How Old Were You When You Started Playing Guitar?

I started at 10 and then again at 15 and then 18 and then 25 and then 35 and then 52.

I'll try again some day.
 
I started when I was 11. But before that was playing the uke from age 8. Played for a few years, then took many, many, many years off. About 7 years ago picked the uke back up and most recently picked the guitar back up. It’s been fun relearning.
 
My dad bought me one at 16, I still have it. No lessons though and no mentors...so the misery of self taught 40 years later. I suck. Discovered the uke 4 years ago and I am hooked. I think I will try the guitar again someday. I think I do it to self soothe and relax. I have no intention of performing. Love you guys!
 
I bought a Gibson f-hole electric from a pawn shop for $20 when I was ~17 years old. Never did anything but strum, & if it wasn't in the key of C or G, forget it. I moved around a lot & didn't really have a home to store things so, somewhere along the line, that sweet ole Gibson got left in a train station. I had it about 5 years & it always wore the same grubby strings that were on it when I bought it. I didn't play guitar since then until just a month or so ago. My fingers will not do what I want them to, as yet (I'm 87) but I keep trying & buying.
 
1977. I was nine. Picked up bass a year later, which turned out to be my main instrument for the next 20 years.
 
44. I thought I had no musical ability for decades, but picked up a cheap acoustic guitar a few years ago on a whim. Discovered JustinGuitar and learned the basics quickly. Still learning stuff.
 
My first 'playing' on guitar when when I was about 6 yrs old. I was also doing group violin thing in school similar to the Suzuki method. On occasion I'd be allowed to hold and noodle on my father's acoustic guitar after he had played 'Puff The Magic Dragon' while my mother sang...

Very quickly, and with no instruction I was able to pluck out the melodies by ear, that I had been playing on violin.

When I was 8, they had a 'guitar class' in school for a handful of students that showed promise on the soprano recorder. It was with classical guitars.

When I was 9-10 yrs old I began weekly guitar lessons on a $20 used electric guitar that we bought from the shop where I took the lessons.

For my Bar-Mitzvah present from my parents, after my mother heard me playing on a used Gibson Les Paul, (learned by ear) 'Message In A Bottle' by The Police, note-for-note to the record, she put a deposit on that guitar right then and there.

I continued my lessons on that guitar for another year before the teacher told me that there was nothing left he could teach me...all I did was practice and learn songs by ear off the radio while my friends were outside playing ball, riding bikes, and I was jamming along to the music played on the Scott Muni, Dennis Elsis, and Harris Allen radio shows on 102.7 WNEW FM out of NYC...as well as whatever I could get from the far-away Long Island punk/new-wave station 92.7 WLIR, and because I was so far away (in NJ), when I called in to request a song, they usually played it for me within the hour....pretty cool stuff

I still have the guitar that used to be my father's (which is desperately in need of major restoration) that original $20 electric, as well as the Les Paul.

In college, as a music minor, I studied classical guitar for 2 yrs with a 1-on-1 seminar and lost patience with the slow pace of the instructor and went off learning further on my own....

lots of other instruments along the way (and many details not here, but in other threads), but found ukulele in December of 2012, bought my first in April 2013, and never looked back.

Ukulele has become my primary instrument now.
 
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When I was five my mum bought me a toy 4 string guitar, and I used to ‘play’ it and sing to my extended family at Christmas gatherings and they would afterwards all throw me pennies as a reward.

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I then bought my first 12 string at age 14 from my mum’s mail order catalogue, which I played on and off until recently when I retired and threw myself into playing more, also buying the kit shown in my signature. If I’d played more consistently during all those years and not let life, job, marriage and kids get in the way, I MIGHT have been able to play guitar reasonably well by now instead of just being capable of tickling a basic tune out of one. One of my real regrets...
 
I messed around with my brother's Hofner arch top and learned a few chords, but bought my first guitar, a used Goya M-26, in 1960 when I was 16 and working for a market gardener. I had to pay it off ($75) in weekly payments over a month.
I sold that guitar and was always sorry, but found another one exactly like it about 18 tears ago. I'll be 74 in a couple of weeks.M26.jpg
 
Let's see...I started yesterday and I'm fifty-oh sheet. Old. I was old when I started. ;-)
 
I attempted guitar at the age of 45, on and off for a while. Fast forward 12 years to the age of 60 and I have taken it up again, about two months ago. After playing uke for 4 years the guitar, though BIG, is very doable. The skills learned on uke transfer quickly and I am much better on guitar now then when it was my only instrument. It is never too late and you are never too old.
 
I attempted guitar at the age of 45, on and off for a while. Fast forward 12 years to the age of 60 and I have taken it up again, about two months ago. After playing uke for 4 years the guitar, though BIG, is very doable. The skills learned on uke transfer quickly and I am much better on guitar now then when it was my only instrument. It is never too late and you are never too old.

