The Ultimate Electric Guitar Buying Guide

If you’re in the market for a new electric guitar, and if you’ve been thinking of getting your very first electric or upgrading to one, you’ve come to the right place!

Buy a guitar – any guitar – is a major decision and a big thing for any musician. There’s so much to choose from that choosing a guitar can quickly become quite overwhelming – there are a lot of brands to look at, and an even larger number of guitars to choose from. Then there are countless other things to consider, such as different specs, wood types, and of course budget considerations.

The fact is that with some basic knowledge about electric guitars, coupled with a little bit of research, buying a new electric axe can be as easy as shopping for, well, just about anything else!

Here’s my version of the electric guitar buying guide, that will enable you to get an instrument that it best suited to your needs and budget:

Setting the budget

Before we start, it is essential to set the budget for your purchase; how much money would you be willing to spend on your guitar. This goes for just about anything that you purchase; setting a budget for your purchase is essential.

A good guitar, made by one of the more well-known brands out there, for instance, come for as low as $100, and can go as high as $10,000 – at times even higher! Set a budget for your purchase, so that you don’t end up overspending. For instance if you set a budget for $400, your primary aim would be to look for the best-possible guitar within your budget.

The key takeaways from this are that (a) it is important to set a budget, and then stick to it, and (b) always buy a branded instrument!

Electric guitar basics

Like I said before, a little basic knowledge about electric guitar will go a long way in helping you choose one.

The most important thing you need to know about electric guitars is that unlike acoustic guitars, they produce no sound themselves. This is because unlike ‘hollow-body’ acoustic guitars, electrics are solid-body instruments, made out of wood of course (more on this in a bit). The sound that you hear from an electric guitar is produced electronically: by means of an electromagnetic pickup, and external amplification. Let’s see how this works:

Electric guitar bodies usually house one or more pickup(s) – these are electromagnets installed beneath the strings that convert string vibration into electronic signals. These electric signals are then passed through an externally-attached amplifier, hence producing the sound that you hear.

Pickups come in different types and kinds. The quality of the pickup is one of the important factors when it comes to determining a guitar’s sound and its overall quality. Guitars with high-quality pickups produce the best sound, and hence are quite pricey as well.

Amplifiers, or amps, for short, need to be bought separately – which ends up adding to the cost of the package. Like it is important to buy a good electric guitar, it is equally essential to invest in a good amplifier. Like you electric guitar, your amplifier will remain with you for a long time – maybe even longer than your guitar does. For instance I’ve bought and sold many different electric guitars over the years, but my trusty old Vox VT30 has remained my faithful companion for a good part of the decade now!

Different types of electric guitars

There are 3 different kinds of electric guitars:

1. Solid-body: The most common type of electric guitar design. The first solid-body electric guitar was the Gibson Les Paul. Solid-body electric guitars can take just about any shape or design. Solid-body electrics are the most commonly-found electric guitars out there.

2. Hollow-body/semi-hollow body: Hollow-body electric guitars are essentially acoustic guitars with a pickup on them, making them ideal jazz instruments. Similarly, semi-hollow electric guitars, also known as semi-acoustic or acoustic-electric guitars, are best-suited to the blues or the jazz genres. Both these types of guitars have hollow-bodies similar to acoustic guitars, but with the additional ability that their sound can be easily amplified, if you’re playing in a large space, for instance.

3. Chambered: Solid-body guitars with sealed chambers carved into them, in order to decrease their weight and increase resonance. Not very common at all.

Wood types

The wood type, along with the pickup of course, has a big bearing on the guitar’s tone and sound, most importantly, as well as its playability, feel, build-quality, and longevity/durability. The wood used in a guitar’s construction also determines the price of the guitar – electric guitars made from commonly-found wood types are cheaper to produce (and hence cheaper to buy) than some of more expensive, more-uncommon wood types:

1. Alder: light-weight wood, which provides a balanced tone. Used mostly to construct the body.

2. Ashwood: The most-commonly used wood in the construction of solidbody electric guitars. It has a high sustain, a well-defined midrange, and an overall balanced tone.

3. Basswood: Light in weight, and has a warm sound.

4. Mahogany: Used in body and neck construction, medium weight, with a warm sustain.

5. Maple: Used in body, neck as well as fretboard construction, similar qualities to mahogany. Bright sound, great sustain and excellent for dense, hard and fast playing.

