What electric guitar would be best for me?
Ereth asked:
I’m planning to get an electric guitar and I want to play green day songs. I’ve never played guitar before. Do you know any good guitars that sound like billie joe’s? Any guitars that sound like his that are under $1,000? What amp does he use? How can I make my amp sound like his? I don’t have an amp yet. Do you know any good amps? Thanks SO much!
I’m planning to get an electric guitar and I want to play green day songs. I’ve never played guitar before. Do you know any good guitars that sound like billie joe’s? Any guitars that sound like his that are under $1,000? What amp does he use? How can I make my amp sound like his? I don’t have an amp yet. Do you know any good amps? Thanks SO much!
The best thing you can do is to go to a guitar shop and ask them all these questions. Most are very helpful and you can try out the different guitars. beware223
I know that the guitarist for 12 Stones uses a Michael Kelly Patriot Glory in the song “Lie To Me”(probably others, but I’ve only seen the guitar in the video linked in my sources).
I ordered it last week with a case for $550, new. I don’t have any experience with it, as I’m impatiently waiting to get it.
I spent a little extra to get it in a prettier color, too, though the regular blue/black/smoky color is pretty awesome.
As far as amps go, this is my first electric guitar, so I don’t know much about amps.
However, I bought a VOXDA15, which sounds great when I play my keyboard, mp3 player, computer, or my microphone through it. It has 11 effect, and 11 styles(which you can use any combination with the two switches), and a ton of features. Sounds great when really blasting my music library, so I think/hope it’ll sound good with my guitar.
It was $150.
My whole setup is $700, and several experienced guitarists have told me great things about the amp.
The guitar’s a shot in the dark, though, as not many people seem to have heard of it. My guitar instructor told me it has great electronics when he saw the specs, very similar to his $3,000 PRS. I’m hoping and praying it won’t disappoint.
If you want, I can edit my answer once I get my guitar in, or email you my personal thoughts on it.
Either way, I hope you find exactly what you’re looking for. Jos h2o
under a grand? well thats nice, you can actually get i pretty nice guitar for under 1000
^thats the kind of guitar billy joe armstrong uses
EDIT: nevermind, its just really close, not the exact model… but yeah. you’ll still get great sound from it
…for big shows he most likely uses a bunch of marshells, but you Definately dont need a marshel if your just starting out. Has Anyone Seen The Bridge?
Hey Ereth. Great question. “Tone” is an elusive thing. Let me tell you a little story to illustrate this. I’m an “old-school metal head”… I grew up loving the music of the 1970s and 80s … I read an interview once with Ted Nugent where he talked about how much he liked Eddie Van Halen’s tone. He was on tour with Van Halen at one point and after he heard Eddie do his sound check–he asked if he could plug in and play through his rig…. to his disappointment he said, “It just sounded like Ted Nugent playing through Eddie Van Halen’s amp.” The point: Tone is produced as much by the way the musician plays–as it is by the instrument, amp and affects that are used.
Now–having said that–there are a number of things you can do to get a tone similar to Billie Joe’s. Since you have a $1,000 budget you have a lot of choices. I would encourage you to do some research at Do a search for “electric guitars”. They have a wide variety of great ROCK STYLE electric guitars — most all of which would do that job nicely.
You definitely want to get a guitar with a “humbucker” pick up in the bridge position. A “humbucker pickup” looks like two pickups side by side… you can see pictures of humbucker pickups by doing a web search for “humbucker pickups” and then clicking on “images”. You’ll see exactly what I mean.
You want a humbucker pickup because it will give you that big/fat sound you’re looking for.
As to specific brands of guitars and amps here are some suggestions:
GUITARS: Fender, Gibson. Ibanez, Kramer, Dean, Peavey… there are lots of them… but any guitar made by these companies–within the $500-$1,000 range will do the trick very well.
AMPS: Again–there are lots to pick from–but a few that I might recommend would be the new VOX valvetronics… Line 6 spider amps sound great… and of course, if you have a truck load of money–a 50 or 100 watt Marshall stack would be the holy grail
Remember: is a great place to check all of this out.
And here is an article you can read on Billie Joe’s sound/set up:
Hope that’s helpful. Brad