After 3 different trips to two different music stores, I finally bought an acoustic guitar. A black acoustic guitar. More specifically, I bought the Ibanez PF15ECE Dreadnought Cutaway Acoustic-Electric Guitar in Gloss Black.

The Ibanez PF15ECE Performance Series Acoustic-Electric Cutaway Guitar uses mahogany back and sides to provide rich, warm lows and sweet sustain. The Fishman Sonicore pickup and SST preamp assure an accurate reproduction of the guitar’s natural tone when plugged in. The gloss black finish, gold die-cast tuners, and pearl dot inlays give the Ibanez PF15ECE a distinguished appearance. Ibanez includes an onboard tuner with your PF15ECE Guitar!

Awww yeah, mahogany, gloss, gold, and pearl.

guitarPhoto taken directly from Ibanez’s website.

It was surprisingly hard to purchase this guitar because both stores discouraged, and were downright unhelpful about me purchasing a guitar with steel strings, since I didn’t know how to play. They also encouraged me to purchase the cheapest guitar possible (something that most sites suggest is a bad idea).

I was planning on only getting an acoustic guitar, and not electro-acoustic, but I liked this one, and it sounds great. Maybe someday I’ll want to hook it up to my computer, or an amp.

It also comes with an integrated tuner, but it wasn’t clear to me how it worked (even after watching the salesperson barely able to use it). So I used a free Android guitar tuning app called GuitarTuna. It works well. I know it works well, only because I was actually able to tune my guitar, and without this app, I would have not been able to.

The guitar came with D’Addario coated 80/20 bronze strings. Don’t know what that means exactly, but it’ll probably be useful information for when it’s time to restring.

The guitar is black, and I like that, because my favorite guitar player was Johnny Cash. He didn’t always play a black guitar. I could have probably gone with any guitar type, and Johnny Cash probably played a similar one at some point in his life. But black is cool, because Johnny Cash is cool and also “The Man in Black”, and also if you Google “johnny cash guitar”, the first site selling a guitar in the results selling a special edition of a black guitar, for $6,000. Maybe someday…

Eventually I need to purchase a case for the guitar. But I took it home in its cardboard box. I also bought a dozen medium Dunlop picks with a tortoise shell pattern. I was disappointed to discover that the picks are actually made out of celluloid, and not actual tortoise shell (just kidding).

And that’s it. Now I have to actually sit down and learn how to play.

I’m writing this because my fingers are too sore to keep practicing right now. I’ve started the Beginners Course at justinguitar.com. I’ve spent some time on the D chord, and the A chord. Tomorrow I’m sure I’ll spend even more time on them, and then maybe the E chord!

Of course, Wikipedia has an alphabetized list of musicians who have made notable use of Ibanez guitars.