Anyone know if the bundled guitar is any good?

I have an acoustic and have been meaning to learn to play more than the handful of riffs I know for a while. I want to get an electric anyway and the QL just convinced me to get this game. So I'm wondering if anyone who knows about guitars can tell me if the guitar is good quality and value. It appears to be a "Epiphone Les Paul Electric Jr," and the bundle price is $199.99. Essentially $79.99 (Cost of game and cable) + $110 for the guitar.

I had a $200 guitar once, and it was horrible and constantly went out of tune. My $600 Epiphone Les Paul is solid as a rock and doesn't go out of tune. I've never heard good things about the cheapo guitars. The wood used has to be of a certain quality or it will constantly warp the neck and the truss rod will never stay in place.

@wipeout: Yeah, I'm aware this is not going to be a great guitar but I'm wondering if it's good for the price. Don't really want to invest much until I can actually play a bit better.

I couldn't recommend buying a guitar without getting a feel for it first. It could be alright for the price, but I would recommend going to a music store or guitar center and trying out different guitars.

Epiphone Les Paul Jr. is an OK guitar according to the Internet. That said: you should almost never buy a guitar sight-unseen. Every guitar is different, and generally the less you spend, the more likely the guitar has issues: unfixable fret buzz, a warped neck, shoddy electronics, shitty tuners. Even the big names who charge thousands of dollars for an instrument make the occasional dud. $110 is a pretty good deal for a Les Paul Jr. though. If you can, try one out somewhere before you buy it, there are a million guides on how to make sure a guitar is not absolute shite online.

@sinusoidal: Ok I will head down to the local Guitar Center and take a look at one, I bet they'll have one. Might have rocksmith as well.

I wouldn't buy the bundled guitar. Go to GC (like you plan to) and mess with the guitars there. You should be able to find a better one around that price though almost anything under $300-$400 is probably going to not be so great. I noticed Vinny having to retune after every song which shouldn't be the case right after one song.

@jams: I'd agree, hard to get a decent guitar for that low of a price. If you think you're going to stick with learning guitar take a look at eBay. They have Mexican Strats for under $300 and they are far superior to that pack in epiphone.

Keep in mind, a strat has single coil pickups that generally have lower output than the humbucker on a Les Paul Jr. I don't know if they would work as well with whatever kind of pre-amp Rocksmith uses.

If I am not mistaken, the first Rocksmith required you to retune before every song, regardless of what guitar is being used. So I'd assume its still the case with 2014.

Yeah, I just watched the QL and it was mandatory tuning, and the guitar stayed in tune pretty well the whole time. The only time he had to actually retune was for Heart Shaped Box because it's in drop-Db.

On another note, the guitar looked like a short scale (shorter neck than usual) guitar. I dunno about learning on a short scale guitar, unless you're a kid with really small hands or something. They are also prone to play out of tune since the strings are looser and much easier to bend. The first time I played a short-scale, there was a significant adjustment period during which I sounded like shit playing the thing because I was man-handling it like it was a regular guitar. I imagine learning on a short-scale and moving up to a regular scale guitar would introduce similar problems the other way round, and since most guitars are normal scale... (Though now I prefer short-scale. They've got a punchier sound and you really can properly bend the shit out of the strings.)

I'm also not a huge fan of the way it teaches you riffs either. Learning them by only playing specific notes out of the riff and slowly adding more until you play the whole thing seems kind of weird and inefficient to me. Sometimes the partial riffs it has you play seem almost more difficult than the real thing due to weird timings. I think it'd be better to give you all the notes to start with, and just have you do them slowly until you can get them up to speed, but I guess that's not as fun as being able to play along with your favorite songs right away.

The general thought is i think that it won't be a great guitar and certainly not a keeper (unless maybe for other reasons if it happened to be your first guitar or something).

Generally speaking though in comparison to 10 years ago the starter guitars and very cheap lines have, maybe not great, but certainly workable. Taking that into account it won't be a great guitar but for that price and it's purpose it will be very high up when it comes to bang vs bucks.

With the disclaimer that this is just a generalization. I must say i have never seen on up close or held on of the rocksmith guitars so i can't directly comment, it might be a stinker or a hidden gem.

Hmm. As I said I don't really care about the quality as much as if it's a good price for the specific guitar, but the short-scale has made me reconsider. I think I'm going to go hunting for a used guitar instead.

Hit up pawn shops in your area before you decide. You never know what you'll find for cheap there. I got a nice little Washburn X10 in good shape for the price of a Walmart guitar. It's not an expensive guitar to begin with, but it's a damn good starter.

The guitar that Vinny used only had one pickup too. Even cheap guitars usually come with two and you can get a lot more sounds out of them because of it.

I looked at the bundled guitar and it looked okay but in the end I went for a Yamaha Pacifica 012 bundle (I'm a beginner, so sue me :D) and it's actually a pretty sturdy guitar & feels well built, has 3 pickups as opposed to the one you get on the bundled guitar and it'll happily hold it's tuning for a couple of hours (providing I stay in E standard I don't feel the need to retune the guitar until after 2 or 3 days) so I'd recommend it... reading reviews on the internets it seems to be considered one of the best beginner guitars and I can see why!

The tone isn't bad for the humbacker pick up but the clean setting (the top one) is a tad flat but not terrible, my friend (an experienced guitar teacher) said for the price it sounded like really good and not that far off from a more expensive Strat in some settings.