Independent buying guides
For parents and adult beginners buying paints, an instrument or a kit without overspending on stage one. Each guide answers one question, costs the hobby per month with the formula shown, and dates its sources.
Each guide answers one buying question and shows the figures behind the answer.
How to choose
Scale length, nut width and string type decide whether a beginner keeps playing. The measurements that matter, the full first bill, and the rosewood rule.
Photo: Martin Möller · CC BY-SA 2.0 de · Wikimedia Commons
Safety
Conforms to ASTM D-4236, the small parts ban, the 100 ppm lead limit: what each label is required to mean before you buy paints for a child.
Photo: Meriem Mach · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Budget and prices
Kit is a one-off; consumables and lessons are the month. Worked monthly figures for a starter guitar and a starter paint set, with every division shown.
Photo: so flow soflow · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons
The decisions that actually change what you end up with.
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Photo: Wilfredor · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons
Standards, warnings and the checks worth doing.
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Photo: so flow soflow · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons
What changes as a child or pet grows.
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Photo: Retired electrician · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons
What the total comes to once everything is counted.
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Photo: Shixart1985 · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Order, frequency and how long a bottle lasts.
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Photo: Martin Möller · CC BY-SA 2.0 de · Wikimedia Commons
Fixing it before you replace it.
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Photo: Alvesgaspar · CC BY 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Each calculator shows its formula, units and assumptions. Nothing is estimated for you in secret.
Spreads purchase price, consumables and repairs over the years you expect to keep it.
cost per year = (purchase price - expected resale value + consumables per year x years + expected repairs) / years
Replacement intervals turned into a yearly cost for filters, pads, pods and brush heads.
replacements per year = 365 / interval in days; yearly cost = replacements per year x unit price x units per change
What a cross-border order really costs once shipping, duty and tax are added.
landed cost = (item price + shipping) + duty + tax, where duty = item price x duty rate, and tax = (item price + shipping + duty) x tax rate
Every figure in a guide is taken from a named source, with the date it was checked. Where a number is an assumption or an example, it says so in the same sentence.
We do not run paid product tests, we do not publish reader reviews, and we do not claim to have handled every product mentioned. Where a claim needs a lab or a long-term test we do not have, the guide says that plainly.
Photographs are free-licence images from Wikimedia Commons or Openverse, credited to the photographer with the licence named. Charts are drawn from the figures printed in the same guide.
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