It’s been six months since I started learning to play acoustic guitar with my trusty Yamaha FS720S. I’ve mostly been led by my guitar teacher towards the blues and funk orientated music from the likes of the Chili’s, so when it came to buying an electric guitar I wanted to get something that had that character and versatility of tone that could cover those styles.

With my sensible hat on, I set myself a budget (cue laughter here) of around £300 for an electric guitar, and popped down to the local guitar shop with my teacher. First of all I tried out a crimson red Tokai ES60 335 Semi-Acoustic, then a Squier Standard Telecaster, a Vintage VSA 575, and probably a handful of others as well, including a Stratocaster (you just have to).

My favorite of the bunch was the Tokai, a Gibson reproduction with a fairly unique sound that had a lot more depth than the other guitars, also some good flexibility, unlike the Vintage which had very strong jazz tones.

Then everything got thrown to the fire, as my guitar teacher pulled an axe off of the racks that didn’t have a price tag on it, the Fender Classic 72 Telecaster Deluxe. It has two wide-range humbucker pick-ups which give an amazing blues tone, a body made of alder, neck made of maple with a stratocaster style head, 3 bolt with micro adjustment for the neck, bullet style truss rod, and in Sunburst Maple it looks as beautiful as it sounds.

So gave it a run through with the same old songs I’d played on the other guitars and basically that was that, it blew all of the other guitars away, I walked out paying £625 including a Line 6 Microspider amp, and a cable to get me started.

I seriously have barely put it down since I got it home. I’m new to electric so I can’t preach about all the different tones, but just playing switching between the pick-ups, and adding a little reverb on the amp has given me days of fun so far and I can see this being a long term companion on my musical exploration!