Do you still have your first real guitar?

I let some good stuff go because I didst know how or couldnt afford to fix issues like poor intonation(an actual 61' SG/LP that had been modded w/ a wrap around bridge), high action(that little Yamaha acoustic from early on), and the Marauder with the sloppy neck repair that played and sounded great but looked like crap and I thought just wasn't "cool" enough.
My first quality guitar with absolutely no issues is my 81' Carvin DC 100 which I still have. Solid as a rock that one is, still a great guitar.
Before that I had a decent little $200 Alvarez acoustic that I bought I college and sold after getting my D28 in 1985.
 
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I do. My first guitar was a budget Yamaha acoustic with high action that was quite hard to play, but I didn't know any better and that's what I learned on. This was 1975-ish. My piano playing sister's boyfriend gave her a used Norlin-era Epiphone acoustic which was way easier to play than my Yamaha and I convinced her to trade me. I still have that Epiphone and play it often.

As far as electrics go, I managed to save up enough money one summer to buy a brand new GIbson Sonex Custom. I thought I had arrived. I still have it, but very very rarely play it. Not mine, but looks exactly like it.

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No, thankfully...it was a really cheap SG copy with janky bigsby knock-off trem that would get stuck if you gave it a sideways glance.
 
No, I've usually been happy with the guitars I've owned but never been particularly nostalgic, so they went when I got something else. Generally I don't hold on to stuff I don't use.
 
Depends on what you mean by "real". I started playing on a $60 K-Mart Tiesco Del Ray tulip single pickup. I guess you could call it real. Sometime after that, someone gave me a Sears guitar that had an amp built into the guitar. Likewise, I suppose it was real. They were both mostly playable, but both had some serious shortcomings. They are both long gone, and I'm not quite sure what happened to either of them.

When I was 17 in 1978, I used the money I saved up working for a horrible company to buy a Les Paul Standard. It had a DiMarzio PAF in the neck and a DiMarzio super distortion humbucker in the bridge position. I hated the SD and traded it to a friend for a standard Gibson humbucker out of his brand new 79 LP Custom. The PAF got moved to the bridge, and the Gibson went to the neck. At the time, I didn't realize neck and bridge pickups were wound different.

I still have that LP, and the same pickups are in the same spots.

Oh, and my friend still has that 79 Custom. I don't think he still has the super distortion humbucker in it though.
 
Kind of. I had a Memphis strat copy that I sold to a friend but my Tokai is the first decent instrument I bought in 1986 or so and I still have it although the only original parts art the body, bridge and pickguarx.
 
Wish I had. I just mangled both the body and neckwith files trying to add better hardware. At that time I had no idea what I was doing. Tried to fit a Wilkinson bridge and a better nut, but ended up destroying the thing. The guitars I have now though, way different scenario. And... cheap guitars now are insanely good compared to what they were in the late 80's.
 
i know it's natural to have a lot of feelings and nostalgia for your first guitar, but for me I think i don't really feel that, and I'm ok with it. My first guitar when i was like 14 or so was an epiphone les paul junior; a bit of a hunk of junk that I then traded up for some kind of ibanez SSH i think.

What i do feel an attachment to is my first real big boy guitar, which was an Ibanez Artcore AF75TDGIV (i think), which I still have and is still one of my main guitars. 2008 model i think? (coincidentally the year I joined HCGJ :embarrassed:) This is truly the one that I feel a big emotional attachment to and I hope to never part with:

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(Yes I was and am still kind of a big fan of Billy Duffy and The Cult. But who has white falcon money? :embarrassed:)
 
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My first? No way. Back in the late seventies when I was teaching geetar, one could actually lease geetars from stores.
I had an Ibanez lawsuit double neck, a Gibson V with a bad headstock repair, and a Tele that I wish i still had today.
Then around 1985, I traded a a Yamaha classical, and $200 for my 54 ES-175, which will be with me until i expire.
 
GomezAddams said:
Depends on what you mean by "real".
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^This. But under probably any definition, the answer is yes, I still have it/them.

First guitar was/is a no-name MIJ acoustic from my Da. It's no great shakes, kinda tinny and otherwise unremarkable. But I learned on it, and my father died a couple years back, so obviously it's not going anywhere.

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My first electric I also have. It was real in the sense of not being imaginary, and in being a real piece of crap. I gave up on it being actually playable in the early '80s, handpainted it checkerboard, and used it as wall art. I lost track of it when I graduated law school, and assumed it had been binned. My housemate/bandmate in fact rescued it and returned it to me several decades later. It's up on a shelf in the garage in a space I call, for no particular reason, the Amen Corner.

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My first real decent guitar I also still have. C. 1973 Ovation Breadwinner, with the original style single-coil pickups that outwardly resemble humbuckers. It's a good build and very playable, but quirky in the extreme. Controls are incredibly counter-intuitive and the pickups howl like a banshee with even medium distortion. Still, it was my main gigging guitar for most of the '80s, haha.

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Brian Krashpad said:
My first real decent guitar I also still have. C. 1973 Ovation Breadwinner, with the original style single-coil pickups that outwardly resemble humbuckers. It's a good build and very playable, but quirky in the extreme. Controls are incredibly counter-intuitive and the pickups howl like a banshee with even medium distortion. Still, it was my main gigging guitar for most of the '80s, haha.

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Didn't realize this was a competition, but I think BK just won.
 
Chicken Man said:
Didn't realize this was a competition, but I think BK just won.
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Haha, I saw that guitar in a pawn shop window from a moving car. I was in my year between undergrad (I managed to complete in 3 years due to CLEP credits) and law school, living at home and teaching junior high in very sketchy downtown Jax, Florida. I was saving up to go back to school, but for the first time had a little bit of disposable income. I couldn't swear to it, but I wanna say it was $225 USD. Bought probably 1979.

Shot from first band gig, back in Gainesville, 1L (hint: being in your first band in your first year of law school: not advisable). The orange dots were little blank price stickers. I later took off the orange ones and put medium blue ones (that matched the pickguard) on. Then finally put on the "Florida" decal, that's still on it.

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Most recent time onstage, Brass Mug, Tampa, 2/27/01:

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