The single best Christmas (or any other holiday) gift for a guitarist is money.
But there’s a qualification – “single best” means, in this case, the best generic idea for all guitarists. If I got lunch with Brian May as a gift, that’d be better than money, because you likely can’t “buy” lunch with Brian May.
Still, money makes the most sense, in general, because most guitarists are always lusting after some piece of gear they don’t have. Most, not all. Even Joe Bonamassa, who owns more amps and guitars than anyone would ever need to, is still collecting. There’s still stuff he wants.
My wife and I had many conversations about this in our early years. So now I pretty much just buy for myself on Christmas and my birthday, because what I want can change from minute to minute… although Amazon’s Wish List is a brilliant idea that I WISH more people would use. The stipulation is that I almost always choose a “small” budget, usually around $200. But I sometimes save up money to ADD to that $200.
Guitarists love gear because we’re really just grown up kids, and these are our toys and we love to play with them. We fall into two different realms when we have money and are trying to figure out what to do with it: either we already have something in mind, or we invent a matrix to try to figure out the best way to spend our money.
For educational purposes, here’s how I decide what to buy; I will make a list of things I might want, and then use the following list to eliminate items. If there’s nothing left, I’ll save the money.
Sometimes the answer can be yes, sometimes no:
- Do I already have one?
- Do I already have something that does the same thing?
- Does this give me some new capability that I will use to improve my music? (This is key)
- Will this improve my live show?
- Is it way more expensive than it should be?
- Is it $500 or less?
- How much will I use it?
- Is there something I REALLY want but can’t yet afford?
- How much fun would it be to own this?
- Does the cost justify the improvement it would bring?
Recent purchases included a guitar kit and the Helix Native software. Heck, I made a video on this topic.
Oh well. Maybe you’ve got your own set of purchase rules. If you want to talk about them, email me at richard@budgetguitarist.dot – maybe you’ve thought of some things I haven’t.
Anyway, MONEY is the best gift.
