Originally Posted by: darickmendes

I have a question , as time goes by and I get better and practice a lot , do I eventually have to buy a more expensive guitar in order to show my full potential or I can still play well with my current one ?

It depends...but you don't have to buy a new guitar really. The full potential question is really more about; does my guitar inhibit my ability to get better?

That is to say; if your guitar works for you and plays nicely, there's no reason to go buy a guitar thinking that it will help you better. The big part of my statement is the 'IF' part. If you have a guitar that was $120, it might be ok for now but you would pretty surely benefit from an instrument upgrade. If you have a guitar that was something like $400+ new, it's more likely that your guitar will do you just fine.

Since I've got a good few guitars, there's a range of values from $500 and up. Thing is, I have a $550 import Gretch Jet Electromatic and a $2000 Gibson Les Paul. How much of a difference do I get between the two? Not enormous. To be honest, that Gretsch Electromatic is a really, really great value and, as they say in boxing; punches well above its weight. That's why I got it. It's playeds as well as any of my guitar and all my guitars are great players.

The point being, money does not (always) equate to playability so it's more a matter of how comfortable you are.

We can't know what guitar you have or how well it works for you. My mental rule of thumb is; if you're playing acoustic, if your starter guitar is under $300, at some point, you may want an upgrade to a new instrument. For an Electric, that number is anything below $450.

This is a rule of thumb. It's not a law and there are guitars that are an exception to the rule of thumb. This is a general guide from my years of obervation and playing a million instruments of differing values.

A much cheaper guitar might have structural issues in construction that limit its ability to be improved enough. There's only so far you can tweak a guitar and a cheaper one is likely to fight you a little more with limited ability to make it maximally playable. Once you get to the next rung of intermediate guitars like my 'guide' above, you've crossed a line where the guitar is more about what they call 'fit and finish'. The details. Stuff that has less to do with playability. Even then, import guitars like my Gretsch came ready to play out of the box...and I do play it a alot.

I hope that guide helps. It's just my thoughts and all of this is not a science so this is just an idea of how to approach instruments.

But, like Tinpan said, I bet you want to.....