I would honestly say to start out with a clone, for sure. That way you haven't dropped a ton of cash on something that you may end up hating building on. Thats what happened with my first purchase (I did get a clone though) it was a paaaain to build on and I ended up getting SO frustrated with it. It was okay, but I wanted something better. Once I kind of did some research and got a feel for what I wanted, I went all out and just bought an authentic of something that I knew was an old standard (Patriot rda) and that's basically all she wrote. I still use my patriot daily.