6. Rosewood: Used mostly in fretboard construction. Plays smooth, fast and has a warm tone.

7. Ebony: Expensive! Very hard wood type, smooth-sounding and ideal for fast playing. As far as sound goes, very bright sound with a long sustain.

8. Pau Ferro: Expensive, used only in high-end guitar fretboard construction. It is a very hard wood type like ebony, and brighter-sounding than rosewood and warmer than ebony.

Pickup types

As I mentioned earlier, the pickups that are used in the construction of an electric guitar have a big impact on its sound (along with the wood-type of course). The 3 most common types of pickups used on modern-day electric guitars include:

1. Single-coil: This pickup has a single magnetic bar surrounded by an extremely fine piece of wire, that produces an electric current each time the string vibrates within the pickup’s magnetic field. The single-coil pickups are the most basic kind of pickups, used on some of the earliest electric guitars. It is still the most commonly-used pickup type used in guitars.

2. Humbucker: A common problem associated with single-coil setups was the humming noise produced during playing. Enter the humbucker pickup: these pickups counter the humming noise by two coils wrapped opposite each other, eliminating any humming and instead producing a smooth, round tone. Read more here.

3. Piezo: The main advantages of Piezoelectric pickups is that they do no pick up any other magnetic fields, eliminating any hum or feedback, making the guitar ‘silent’ and ideal for practice. They are made of a crystalline material, which produces a very small electric current. They also require ‘pre-amplification’ before they are fed to the amp.

Neck types

This is generally split into 3 types:

1. Bolt-on necks: Bolt-on necks were considered to be the pioneer in terms of mass-production of the guitar, as well as making the electric guitar cheap and affordable. Attached to the body by 4 screws, running through the back of the body and into the back of the neck. Due to its qualities, it is the easiest to replace or repair as well.

2. Set neck: Refers, in simple terms, to guitar necks glued to the body of the guitar.

3. Neck-through: The first two kinds of necks usually consisted of two separate pieces, attached to the body by screws or glue. Neck-through refers to guitars constructed with a single piece of wood, starting from the headstock all the way to the tail.

Guitar price

Bear in mind that buying quality does not mean that you HAVE to spend big. You’ll be surprised to know that you can get some amazing electric guitars for under $500 – as low as $100-200 even! Look at instruments made by the likes of Squier and Epiphone such as the Squier Telecaster or the Epiphone Les Paul; these are quality guitars – perhaps the closest you can get to the real Tele or the LP – and don’t cost an arm and a leg!

Buying a guitar should never be a difficult thing to do, provided you have a fair amount of knowledge, and know-how of what you’re getting yourself into. Remember that a guitar is an investment, and ideally, you would want to get the most out of your investment, and for it to last you long.

Quality guitars don’t come cheap, a good Les Paul, for instance, could set you back by $1000. Similarly, PRS, Jackson, Ibanez and Fender instruments cost a good amount of money. If you have deep pockets and if some of the guitars that you like fit in your budget, go for it. If not, there’s plenty of more reasonably-priced alternatives to be looked at!

Mistakes Made by Beginner Guitar Players

Learning to play the guitar can be very tricky – regardless of how you go about doing it. Whether you learn the guitar on your own, enlist the help of a professional, or use online resources to learn to play the instrument, certain mistakes and obstacles can seriously hinder your progress or even worse, cause you to form bad playing habits and prevent you from really enjoying playing the guitar.

Often times, this discourages beginner guitar players from learning the guitar, and they give up trying.

Here are a few mistakes that many beginner guitar players make:

Mistake 1: Not putting in enough practice time

I’m a firm believer in quality > quantity, and I’ve probably even said this before: when it comes to practice, the quality of the practice is more important than the quantity. Essentially, you want all your practice sessions to yield a result of some sort (which is why it is essential to set short-term or daily goals). However a 10-minute practice session won’t do you any good, will it. It is therefore essential to set aside at least 30-60 minutes each day, for practicing the guitar – when you choose to do this is entirely up to you. But the important thing is to be as regular as possible about it – make it a point to practice daily, and if you miss out on one, make up for it the next day.

