Four Guitars

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Not a Fender Strat, in the video I misspoke; a Sire S3 HSS.

Today's post celebrates the arrival of my new Alvarez AF30CE electro-acoustic guitar, with steel strings (pictured). You don't have to plug it in, but when the amplified sound hits you, you notice. The strings are heavier than on the S3 and it's much less supple to play. But then it is, fundamentally, an acoustic guitar, designed first to produce that direct, resonant sound without any electronic assistance.

None of the three guitars I bought over the last nine months cost more than £300 - most were quite a bit less. It's both surprising and pleasing that you can get high-quality beginner/intermediate guitars at this kind of price point.

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My guitar progress at seven weeks or so

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My Cordoba C1M acoustic guitar arrived on Thursday November 27th 2025 - and I had my first lesson with Stewart three weeks later, on December 17th. He assessed me at Grade 3 preparation and gave me some assignments.

Since then I've been practicing hard: one month has gone by and I've had two subsequent lessons where I'm working through this book.

Amazon

I've upped my practice to around 25 minutes per day; the fingers of my left hand are become numb, thick and calloused, and the pain is beginning to diminish. I'm at the point where I can stagger through a simple exercise - thumb working a little independently from the fingers - but I soon get tangled up - and the chord changes derail me.

At the end of twenty five minutes my brain has turned to porridge and I can't make any sense of where I am: the fingers of my right hand are like an octopus on LSD.

When I think I have something not totally embarrassing I'll post it here as a benchmark. A few weeks. Soon.

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