Hey guys!

This is my very first thread on LowYat =) My wife got a student exchange place in USM, so I'm moving with her obviously. We'll be living in Penang for 5 months starting from December 2007. Now, I love playing guitar and bass, but obviously it'd be stupid to bring a guitar from Finland (yeah, Scandinavia..North Europe, anyone?) as we try to travel lightly.

So, to my question is: how much does a decent 6-string electric acoustic cost in Malaysia?

I play both bass and guitar and have had bands and stuff going on in Finland but when we get to Malaysia I'll probably be spending quite a bit of time alone so I'm just looking for an instrument to play around with at our to-be-home. Who knows, maybe I'll join a band in Penang or something and buy meself some more gear =)

Here's my most recent band: http://www.kemosabe.fi
It's in Finnish but the site is quite clear and the songs are on the front page =) We quit, but will one day reform. I play bass, but I make most parts of the songs at home on guitar.

Thanks, everyone!

welcome to malaysia~

I bought a Norman B-18 for 900++ and it sounds fantastic. It's a handmade guitar from Canada and I wouldn't settle for another guitar (unless it's a Taylor, but those cost a bomb!).

This post has been edited by bumz: Jul 29 2007, 07:21 PM

well there's plenty of guitar shops around and you'd be surprised by the range of guitars that are available here..

take care,
-nullify.

^And also be surprised how much some stores mark up the prices. Best thing to do is just go window shopping around here to find the most suitable guitar at the most suitable price for you. And yeah, welcome to Malaysia!

welcome to Malaysia =)

what's your budget?

get something around your budget =)

Taylors are good if you can afford =)

This post has been edited by Equilibrium777: Jul 29 2007, 10:17 PM

Welcome my friend.

From what I've seen.... Finnish are awesome metalheads!
and musicians of course.

cool, another student exchange to USM.
i had a friend from sweden who went there on student exchange, also into metal.

welcome to malaysia.

im not sure where you could shop for guitars in penang. i dont think there are many choices there (as i might be wrong). when i was there i could only find 2 music stores.

any penang ppl wanna suggest where he could start looking?

danlion1 is in penang.

Welcome to Malaysia.
Maybe you can look into some epiphone acoustics like the dove

or seagull guitars

not sure if you can find them in penang tho

hey wait, only coming in december.
thats when my friend from sweden might come by again to USM.
gotta go check.

Maybe you should make some time and pay a visit to Kuala Lumpur, because, while shopping/sightseeing you can also visit some of the guitar shops there. There should be more choices compared to Penang. The trip will took you about five hours by bus. You're from Finland? Wow, I like Nightwish, Opeth and HIM.

umm, opeth are from sweden

ooops.. my mistake. but as a whole, Scandinavians rocks!

who can forget children of bodom from finland?

Thanks everyone =D I love LowYat, so many replies in such a short time and such good atmosphere. The Malaysian people seem like such an easy going bunch, everybody's friendly at least on LowYat =) Can't wait to get there. On almost any given Finnish forum, people would've replied with "go look for yourself you lazy f*cker!" or "don't listen to the other guys, play piano instead".

Anyway yeah I kinda forgot to mention my budget, I was thinking like RM500-750 or so...is this doable or am I expecting Malaysia to be cheaper then it is today? I'm most willing to buy a used guitar as long as it's not beat to crap, I almost always buy used gear (guitars and pedals) anyway cos they're such a better value and anything that was wrong with them right out of the box is most probably fixed by the previous owner(s) (setup etc).

Basically, it doesn't even need to be electric as long it's got steel strings. I just need an acoustic to jam by myself when I'm lonely =) I haven't played with a band in something like half a year and I'm already dying to just play ANYTHING, my head is full of riffs and rhytms! It'd be terrible if I didn't even have a guitar when I'm abroad =)

As for music, people seem to know HIM and Nightwish..some know Children of Bodom and Hanoi Rocks too. Me personally..I don't listen to any of those bands =) When it comes to style I'm all about the rhytm and the groove, so I'm more into stuff like Helmet and Rage Against the Machine.

What brands do you see in Malaysia? The most common guitars in Finland are Ibanez, Fender (Squier too), Yamaha, ESP and Epiphone. Of course there's a lot of different brands in different stores but those are the ones you see around the most. With the guys that I've played with, it seems to be ESP, Ibanez and the better Squiers that they use. I'm an Ibanez man myself, most of my gear has been Ibanez..they just seem to provide awesome bang for the buck. Are any of these brands available by another name as they often are in different parts of the world? (you know, like Dodge is Chrysler here and Exxon is Esso etc)

Fender, Ibanez, Yamaha and Epiphone are pretty common here but as for acoustics there are very limited choices here. They are not cheap as well, probably over your budget except some of the lower end models. The shops here they usually sell cheaper brands that are made around Asia(brands like Hofma, SX and other weird names I can't remember..), price can range from RM200+ to more than RM1k. And some of them are not bad for the price actually, you just need to test them out and see. By the way good second hand acoustics are not easy to find here actually. Hope this will helps.

I wouldn't put too much money on Hofma and Fina though.
SX however, there are some gems and lemons with them. My friend was lucky enough to get a pretty decent SX dreadnought for bout 500.

Strung with elixirs, it really sounds pretty good.

But god, Woh Fatt's staff still provides horrible service though I've been their customer before. Sigh.

honestly i think any guitar strung with elixirs will sound better in alot of ways. . . those strings are damn good. . .

another one is the GHS phosphor bronze but i still prefer the Elixirs xD

you went to woh fatt when those old ppl are around? expected xD