So, you want to sound like J. Mascis from Dinosaur Jr. but you don’t have enough money to do that?
Here is how you can do it with a little bit of money.
J Mascis from Dinosaur Jr. plays a Jazzmaster, which is a very expensive guitar from the Fender company. If you buy a new one it costs like $800 on Amazon
Then there is a cheaper one, which is the Squier J. Mascis Jazzmaster which is also expensive, like $400 or more.
These are definitely GREAT guitars but for the player on a budget, they cost too much money to afford to buy them. So how can you still play a guitar like that?
The answer is that all electric guitars actually do sound the same, so any cheap Electric Guitar would be fine! I reccomend the Zeny 30″ Children’s guitar. For $69.95 on Amazon you get it with an amp. It’s pink, which is a cool color.
It might not be as cool as the more expensive ones that J. Mascis uses but for more than 10 times cheaper, it’s absolutely worth it. The sound will sound the same it just doesn’t look as cool and is smaller.
Now, for the pedals which J. Mascis uses many of, you have to work to achieve that tone the hard way. One of J Mascis’s most famous pedal uses is the Big Muff pedal from Electro-Harmonix (EHX) which is a Fuzz pedal, meaning it makes the sound fuzzy and distorted and makes the guitar sound worse than how it usually would sound.
The Big Muff is a BIG grey pedal, which costs $105, which is alot of money for a rock guitarist on a budget who still needs to get a fuzz sound.
So there are a few other options. The first option is that the wiring and electronics of a fuzz is very simple, so if you learn Electrical Engineering you can easily just make one by soldering the wires together and the cables to make a cool pedal. BUt if you don’t want to learn Electric Engineering or how to do it that way another option is you can go to a local retailer and steal the pedal. Guitar Center keeps them behind a glass case, but if you ask to try it you could take it home with you when they aren’t looking.
Another option is to buy the Nano Big Muff, which is the same pedal, but instead of Grey, it’s White and it’s a smaller pedal that costs $72 and not $105.
So once you get that guitar and that pedal it will costs between $69.95 (if you steal the pedal)-$174.95 if you buy the big pedal.
So that’s a very cheap way to sounds just like J. MAscis on a budget and make cool music that way!