cost at least a couple hundred bucks. And she did: she picked a package from Yamaha, the Gigmaker. Before we move on, however, we need to look at F's "qualifications":

"I have always been a guitar enthusiast. I always go around and visit different music stores every time I get some free time. I spend a lot of time in these shops checking out and testing the sound quality that I would get from different instruments. I love purchasing guitars that sound great and weigh right."

Yeah, sure: they "weigh right." If that's the case, then why does her post not mention the weight? And for that matter, why doesn't it mention the size? Is this guitar a dreadnought? a backpacker? You can't even tell, since Mary doesn't mention that the guitar in the package is a Yamaha FD01S which is, FWIW, a dreadnought body.

No, Instead of describing the guitar, F decided to wax eloquent about the other goodies in the package: a gig bag, a tuner, a strap, a couple of extra strings, and – get this,

"...some guitar picks that the guitar player can use to pluck or strum the guitar strings with."

Duh: what else would you use a guitar pick for: picking your teeth?

Oh, Mary claims that a friend "asked for help with finding the best guitar for beginners," but even if that were true, she should have started by mentioning that there are various kinds of guitars: acoustic, electric, classical, folk, flamenco... But no, she went straight to the sale.

Interestingly enough, Mary also gave her best shot to "reviewing" the best violin, best drum kit, best microphone, and best DJ speakers... she claims to be a DJ who also plays guitar and violin . Yeah, sure: our staffer who used to write for Epinions knows this syndrome all too well: it's faking expertise so people will believe your "drive-by review," a review that is based only on reading the specs pages at online retailers. Around the Antisocial Network conference table, we have a name for people who do that: we call them the Dumbass of the Day.

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