Cheap acoustic guitar hard to play?

Question:i have this cheap 60dollar acoustic guitar. ive had it for a while and ive been wanting to learn to play it. but everytime i pick it up and play a chord it pisses me off! it sounds terrible. the strings are hard to press down and it pisses me off. do you think this is cause i suck, or are cheap guitars actually harder to play?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: i have this cheap 60dollar acoustic guitar. ive had it for a while and ive been wanting to learn to play it. but everytime i pick it up and play a chord it pisses me off! it sounds terrible. the strings are hard to press down and it pisses me off. do you think this is cause i suck, or are cheap guitars actually harder to play?

Cheap guitars ARE harder to play. They just discourage beginners from sticking to it and making the effort to become good at it. If it's not fun, they will give up. You can do a few thing to help yourself out with this problem. You can take it to a guitar shop and have them check to see if the strings can be lowered so they do not stand so high off the neck. You can get a good set of softer and lighter strings that will be much easier on you fingers. Even with good strings your fingers will take some time to get used to pressing down on the strings. You will be doing good if you can go for 20 minutes at a time for a while and work your way up to being able to play for hours at a time. Even with these adjustments your guitar will sound like a cheap guitar. Dont worry about the sound so much for a while. just work on learning how to play. As you feel you are learning and want to stick to it you will want a better guitar. Don't buy a better one now until you figure out if you really like to play. Go to the music shop and see what they can do to make it more user friendly. BTW everyone sux when they are new and beginning to play, but that changes with some practice and patience. It's a long term commitment and not a fast reward kind of thing. Hang in there and you'll do fine.

The first problem is that you are playing a $60 guitar. It's a sad fact but the more you pay for a guitar, the better it will sound and play. You should invest $200-300 on a nice fender acoustic. That will be the best for your money. I recently bought a guitar and i could've spent a lot more but i bought a $300 fender acoustic and it plays better than most of the $3000 gibsons I've played.

Well its true that a cheap guitar is not going to sound as nice, but the whole "The strings are hard to push down" thing, thats normal. Every begining guitar player has that problem. You just have to get your fingers stronger. Don't sweat it.

Get a good guitarist to have a look at it. The two most probable problems are:

1) The strings are too far from the fret board, and take a lot of pressure to hold down. The bridge might need lowering. The neck might not be dead straight. The nut might need lowering.

2) The intonation may be out. In other words the frets are not accurately placed, or the bridge position is wrong. Unless the bridge is adjustable, this is serious.

Make sure it is always tuned to a tuner every time before you play. You might try lower gauge strings.

Using a capo can also help while learning. Pretend the capo is the nut, and learn all your basic chords with the capo on say, the 5th fret, where everything will be easier, provided it is still in tune with the capo on. Put the capo very close behind the fret. Your music store guy should explain how to fit it and re-check the tuning.

Some cheap guitars are almost impossible to play. I recently bought a great guitar new for $120 (AUD) but I have a lot of experience.

Almost all beginners find guitar surprisingly difficult, so don't decide that you suck just yet. It does sound like your guitar is working against you.

well cheap guitars aren't necessarily harder to play but they defiantly don't sound good. and for the strings problem they are probably thicker and i don't like those either. strings that i use that don't hurt my finger at all are:
Acoustic Guitar Strings with ultra-thin NANOWEB coating
they are thinner and the nanoweb coating on them makes them not hurt your fingers. they aren't costly and sound great.