Musical Mystery Tour

If the strings have been on that long, there is a very good chance they will have some corrosion - if you run a finger along under the strings, you will likely feel it - it is caused by the sweat in your fingers, which has a small amount of salt in it. This is why you should wipe your strings down after playing, so yes, some new strings are probably a good idea. But, having said that, some corrosion wouldn't necessarily cause them to buzz, although it will deaden their sound somewhat. The buzzing is more likely to be caused by technique being a bit off. If you watch my video about this, it will show you how to avoid that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po_88r7FiUA

Might help if we know whether your friend is a seasoned player or completely new to it. A new plyer who is perhaps inclined to learn because they have been bought a gift will probably be happy to use a guitar with some laminate construction, whereas a seaoned player would probably want something with a genuine single piece wood top at the very least, and probably similar with the back and sides. Inexpensive 4/4 classical beginner guitars are generally around the 150 quid mark for a decent one, ones a seasoned player would get along with are going to be several times that price.

Silvertone Dark Star. The reason I'm suggesting that one, even though it is a basic cheap guitar, is because I once listened to a youtube comparison of acoustics where the guy played five acoustics, didn't show them and asked people to vote in the comments on the best sounding ones, in order. A week later he posted the results. The guitars were: A custom made one which was over twenty grand, a Martin, a Taylor, a Tanglewood and the lowly Silvertone. Many people placed either the Martin or the Taylor at number one, but then put the Silvertone in seconds place, a few people, including me, put the Silvertone at number one. When the results were revealed, I immediately went to get one of them, which I found at Chase in Manchester and paid less than a ton for it. It had an horrendous picture of Paul Stanley and the Kiss logo on the front, so I oversprayed that to make it completely gloss black, sorted out the nut, the bridge and the frets, swapped out the tuners for some much better ones, put a soundhole pick up on it and an Aspri spring reverb unit. It's now my main acoustic gigging guitar and whenever other guitar players hear it, they want to have a go with it and usually end up wanting one. My theory is that because it is cheaply made, the top and bouts are wafer thin, and that makes it reverberate really well. I have lots of other, theoretically 'better' acoustics all of which cost more than that Silvertone, including an Epiphone AJ, Aria MBA, Fender MA-1, Harmony Sovereign and a Gibson MA41, but that Silvertone blows them all out of the water for sound.

Never really got on with Strats until fairly recently. I've had a few over the years which I didn't really connect with and ended up givig them away, but in the past year I got two which I do like and will keep. The first was a Sunn Mustang, which if you know anything about those, is a license-built Fender Strat made in India for the European market in the late Eighties. That's a very good guitar indeed. Finding that I liked that Mustang, it prompted me to get another Strat, a 1980 model which I relicked the living crap out of and tarted up with a few parts, and that one I really like too. You can see me playing that one through an MG15 here. I guess the moral of the story is, sometimes you have to kiss a lot of frogs.

Sort of guitar related, since I got it for my youtube vids, my lovely partner Fifi got me a Tascam DR-05X audio recorder

Matthew 7:24 points out that guitarists cranking up their Marshall stack to 'eleven' and banging out a bit of Zeppelin: 'Will be like a wise man who has built his house on the rock'

My tips on fingering the strings correctly and what can cause problems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po_88r7FiUA&t=1s

I have an MG15CFX, it is pretty loud actually, I could do a small pub gig with it, so it's probably okay for what you want. The eight inch speaker is a bit 'trebly' compared to some amps, but it does nevertheless sound like a typical Marshall and considering you can find them for fifty quid on fleabay, they are okay.

Well that's the great thing with graphic equalisers, you can simply set each slider in middle, then experiment with boosting and cutting various frequencies to see what works for you. However, there are some things to consider which are worth trying in addition to that. First up, the order you have your pedals in makes a difference. so, if you have the EQ before the distortion, the range which you have boosted will distort more easily, but if you have the distortion first, only the distorted tone will be boosted. See which order suits you best, there is no wrong way to do it. Some things to try... From left to right on an EQ is low to high frequencies. Reducing 100Hz frequencies give the bass and drums more room by allowing those to poke through your guitar sound, if on the other hand, you are playing your guitar solo, a bit of boost to 200-400Hz will beef thngs up, too much of that will make it muddy, so add it slowly and see what pleases your ear. Boosting up at the other end on the 3.2 and 6.4 sliders will add brightness and harmonics. The 800 and 1.6 sliders will thicken things up without getting muddy, so that's good for guitar solos. Cutting the 400 slider will leave the midrange with a free hole for other instruments to come through, but still have your guitar sound pretty full. All that kind of thing is the essence of what mixing does, both in the studio and in live performances, where you want each instrument to have some space for its main frequencies to come though. You don't have to know all the frequencies, just let your ears be the guide on what you either think sounds good boosted or cut. It will definitely get you where you want to be.

The Pacifica's humbucker is in the bridge position, which makes it a bit more treble-ish than you'd typically want for that kind of sound. With that in mind, probably the easiest and cheapest way to sort that out would be an EQ pedal. Even an inexpensive one will do the job, so take a look at the Behringer BEQ700; you can find these for about 20 quid. As you expand your playing and eventually end up with a pedal board like most guitar players do, an EQ pedal is something you'd want on that board, so an EQ pedal will be a useful long terms acquisition.

Was originally an HB TE52, but I added a neck PAF: https://i.imgur.com/nOhln0N.jpg