Every elementary general music teacher needs a good guitar.
I don't mean just a guitar but a potential Hammer of Thor. Something that'll shake room, something epitomizing the grist of gossamer wing dreams for kids who see themselves playing guitar.
You shouldn’t use a personal guitar in school. If it breaks, the school very likely will not pay to repair or replace it. You need the school to see the value in buying the guitar not just for you but for your students and their music program.
If your 7.5 job admin says “no go” and you have to make the purchase out of pocket from your 16.5 business earnings, buy the extended warranty when you buy the guitar and be prepared to implement the warranty somewhere down the road.
But how does a teacher go about getting a good classroom guitar?
To start with, have a plan, a budget, a friend, and about two hours.
Rule number one. Always try to pick the instrument up and play it before you buy it. I know you can buy a lot of stuff online at Musician's Friend or Sweetwater but there is nothing like going into a store and picking up a guitar and evaluating it in person in real time.
Befor You Get Your Hopes Up
Make sure your admin approve the purchase as well as the price range and determine the way the school is going to pay for the guitar. If it has to go through a bid list, it probably negates purchasing the guitar on your own and having the school reimburse you.
If that is the case, you need to acquire knowledge as to what guitar you want to buy for school. You’ll still probably be going to a store to try guitars – just not buying one. This is not the best of solutions – because stores are in business to sell and make money – not be a “try me and leave” experience.
If you have to buy the guitar you find in a store on-line with a school P.O., make a point of supporting that seller in other ways, including sending your students there for possible purchases or rentals.
Before You Leave Home
Find out who is the most reputable luthier in your area and talk to them. Tell them what you're going to do. They might have some instruments that they are willing to sell and will work out perfectly for you. Ask for their advice.
The important thing is that you're telling them that you're buying an instrument and will be bringing it back to them to do a complete setup. A setup basically involves making sure the neck is set perfectly, the bridge and a nut are leveled for good intonation, and so that the strings are not so high off the neck that they're hard to pressed down or too low that they buzzed up against the frets when you strum aggressively.
You'll probably also need a strap button for the heel at the base of the neck to attach your guitar strap. Strap locks are a bit overkill on acoustic guitars in my estimation, but if you're really want to get them, mention that to the luthier. Get a price quote from the luthier on what all that work will cost you when you bring a guitar to them.
Take stock on your guitar knowledge base. Know what you're grounding your purchase on. Do you have any teacher friends with an acoustic guitar they would be willing to let you try?
How many guitars have you played and what order of playability would you place them in? What was the best instrument you played? What was the worst instrument you played? Maybe you've only played one guitar. If that's the case then that is your baseline and all the guitars you're going to try are going to be measured by that one guitar.
Do a cursory check on Amazon and price dreadnaught cases. You want to know how competitive the music store will be with Amazon.
On shopping day, make sure you're not wearing any abrasive clothing that can scratch the finish of a showroom instrument. If you’re wearing a belt, loop it from the side so that the buckle rests over your hip and not under your belly button. Take a small container of hand sanitizer and an old clean towel. Have several medium pics. Bring along a good guitar tuner or have a tuning app on your phone.
Have thirty one dollar bills and a ten in your wallet.
If you already own a dreadnought guitar in a case, take the guitar out, leave it at home, and put the case in the trunk of your car just in case you need a case to put a purchase in.
Most of all, take a friend along with you, someone who plays good rhythm guitar. Ostensibly they should play better than you but if your friend has a higher proficiency level, that's okay. Do not take someone who plays with less authority than you do.
I don't mean just a guitar but a potential Hammer of Thor. Something that'll shake room, something epitomizing the grist of gossamer wing dreams for kids who see themselves playing guitar.
You shouldn’t use a personal guitar in school. If it breaks, the school very likely will not pay to repair or replace it. You need the school to see the value in buying the guitar not just for you but for your students and their music program.
If your 7.5 job admin says “no go” and you have to make the purchase out of pocket from your 16.5 business earnings, buy the extended warranty when you buy the guitar and be prepared to implement the warranty somewhere down the road.
But how does a teacher go about getting a good classroom guitar?
To start with, have a plan, a budget, a friend, and about two hours.
Rule number one. Always try to pick the instrument up and play it before you buy it. I know you can buy a lot of stuff online at Musician's Friend or Sweetwater but there is nothing like going into a store and picking up a guitar and evaluating it in person in real time.
Befor You Get Your Hopes Up
Make sure your admin approve the purchase as well as the price range and determine the way the school is going to pay for the guitar. If it has to go through a bid list, it probably negates purchasing the guitar on your own and having the school reimburse you.