Glad to hear it. I just bought a guitar this week and am a bit overwhelmed at the size and extra strings. Plus, that whole fret dot at the NINTH fret keeps throwing me. I am determined to learn it though and going to muddle through. In keeping with the spirit of the thread, first attempt I was probably 11 or 12, then 18. It never took...trying again now at 44.
 
Glad to hear it. I just bought a guitar this week and am a bit overwhelmed at the size and extra strings. Plus, that whole fret dot at the NINTH fret keeps throwing me. I am determined to learn it though and going to muddle through. In keeping with the spirit of the thread, first attempt I was probably 11 or 12, then 18. It never took...trying again now at 44.

Glad to hear you are giving it another go as well. My first attempt I "practiced hard" for 30 minutes a day. It was lonely, boring and tedious. The uke is different, I "played" songs and sang, it was FUN. This is what I am doing now on the guitar and it is so much more enjoyable. I am even playing a bunch of uke chord melody songs I know on just the top four strings of the guitar.
 
Glad to hear it. I just bought a guitar this week and am a bit overwhelmed at the size and extra strings. Plus, that whole fret dot at the NINTH fret keeps throwing me. I am determined to learn it though and going to muddle through. In keeping with the spirit of the thread, first attempt I was probably 11 or 12, then 18. It never took...trying again now at 44.

Re: "that whole fret dot at the NINTH fret".
-I once put a new fretboard on a banjo and decided to play it as a fretless. After a couple of years, I realized that I wasn't making much use of it, so I put some frets on it and inlayed some pearl dots. In a hurry to get finished, I put the dots where they'd belong on a guitar. I discovered this before I put the side dots on it and they went in the correct place. After another period of time putting up with the incorrect position marker, I removed the dot, filled the hole with a rosewood dust/yellow glue mix and put a dot at the 10th fret where it belonged.
-A number of years ago, I found a banjolele at a price I couldn't turn down and bought it. The reason for the low price, $12, was the twisted, beyond repair, neck. I had a new neck made for it by a luthier friend. Having mostly worked on guitars, he put the position markers at the 9th fret instead of the 10th. I don't want to change this fretboard, but I will be adding side dots in the correct place.

banjo frankenstein.jpg This is the banjo with the misplaced dot repaired. I gave it to my niece when she showed some interest.

banjoette new neck.jpg This is the banjolele with the new neck.

Guitars seem to be unique in this way. ukuleles, mandolins, banjos, tiples, bouzoukis. . . all seem to have dots at the 10th fret. (Although I once owned an Aria 12-string guitar with the dot at the 10th fret.)
 
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Tried first time 1997, age 59. Tried to play electric for a little more than a year and quit. 2008/9 I tried again and found I had an injury to hand, thumb so I quite again. Last year, about August 2017 I decided I was going to play pain or no pain. Ha, pain won and I had to go to doctor and now PT for most of the last year. I got a Baritone Ukulele in Sep last year and a Tenor Ukulele this last May. I can play them with almost no pain. In the last month I have aquired a Guitalele and a small classcal guitar. I am playing both with only a little pain. Some days no pain. I am 80 now so I guess I am old enough to do what I want - PLAY GUITAR. Or at least I am trying.
 
I got my first guitar shortly after the Beatles played on The Ed Sullivan Show. I’ve played off and on since then. My currant guitar is a classical guitar, which I bought because it has nylon strings. I have concluded that the neck is too wide for me and haven’t touched it in years. It is in need of a new string.
 
My mum and dad bought me my first ‘guitar’ when I was 3, and I used to ‘play’ and sing at family Xmas parties after which the family would throw coins at me as a reward.

I’ve had various guitars since and have played on and off over the years, albeit with huge breaks when family and career got in the way.

I’ve just turned 62 years of age and there’s only one thing in all that time that hasn’t changed.

PEOPLE *STILL* THROW THINGS AT ME WHEN I TRY TO SING AND PLAY!!!! lol

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I was so fortunate growing up in HNL to have my 6th grade teacher teach the entire class
to sing and play the ukulele.

My first uke was a gift from my Grandmother. It was a 'no-name' orange uke from Long's Drugs!
I believe it was a bit larger than a Soprano, but not a Concert size. I would have been 12 at the time.

since then, I've just kept on singing and playing. My primary motivation was to be able to accompany
myself singing the Rock-n-Roll songs of the 50's and 60's. My teacher didn't teach those songs so I
listened to the radio and tried to mimic the key and chords by ear. in time I learned to transpose using
a barred C shape then converting to the open chording of the appropriate keys (F, G, A, D fingerings).

I had a wheel chart from a Guitar book (Nick Manoff?) that helped me find chords for each of the keys.
I didn't understand Music Theory... I simply looked at the relation of the chords in the Key of C then
turned the upper portion of the chart which had holes cut out and figured that the chords in the cutouts
were related to the Key Chord the same way the other chords in the Key of C were related to that key :)
It seemed to work for me.

bottom line, with regard to the question... I was 12 years old in 6th grade (58 years ago!) :)

Amazing how much one can learn just by keeping at it and being open to what others are doing.

keep uke'in',
 
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