I once started a series of articles on the guitars I have in my own collection. I started that series when all the images on this website were in black and white. I’ve since decided it was time to start the series again. What better place to start this updated series with one of the guitars I updated bastardised a few years ago.
This is the story of my C Giant acoustic guitar. The acoustic guitar I bought from Aldi. It seemed like a sensible idea at the time.
My original C Giant article mentioned my desire to buy a guitar I could leave at work. It needed to be cheap for that requirement. It was a cheap purchase. It remains a cheap guitar as well. It’s easily the worst guitar I own.
That may seem like a fairly harsh statement. I believe it can be backed up by answering some fairly simple questions that I have been asked before in regards to the C Giant guitar.
Should I buy a C Giant acoustic guitar?
Probably not. It will be playable, but it won’t be the quality guitar that motivates you to continue playing guitar.
Is the C Giant guitar any good?
No. It’s cheaply made, has very high action and has trouble staying tuned.
Where can I buy a C Giant guitar?
One answer is Aldi. The other answer is “It doesn’t matter. You shouldn’t buy one”.
I say type all of that, but I doubt I’ll ever get rid of mine. So let me expand on that.
It’s a part of my guitar collection history. Every guitar tells a story and I like the stories this guitar has given me. Also, I’ve since taken a Sharpie to it to give it some Eddie Van Halen stripes. It’s clearly a lot cooler now. Those stripes have quickly faded with use, but they’re still there and looking rugged. Picture below.
Here’s a secret I’ve never shared before about the stripes. If you look carefully, the thicker lines spell AX. That’s a small piece of fun for us axe lovers out there.
Recently I also took to the Wish app to see what cheapness I could add to this low quality guitar. Coloured strings for under $5 delivered? Sold.
I’ve added these strings to my C Giant acoustic guitar and in the process either increased the guitar’s value to what I assume is now $6 or lowered it to a new street value of $1. It’s one of those.
Either way, the C Giant remains as a guitar I play occasionally when I need to strengthen my fingers on this guitar’s increasingly terrible action. It continues to make me smile when I see it hanging on the wall beside more respectable guitars.
It remains a guitar I would not recommend buying if you ever saw one for sale. If you’re looking for your first guitar, buy a real guitar—almost any other guitar. You’ll thank yourself in the long run.
If you’d prefer some pictures to highlight the reasons you shouldn’t consider buying a C Giant acoustic guitar, then these pictures should speak about four thousand words.
Fret wear from very little use. Machine heads that are honestly mostly held in place by string tension alone. A cheap and nasty saddle. I could go on. The guitar just doesn’t justify the effort.
My Father in law bought one of these from Aldi, I own a few Guitars, some at 3/4 times the price of a C Giant Acoustic, I found the Sound, pretty good, in tune up/down Fretboard, it stayed in tune throughout a 20 minute playing, the label says it’s Hand Crafted, we have no way of verifying this but all things considered, this is a nice Guitar