If that is the case, you need to acquire knowledge as to what guitar you want to buy for school. You’ll still probably be going to a store to try guitars – just not buying one. This is not the best of solutions – because stores are in business to sell and make money – not be a “try me and leave” experience.
If you have to buy the guitar you find in a store on-line with a school P.O., make a point of supporting that seller in other ways, including sending your students there for possible purchases or rentals.
Before You Leave Home
Find out who is the most reputable luthier in your area and talk to them. Tell them what you're going to do. They might have some instruments that they are willing to sell and will work out perfectly for you. Ask for their advice.
The important thing is that you're telling them that you're buying an instrument and will be bringing it back to them to do a complete setup. A setup basically involves making sure the neck is set perfectly, the bridge and a nut are leveled for good intonation, and so that the strings are not so high off the neck that they're hard to pressed down or too low that they buzzed up against the frets when you strum aggressively.
You'll probably also need a strap button for the heel at the base of the neck to attach your guitar strap. Strap locks are a bit overkill on acoustic guitars in my estimation, but if you're really want to get them, mention that to the luthier. Get a price quote from the luthier on what all that work will cost you when you bring a guitar to them.
Take stock on your guitar knowledge base. Know what you're grounding your purchase on. Do you have any teacher friends with an acoustic guitar they would be willing to let you try?
How many guitars have you played and what order of playability would you place them in? What was the best instrument you played? What was the worst instrument you played? Maybe you've only played one guitar. If that's the case then that is your baseline and all the guitars you're going to try are going to be measured by that one guitar.
Do a cursory check on Amazon and price dreadnaught cases. You want to know how competitive the music store will be with Amazon.
On shopping day, make sure you're not wearing any abrasive clothing that can scratch the finish of a showroom instrument. If you’re wearing a belt, loop it from the side so that the buckle rests over your hip and not under your belly button. Take a small container of hand sanitizer and an old clean towel. Have several medium pics. Bring along a good guitar tuner or have a tuning app on your phone.
Have thirty one dollar bills and a ten in your wallet.
If you already own a dreadnought guitar in a case, take the guitar out, leave it at home, and put the case in the trunk of your car just in case you need a case to put a purchase in.
Most of all, take a friend along with you, someone who plays good rhythm guitar. Ostensibly they should play better than you but if your friend has a higher proficiency level, that's okay. Do not take someone who plays with less authority than you do.
When You Get To The Store
Plan to spend about two hours at least in the store. This is not a purchase you want to rush.
Before you even pick up an instrument, ask what their return policy is. If you don’t agree with their terms, leave and find a different store.
If you go to a big box store like Guitar Center, they will have an acoustic guitar room and, slightly beyond that room, another room reserved for the pricier models from Taylor, Martin, and Gibson.
I know it's tempting to go in that boutique room and pick up a $3,000 dreadnought but don't. First, you might drop it and that'll be the guitar you'll be buying – because you have to. Second, you don't want to be listening to something that good quite this soon. Save that for another day. You'll be able to find a serviceable guitar for your classroom in the $300-$400 range.
Before you even pick up a guitar hanging on a wall in a store, eye-ball it so that there's nothing glaringly wrong with it like a broken string, missing tuner apparatus, or a nasty scratch. If it’s messed up, tell a sales person that you noticed the problem BEFORE you ever touched it.
If the guitar on the wall looks OK, as soon as you pick it up, sit down, thereby lowering the odds of you dropping the guitar.
Remember that the guitar you're holding might have been already played by a hundred different sets of hands before you. Clean your hands hand sanitizer and wipe them on your towel before you pick it up.
Looks Do Matter
I've bought guitars that are not necessarily considered beauties but they were incredible gigging/teaching tools. But any guitar that I knew I was going to be playing five days a week, I wanted to be something I wanted to see. If you can’t stand the way it looks, maybe don’t pick it up.
The Most Bang - and Sound - For Your Buck
For classroom use, stay away from classical or electric guitars and lean toward steel string acoustic guitars, preferably with a pickup and tuner built-in.
There will be days when you’ll need to amplify that guitar while you're singing into a microphone so you might as well get the pickup built in. That means you’ll want an “electric/acoustic” guitar – they sound great either way. On the chance that you find the perfect guitar that doesn't have a pickup in it, you can have your luthier install a high-end Fishman piezo pick up.
Don't get involved with guitars containing inside suspended microphones. They simply lead to too many headaches. Somewhere down the road you might want to investigate that but for general classroom use, piezo pickups are perfect.
Stay within your price range as you're looking at guitars. Sometimes it's a little bit like buying a house. Sales people will try and talk you into buying something above your price range. Don't give in. Stay true to your investing strategy.
I always go with dreadnoughts in a classroom. They’re a nice big wooden box and project better than just about any other type of acoustic guitar. A solid top will make it sound even better.
