Bob Dylan was villified for abandoning acoustic guitars in favor of electric ones at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Back then, it was grab and play. Not any more.
Playing the Guitar in Technicolor
Bruce Jacob, an engineering professor at the University of Maryland in College Park, dreamed about the sounds he wanted to play on an electric guitar. In fact, he describes sounds as if there were colors, a phenomenon called synesthesia.
In an interview for an article written by Susan Kinzie published in the Washington Post on July 7, 2009, Jacobs said, "If you have a bunch of paints, you can create any paint you want from the three or four fundamental colors. With guitars, it's the exact same thing. You can make any sound you want out of three or four colors. But most guitars have one color."
That's why a lot of players change guitars from song to song during concerts, and it's also why they open up the backs of their guitars and rewire them. Jacobs' solution to this problem is a newly designed circuit board with adjustable pegs. It's a shortcut way of reconfiguring the coils (pickups) that grab the sound from the strings and shoot them over to amps, speakers, or recording devices.
And Technicolor Sound Costs How Much?
Jacobs is a lucky guy; he's got university backing in the form of office space and research money, and he teaches a course called ENEE 159b: Start-Up 101 - Electric Guitar Design, so he can get his students involved, too. He's also got business partners, and they've plunked down $100K on a startup company called Coil. They'll be selling guitars made in Korea for $1000 and up.
The guitar market is capricious, and the current economic climate is not exactly popping. There are cheaper ways to get electric guitars, and some claim, to get similar results. An electric guitar with the right pickups can be run through a synthesizer, which in fact can produce the sounds of any instrument—percussion, woodwind, brass, or string.
Above and beyond electronics, there are other features of guitars that affect their tone, including materials, construction, and design. Great electronics don't make great guitars if there are issues with the tonewoods from which it is constructed and how the parts are designed and then bolted together.
Of course, guitars don't play themselves. The boring basics of tuning, intonation, and technique can't be ignored. While it is completely unfair to expect a beginner to learn to play well on a crummy instrument, a lack of effort on an expensive instrument produces similar results.
It's advisable to keep on top of new developments in the music world, whether they are technological, pedagogical, or just a cool thing that some dude is playing that you like well enough to want to try for yourself.
But given limited fiscal resources, remember that, at least at the beginning, a good teacher is better than a great guitar.
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