ezbass

Either pickup, swap the hot and earths around.

As Dad says, it has to be playable and comfortable for your hands and body, whichever feels best should be the one you buy. However, that said, don’t overlook the visual appeal. The more you play, the better you’ll become, so having something you want to pick up and play, because of the way it looks, as well as the ergonomics, is also important.

If you're happy not playing barre chords, then that's fine. However, it will impede your progress. It's not all E/Em and A/Am shapes (dominant & minor 7ths too), a barred C shape is a great voicing to have available, for instance. It takes time and effort to build up the strength to play barre chords, but once you have it down, you'll never look back. Just to reiterate, you don't need to voice all 6 strings when playing chords, you often must (see should) mute some of the notes so as not give the wrong flavour to your playing.

If you can stretch the budget, just a bit, I'd always recommend Yamaha.

You may waver slightly from the actual beat during fast sections, either single note or strumming (it’s only natural when playing fast) but providing you start and finish on the beat, it’s fine and adds a human element to the passage. If you’ve ever heard famous drummers quantised, you’ll notice it feels unnatural, even though it’s bang on time. In short, feel it. At least this is what I do.

I’m only hearing what I would consider normal pick response (there’s always some extra harmonic content). Try not playing so quickly and see if you can still hear what you’re hearing with space between the notes. Something else to consider is pick-up height, if the pickups are too high, you might be hearing what are referred to as ‘wolf tones’.

Could be that. Could be that too. It won't hurt.

SRV by Eric Johnson. Took a me ages to get the main parts down and I don’t have the chops to nail the main solo. Still revisit it occasionally, which then becomes also a feat of memory, as alluded to by @Dad3353.

It’s been a progression really, so I’ll list them as they came into my consciousness. Les Paul - I was raised with Les in the house, the sound of guitar, front and centre was different from everything else. Hank Marvin - The Shadows were on my turntable a lot with records that I’d inherited, guitar front and centre again. Crosby Stills Nash & Young - The live album, 4 Way Street, made want to learn to play. Eric Clapton - Hearing Layla for the first time was a ‘wow’ moment, I wanted to play like that. I became the biggest fanboy, but can’t stand him now Paul Kossoff & Santana - I didn’t have fast chops and these guys showed that note choice and feel were just as important and I could actually play their lines (at least I thought I could). Eric Johnson - The master of electric tone IMO, I can’t play or sound like him, but still my favourite player. Carl Verheyen - Introduced me to playing bigger intervals for solo breaks, pulled me out of the typical, pentatonic rut. Brian Setzer - I was asked to join a rockabilly band, so started to listen to Brian, completely changed my style. These days, I’m more into rhythm playing and guys like Cory Wong and John Mayer for their rhythm chops are more my thing. As I play mainly acoustic now, I’m also developing a better appreciation for Jimmy Page’s acoustic playing (I think he plays electric like he’s falling downstairs, too messy).

You can lessen a good bit of the early grief of steel strung acoustic guitars, with a good set up and using light/low tension strings. Optima make a low tension set and, having tried them, they do make a difference, although sound projection is somewhat reduced (as you’d imagine).

These would make me a suggest a dreadnought or maybe a folk sized acoustic.