Orchestra guitar and “000” models look like dreadnaughts but are slightly smaller and have less inherent projection than a dreadnaught. They sound great but not suitable for the rigors of an elementary classroom.
My hands are a little on the large side so the feel of the neck is very important to me and a deal-breaker if it doesn't feel right.
If your hands are on the smaller side, you'll want to feel a slimmer neck under your hands so that's going to be a consideration as soon as you pick up that good-looking guitar. How does it feel in your fretting hand?
You won't be using a guitar strap in the store so carefully sit down on a bench or a chair to play. Use a pick. Be careful not to scratch the face of the guitar or the pickguard.
Have your partner stand about ten or fifteen feet away from you when you play two simple chord patterns as well as a chromatic scale all the way up the neck of each string. You're going to play those chord patterns and chromatic scales hundreds of times on every guitar for the next two hours so this is not an opportunity to strut out the intro to “Stairway to Heaven” followed by a Guns and Roses highlight reel.
Just strum and scale, and strum the same thing on every guitar. The chromatic scale will reveal dead spots and fret buzz on the neck. Fret buzz can usually be fixed. Dead spots can be a little more problematic.
Does the guitar feel like a butterfly or a tank? If the guitar feels flimsy or any of the mechanical elements like the tuners feel shaky, put it back. It's a rotten egg waiting to be hatched. You want something that feels like a brick house.
In summary, stay away from classical and electric guitars and focus on acoustic electric dreadnoughts.
What You Hear, What Your Partner Hears
You want a guitar that sounds good to you, something that feels good when it's pressed up against your belly as you sing and play.
But it's crucial that the guitar sounds even better for your students who are ten to fifteen to twenty feet away.
So how you get to hear how the guitar will sound to your students? That’s where your friend comes in.
After you've played the guitar, if you like the sound of it, pass it carefully to your friend to play the exact same chord progression you played. Have them play the chromatic scales. Make sure you're listening from ten to fifteen to twenty feet away.
The guitar will sound different than it did when you were playing it, much like your voice sounds different in real time when you sing compared to what it sounds like when it's recorded and you're listening to it on tape.
A guitar that has a lot of treble when you play it will sound excessively treble-ly when you're listening to somebody else playing it. A guitar with a more boomy bottom end when you play it might just have the right balance twenty feet away.
If you find an acoustic/electric guitar that you like, you're going to have to check out the electronics before you buy. If you don't know anything about this stuff, ask if your partner does and have them hook it up to an acoustic amp that will probably be in the guitar room. If neither of you have a solid foundation in electronics and acoustic guitars, ask the salesperson if they can demonstrate for you what the electronic sound like through an amp.
Keep mental notes on each guitar. You don't need pieces of paper and pencil to gum up the works and maybe have you drop an instrument.
Listen to your partner’s comments. Measure their observations with your data. But remember: you're going to be the one playing it five or six hours a day, not them.
While you're in the store, after you've played a guitar that you really like, take a break for a few minutes and check out the reviews online see what people are saying about that model. Find out if there are any documented chronic problems inherent in the instrument that you would not be aware of with a simple two minute play in a store. Check forums and message boards online specific to your guitar and how it balances with a strap.
Take your time. Play the best ones a few times and keep a “top five” list germinating in your mind.
Narrow your choices from five, to three, to two, to “the one”.
After you made your choice, you need to close the deal. We’ll explore that experience in . . . .
“So You Need a Classroom Guitar – Part Two”.
Plan to spend about two hours at least in the store. This is not a purchase you want to rush.
Before you even pick up an instrument, ask what their return policy is. If you don’t agree with their terms, leave and find a different store.
If you go to a big box store like Guitar Center, they will have an acoustic guitar room and, slightly beyond that room, another room reserved for the pricier models from Taylor, Martin, and Gibson.
I know it's tempting to go in that boutique room and pick up a $3,000 dreadnought but don't. First, you might drop it and that'll be the guitar you'll be buying – because you have to. Second, you don't want to be listening to something that good quite this soon. Save that for another day. You'll be able to find a serviceable guitar for your classroom in the $300-$400 range.
Before you even pick up a guitar hanging on a wall in a store, eye-ball it so that there's nothing glaringly wrong with it like a broken string, missing tuner apparatus, or a nasty scratch. If it’s messed up, tell a sales person that you noticed the problem BEFORE you ever touched it.
If the guitar on the wall looks OK, as soon as you pick it up, sit down, thereby lowering the odds of you dropping the guitar.
Remember that the guitar you're holding might have been already played by a hundred different sets of hands before you. Clean your hands hand sanitizer and wipe them on your towel before you pick it up.
