Originally Posted by: tammie burdenHi, I'm a dumb mom of a 14 yr. old who plays electric guitar. I just recently bought a used Ibanez GIO 6 string, Strat style, electric guitar. I know nothing , but that it's 2 years old. It looks like it's in great condition. The neck is straight. You can't tell that it's been hardley used. I haven't heard it yet, because it's a christmas present for my daughter. Could somebody tell me if this is a decent gutiar and if i'm wasting my time or not? I got it for only 86 bucks. She likes metal and alternate music and takes lessons. Is this a good metal guitar? Someone help, please?!

Tammie

This should be an fine start for a beginner...though at 86 bucks I'm a little worried about a few things that may be wrong with it...did you get it on E-bay, in a pawn shop, from a friend? It might be a good idea to run it by a local guitar store and ask if there's anything wrong with it (guitar center usually won't charge you for that kind of thing). They might try to sell you some new pickups (the things in the body that channel the vibrations of the string into the wire that runs to the amplifier), but you can ignore those sales pitches, it's not worth it to upgrade pickups on that guitar, but if they say you'll need new tuning machines or could have the action lowered a little bit, I'd go for it. Lowering the action is really cheap (maybe even free), but the tuning machines could cost anywhere from 10 to 60 bucks! They're worth it though, as without decent ones, the guitar will be going out of tune every ten minutes. Don't fret though (no guitar-related pun intended), if there's anything drastically wrong they'll tell you. I have a feeling the guitar is fine, but I'm wondering why it was sold. Odds are good that the player just lost interest, which means there's probably not much (if anything) wrong with it.