just a mention about taking lessons... If you start out taking lessons and stick with it.. you will go farther faster.. If the teacher know what they are doing.   The lessons will be laid out so that you will develop  your knowledge and dexterity in a progressive manner.  you won't be developing any bad habits (hopefully ),.. that would slow you down  when attempting very hard passages of music.   If you follow the course programs you would learn theory along with music and playing skill.. 

 yes there are people that get  very  good without lessons, but very few .. Mainly because they don't know how or what comes next in their need for development.

I picked up my first guitar when I was 19.  I learned about six chords and stopped there.  I was more about writing.  Always a private person and never interested in learning how play other's music stunted my growth.  The next seven or eight years was a love/hate relationship, selling a guitar, buying another, smashing a guitar, buying two more. When I was about 28, I bought a nice Guild guitar.  Amazed at how a good guitar can make all the difference in the world, I put something like 15 pieces to music within a couple of days and thought, 'well, that's kinda nice'.  So I did the next best thing for experience and started playing at the bars.  Soon after I bought my first digital 8 track recorder. 

I can always hear music in my head but I can't always bring it to fruition.  I've been lucky to play with some other small bands and that helped me out immensely but my style and direction is not always a very popular one so I end up going right back to me in a room all by myself.  The problem stems in being guitar illiterate and software illiterate so when wanting to actually make something serious and not just on-the-whim, I fall short.

I've definitely improved with my guitar style but I'm still a long way from being remotely decent.  Someday, after I master this Chinese language, I think I'll take some lessons.

Self taught bass, piano , guitar, and ukulele. Had classical training on cello, but learned a lot from friends/ experience

Once you learn one insturment and music theory, all the others you have access to fall into place...

I started bass and singing and then started guitar and drums when i was like 12 and i still haven't taken any lessons-i find them unnecessary and expensive...I noticed that strings break alot when you don't know what you're doing but now strings last me forever

I tought my self to play guitar at 11 as well! (Hey man pink floyd rocks lol "dark side of the moon"

Yeah i had my brother teach me at about 11 or 12 and then sorta learned the rest on my own.ill be getting some more lessons fairly soon.

I played bass for around 4 years before I got lessons, mainly for theory and such, now music to me "makes sense"  I can take a listen to the music (or look at the notes in the song) and have an idea where it's "going" and improvise and things, I'd also recommend lessons for the more advanced skills maybe, things such as double thumbing and sweep picking.  I'd definitely recommend getting lessons unless you are a musical prodigy!.

I'm thinking of picking up a banjo, though no place here seems to do lessons

I am self taught on everything I play except for drums. I think its far more interesting for me to play that way. I'm also pretty much self taught in recording. A friend helped to get me started though.

I'm thinking of picking up a banjo, though no place here seems to do lessons

Banjo is relatively easy to play because of it's open tuning. You could probably get the hang of it if you checked out a book, a website, etc... for chords.