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Comment by raincole | Hacker News Reader

The hivemind advice is to use a cheapest tool for learning when you're just getting started.

...and I strongly disagree with it. I think if you are serious about learning, you should get a reasonably good one from day 1 (if it doesn't hurt you financially, ofc).

Shitty tools can sometimes waste a hefty amount of your time. Anyone who ever paint watercolor on papers that are not for watercolor knows what I mean. All the time you could've spent on... guess what, practicing.

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I've seen that advice about (electric) guitars too, and it's so wrong. A cheap shitty guitar will feel awful to play, have problems staying in tune, etc.

If you're at all serious about it, I'd go straight for one of the $1000+ flagship guitars. Go to a shop, figure out what you like, but absolutely don't waste your money on garbage.

Genuine question, when did you learn to play? Even 10 years ago entry-level solidbody guitars where quite good, and they keep getting better. Things like CNC manufacturing, tighter tolerances etc. really improved the quality of the average instrument.

I think you’re basically fine with anything $500+ these days tbh. I say this as someone who owns multiple $1000+ guitars. You might get incredibly marginal gains in playability, sound, etc, at that price, but realistically my $500-$1k guitars are all completely capable instruments.

For a beginner a $500 instrument is way overkill. An affinity squier, yamaha pacific, or a variety of epiphones are available for half of that, and are more than capable for beginners.

I can’t really speak to the other brands, but the Epiphones under $500 start to, in my experience, suffer from pretty meaningful playability issues- and I’d argue that’s even more important of a problem for a beginner.

I’d definitely not recommend going below $500 if possible. That’s price as new, btw. Used guitar is a great option.

I agree in spirit, but the $1000 price is wrong.

There are brands like Harley Benton producing amazing €200 guitars.

I have one that I like as much as my two Custom Shop Gibsons... and it is vaaaaaastly superior to my Gibson SG Standard in terms of quality and playability.

Also the $1000 price point is a very awkward price point, IMO. Not that much of a quality jump compared to $400/$500 guitars, and proportionally not as good as more premium instruments starting at $1500 and up.

Due to manufacturing variability, a cheap Squier can be quite good or quite bad.

If you have the ability to tell the difference, you can get a quite good Squier by playing many Squiers in different shops and picking the best one you find. You can save a lot of money this way.

I think a lot of people tend to stick to the cheapest tool for far too long. However, starting cheap is a great idea. I've tried things for a few weeks that didn't stick, and was happy not to have spent the money.

Instruments and art supplies are a good example of this: a $100,000 violin is a lot better for your playing than a $50 one, and a professional miniature painter I watch on YouTube likes brushes that are $50-100 each (over a 40 year career, that can easily mean 6 figure spend as those wear out).

IMO once you can hear/feel the quality difference (or worse, spend time rectifying it), you should switch. For some things, that can take weeks or months, while for others it can take years.

In instruments, going for the absolute cheapest one is almost a recipe for disaster. I don't know about violins, but I had piano classes a decade ago and now I'm with clarinet classes. In both cases, the cheapest option would have push me away from the instrument. In pianos, the cheap electric ones are very crappy, usually don't have the full key range, the weight of the keys is non-existent, and sometimes even the size is wrong, not to mention the sound. For clarinets, you can find ones for less than 100 dollars on Amazon, but they sound like crap, the keyboard is fairly bad and they fight you when you want to make a decent sound. If you buy one of these, the most likely outcome is that learning is so hard and unrewarding that you end up abandoning it after a few months.

Usually the best idea is to start out with the entry level range of established brands. I'm not up to date on pianos, but for clarinets that's $500 minimum. Yes, it's more expensive, but if you have at least a basic commitment to learning it's going to pay off. The other option if you aren't sure is getting a loaned or rental instrument, but please don't buy cheapo instruments because that's just throwing money down the toilet.

I am a pianist, by the way. My current instrument at home is >$50k but I play a lot. My starter instrument years ago was $1000, and was a great starter upright.

If you're learning the piano don't get a keyboard. Just don't.

Depends on your age:) My dad lent me a beat up old car to go to college and I smashed it to bits over the years. I took very good care of my first car when I bought it with my own money.

Regarding tech, it’s good to go with the industry standard, learn why it’s the standard, and go from there.

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