Looks Do Matter
I've bought guitars that are not necessarily considered beauties but they were incredible gigging/teaching tools. But any guitar that I knew I was going to be playing five days a week, I wanted to be something I wanted to see. If you can’t stand the way it looks, maybe don’t pick it up.
The Most Bang - and Sound - For Your Buck
For classroom use, stay away from classical or electric guitars and lean toward steel string acoustic guitars, preferably with a pickup and tuner built-in.
There will be days when you’ll need to amplify that guitar while you're singing into a microphone so you might as well get the pickup built in. That means you’ll want an “electric/acoustic” guitar – they sound great either way. On the chance that you find the perfect guitar that doesn't have a pickup in it, you can have your luthier install a high-end Fishman piezo pick up.
Don't get involved with guitars containing inside suspended microphones. They simply lead to too many headaches. Somewhere down the road you might want to investigate that but for general classroom use, piezo pickups are perfect.
Stay within your price range as you're looking at guitars. Sometimes it's a little bit like buying a house. Sales people will try and talk you into buying something above your price range. Don't give in. Stay true to your investing strategy.
I always go with dreadnoughts in a classroom. They’re a nice big wooden box and project better than just about any other type of acoustic guitar. A solid top will make it sound even better.
Orchestra guitar and “000” models look like dreadnaughts but are slightly smaller and have less inherent projection than a dreadnaught. They sound great but not suitable for the rigors of an elementary classroom.
My hands are a little on the large side so the feel of the neck is very important to me and a deal-breaker if it doesn't feel right.
If your hands are on the smaller side, you'll want to feel a slimmer neck under your hands so that's going to be a consideration as soon as you pick up that good-looking guitar. How does it feel in your fretting hand?
You won't be using a guitar strap in the store so carefully sit down on a bench or a chair to play. Use a pick. Be careful not to scratch the face of the guitar or the pickguard.
Have your partner stand about ten or fifteen feet away from you when you play two simple chord patterns as well as a chromatic scale all the way up the neck of each string. You're going to play those chord patterns and chromatic scales hundreds of times on every guitar for the next two hours so this is not an opportunity to strut out the intro to “Stairway to Heaven” followed by a Guns and Roses highlight reel.
Just strum and scale, and strum the same thing on every guitar. The chromatic scale will reveal dead spots and fret buzz on the neck. Fret buzz can usually be fixed. Dead spots can be a little more problematic.
Does the guitar feel like a butterfly or a tank? If the guitar feels flimsy or any of the mechanical elements like the tuners feel shaky, put it back. It's a rotten egg waiting to be hatched. You want something that feels like a brick house.
In summary, stay away from classical and electric guitars and focus on acoustic electric dreadnoughts.
What You Hear, What Your Partner Hears
You want a guitar that sounds good to you, something that feels good when it's pressed up against your belly as you sing and play.
But it's crucial that the guitar sounds even better for your students who are ten to fifteen to twenty feet away.
So how you get to hear how the guitar will sound to your students? That’s where your friend comes in.
After you've played the guitar, if you like the sound of it, pass it carefully to your friend to play the exact same chord progression you played. Have them play the chromatic scales. Make sure you're listening from ten to fifteen to twenty feet away.
The guitar will sound different than it did when you were playing it, much like your voice sounds different in real time when you sing compared to what it sounds like when it's recorded and you're listening to it on tape.
A guitar that has a lot of treble when you play it will sound excessively treble-ly when you're listening to somebody else playing it. A guitar with a more boomy bottom end when you play it might just have the right balance twenty feet away.
If you find an acoustic/electric guitar that you like, you're going to have to check out the electronics before you buy. If you don't know anything about this stuff, ask if your partner does and have them hook it up to an acoustic amp that will probably be in the guitar room. If neither of you have a solid foundation in electronics and acoustic guitars, ask the salesperson if they can demonstrate for you what the electronic sound like through an amp.
Keep mental notes on each guitar. You don't need pieces of paper and pencil to gum up the works and maybe have you drop an instrument.
Listen to your partner’s comments. Measure their observations with your data. But remember: you're going to be the one playing it five or six hours a day, not them.
While you're in the store, after you've played a guitar that you really like, take a break for a few minutes and check out the reviews online see what people are saying about that model. Find out if there are any documented chronic problems inherent in the instrument that you would not be aware of with a simple two minute play in a store. Check forums and message boards online specific to your guitar and how it balances with a strap.
Take your time. Play the best ones a few times and keep a “top five” list germinating in your mind.
Narrow your choices from five, to three, to two, to “the one”.
After you made your choice, you need to close the deal. We’ll explore that experience in . . . .
“So You Need a Classroom Guitar – Part Two”.
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