Buying gear as a guitar enthusiast

Because the quality of your gear reflects directly into your progress as a musician, if you don't choose the right equipment, you won't only be set back a few hundred dollars, but your playing, your attitude towards practice and your general progress will all have to suffer.

There are a lot of little obstacles down the road. I won't go into very specific details about each equipment category, instead, I will give you guidelines on what to look for and what to watch out for when you're shopping.

The process of choosing your tools begins with a bit of research, which I most oftenly do online. You search a certain type of amplifier or guitar, you compare the results and you narrow it down. At this step, there are several problems:

(1) not going through research at all because you were influenced by someone with radical opinions on different brands etc.: you should really avoid these people. You can miss out on a lot of good gear and more importantly incapacitate yourself in going through the next step - listening.
(2) choosing gear based on how it looks: this sounds really stupid, and while you're reading this you're probably telling yourself "You have to be really dumb to do this; this surely doesn't apply to me" the truth being that you do this a lot involuntarily. Solving this can only be done by asking yourself if the looks are giving up you're original specifications and admitting what you involuntarily think: "Sure this Gibson Les Paul Studio looks better on wine red than alpine white, but I really need that ebony fretboard on the latter."
(3) magically and mentally compensating the absence of some features you need through other more fancy ones. For example, you'd be looking to buy a tube combo and you'd find a solid state combo that coincidentally has a Celestion Vintage 30 inside, for example. You really love the sound of that speaker, but you're forgetting that it doesn't meet one of your basic criteria: it doesn't operate on tubes.
(4) overestimating equipment because it's a certain brand. In our days, most prestigious brands have both budget stuff and high-end stuff. In the long run it's very inefficient to lie to yourself:

you may be very happy that your amp is a certain brand, or your guitar is a certain color... but if the tone coming out of them sucks, you'll lose your enthusiasm quickly. However, if you tell yourself "Eh, maybe I bought the least attractive guitar from the least known brand - but it sounds better than all my other choices and it plays like a dream.", you'll see that your enthusiasm will build up and last a lot longer.
Finally, when doing your research you should have a clear plan of what you want. Yes, you can get good results by mistake, but the point is to minimise trial and error so that you don't waste any of your resources. To make this plan, you have to write down all the necessary features of what you want to buy. There are things like an effects loop, multiple channels and footswitching that, depending on the guitarist, cannot be overlooked. Again, you have to ask yourself some questions: what will you do at a gig when you have to change from that clean intro to that really distorted verse? what will you do when you need a really bright single coil sound, or a really fat, dark sound? what will you do when you have to go directly into the mixer with your amp in those barebone clubs from your town? You should always go by this list of mandatory features for your future gear.

The second step is LISTENING or TRYING-OUT. Worst-case scenario here is that you don't have a store where you can listen the gear you want in your city or country... which isn't a problem if you're in the US, but can be a problem for a lot of people living in countries with an emerging economy. Listening is probably more important than research, because it can be the sole reason for buying a piece of gear. You have to leave your ignorance behind and decide wether you like or dislike what you're testing. The Marshall you're trying isn't going to sound better tomorrow, it's going to sound exactly the same, no matter how much you'd fancy the ideea of owning it... the Orange Tiny Terror that you didn't consider because of it's minimalistic appearance may be just the right thing for you. Although a certain device may meet your exact criteria and specifications, you may just not like the sound of it. Only then you can say that it's a good decision to look at something with less than what you wanted, but that sounds or plays a lot better.

The third step is the actual acquisition of the object. It'd be better if you could buy it from a real store, but that doesn't mean that the internet or ebay is evil. A lot of times, I've heard people questioning the honesty of internet stores, ebayers and such. If, for example, you're buying off of ebay, you need to know the condition of the product: used - mint condition, new - new in box, used - minor wear and so forth. Then, it's smart to ask all the questions you could possibly have about the product: the shipping rate (very important if you're outside US), the serial number, the year it was made perhaps the tremolo system on a guitar or the age of the tubes inside a preamp.

Do a lot of research, listen to a lot of gear, be honest with yourself and don't rush.

Choosing your first tube amp

For decades, it's been a general opinion that tube (or valve) amplifiers sound better than solid state amps.
So how do you pick one?
First of all - what is a tube amp? A tube amp is a type of guitar amplifier that operates on valves (or vacuum tubes) instead of transistors. The sound you get from a tube amp is warmer and fuller that what you'd get from a solid state amp.
Valve amplifiers range from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars, so the choice is really confusing! If you're reading this article, you've probably decided that it's time that you want to crank your volume past the 10 mark on your current practice amp or the tone just isn't satisfying you anymore.
There are a few things you have to know in order to make your decision. First of all, the type of music that you play, so that you can decide on the amount of gain that your amp needs to have. What is gain? Gain is basically a synonym for distortion. If you play mostly "clean" music (virtually, no amount of distortion), you won't need a lot of gain. If the music you play is blues or rock, you'll need a mild amount of gain, depending on how distorted you want the sound to be. If you play metal, you'll need a high-gain tube amp.
The most notable clean amp of all tube amp history is the Fender Bassman, the holy-grail of clean sounds. Generally, you'll want to look at Fender and Vox. Most tube amps have the amount of gain necessary for blues or rock (Marshalls, the expensive Buddas, the budget Blackhearts). Finally, if we're talking metal, you're going to want to look at Peavey, Mesa Boogie, ENGL.
The second aspect of a tube amp, why many people crave them, is the dynamic. Dynamic is the ability of the tube amp to sound clean when you're hitting the strings softly, and distorted when you're hitting them hard. This allows a great amount of expression. You're going to have to listen to an amp to see if it has this quality.
You'll also have to listen for definition, which is the ability to amplify every single note your play clearly. This is very important, otherwise you'll sound all muddy. The best way to test this is to play some chords, even fewer amps possess this quality.

Lastly, you'll just have to listen if it possesses the basic tonal characteristics that fit you. If the basic sound of the amp is bad, it will sound bad anyway you will adjust the equalizer, amount of gain, anything. It's not uncommon that you find bad tube amps made by prestigious brands. There's no such thing as "not knowing" if it sounds good or not, and although store employees can help you with various information such as amounts of gain, number of tubes, etc. they always want to convince you to buy the products you're trying. If you don't buy it, you can always come back another time and try it again, but if you do, you'll just lack motivation and it will harm your playing. This is important because tube amps aren't as cheap as a practice amp. Always try before you buy!