How a $93 guitar changed my life (the guitar part of it anyway)

The best guitar you can buy for around $100.

I've often said that the right guitar will find you, not the other way around, and if you don't recognize it when it happens, you'll forever regret it. Well, a few weekends ago, the right guitar found me, and I'm glad I was paying attention.

I have a big birthday coming up (one of the ones that end in zero) and my wife wanted me to get something special, so I was given a generous budget of $400 to get whatever I wanted. Since I'm not a professional gigging musician, I have no need for a $2,000 custom shop guitar, which means that $400 would buy a nice mid-level guitar that I would be perfectly happy with.

But what's better than buying one guitar? Buying two guitars, of course.

I'm nothing if not cheap, and I have an affinity (no foreshadowing pun intended) for cheap guitars, so I decided to look at the low end of the guitar spectrum and see if I could get two decent guitars for my $400. It's been a goal of mine to complete, in one form or another, the Holy Trinity of Guitars - Strat, Tele, and Les Paul. I already have the Strat, so I needed one of each of the other two to complete the trifecta. Could I do it on $400?

Short takes: Airline Bighorn, Squier Affinity Tele, Fender Mustang II

I went to Guitar Center again this past weekend to waste time while my wife got her hair done, and I ended up trying out some gear. I played an Airline Bighorn and a Squier Affinity Tele through a Fender Mustang II amp. I'll share some quick first impressions of each one, starting with the amp.

Fender Mustang II

Fender's Mustang range of solid-state modeling amps has been very well received in the music press, and I've been eager to try one out. I recently bought a Roland Cube 40XL that I love, but the 40-watt Mustang II was on my short list of amps to buy, and after playing it, I know that its place on that list was justified. It wasn't enough to make me regret my Cube purchase, but if I would've bought the Mustang instead, I wouldn't have been disappointed.