Mistake 2: Not practicing ‘correctly’

What this essentially means is that it is important to plan out your guitar practice sessions in advance, instead of picking up your guitar without knowing what to do. Schedule your time well in advance, in order to know what exactly it is that you’ll be working on. For instance would you use this week’s practice session to work on a particular technique that requires improvement, or do you want to learn new riffs or a new chord this week? Often times, the best way is to find a balance between the two – for this purpose, divide your time between working on what you know already and learning new material.

Mistake 3: Using the wrong instrument

This one’s tough to spot, however any guitar player – even a beginner one – would instantly be able to tell if his/her guitar is causing problems in playing. The importance of using a good guitar cannot be overstated. Beginner guitar players often may not want to spend too much on a good, expensive guitar (understandably so), however buying a cheap instrument which causes you problems or gives you trouble (like a guitar which cannot even stay in tune, for instance) will only frustrate you. It should be known that these days, you can get a good, branded guitar at just about every price-point. Don’t have money for an expensive Les Paul – get the Epiphone Les Paul, virtually the same instrument, for less than half the price! The Stratocaster’s out of your budget – get the Squier Strat for as low as $150. I simply cannot stress more on the importance of buying a good guitar as your first one; it will probably stick with you for quite some time, and make your practice and playing sessions, as well as the process of learning much better, enjoyable and frustration-free! Cheap guitars do not stay in tune, and have a bad action as well, stay away at all costs (at the same time, you also don’t need to spend big in order to get a good guitar).

Mistake 4: Not enjoying playing or practicing the guitar

When it comes to beginners who’ve just picked up a guitar and learning to play it, one of the best advice you’ll get from anyone is to try to enjoy playing the guitar. Do not look at practice sessions as a chore. Try having some fun when learning the guitar, and above all, enjoy the process of your learning as well.

Mistake 5:  Not making it a habit to warm-up before picking up the guitar

I simply cannot stress enough on the importance of warming up before playing the guitar! A proper warm-up regime/routine allows you to loosen-up your finger, arm and shoulder joints and muscles, gets blood flowing through these parts of your body and gets your body as well as your mind to optimum levels, which enables you to put in a great practice/playing session. An effective warm-up routine consists of physically warming up through various finger, wrist, and arm exercises, as well as playing a few easy scales or licks that you’re already familiar with – shouldn’t take more than 5-10 minutes at max. As an experiment, try this: pick up your guitar one day without warming-up and try playing stuff you’re well familiar with and usually play with ease; you might be surprised to find how tough it is to play the same stuff! Now warm-up, and notice the difference!

Mistake 6: Not setting guitar playing goals

I spoke about the significance and importance of setting short-term and long-term guitar-playing goals in one of my articles on this blog. Setting goals is essential for beginners, perhaps more so than anyone else. I strongly suggest going through that article (linked above) at least once, especially if you’re learning to play the guitar. In a gist: without goals, you’re just someone who’s basically wandering aimlessly, and you cannot expect to make any progress whatsoever without a long-term goal, and a set of short-term goals to be used as stepping stone to accomplish the ‘end-game’.

Mistake 7: Ignoring the importance of aural skills

Tom Hess, guitar instructor and musician, calls aural skill as “the most important skill that most guitar players don’t have”. And I have to say that I agree with him! Ear training and acquiring aural skills is an essential skill that beginner guitar players and those learning the guitar should definitely work on. Aural skills allow you to maximize your creativity, and provide with you skills important to being a good guitar player, such as the ability to improvise. Read the whole article here.

Mistake 8: Not enlisting the help of a professional guitar instructor

Yes, private guitar instruction usually costs a buck-and-a-half, but a lot of the guitar-playing mistakes made by beginner guitar players mentioned in this list can be easily rectified by working with a guitar instructor/teacher. And the best part is that you don’t even need to pay $60-an-hour to a private teacher for lessons, you could look online for much cheaper lessons which give you a better bang-for-the-buck. Or perhaps think about joining a beginner guitar class at your local community center.

9 Reasons Why You Should Play the Guitar

As someone who’s been doing it for a while now, I can personally attest to the fact that playing the guitar is, in one word, AWESOME! Here are 9 reasons why:

1. It enhances your metal and intellectual capacity

Learning to do something new, and enhancing or working on your skills is known to be extremely beneficial for your memory and mental capacity! Studies have shown that musicians who play one or more musical instruments tend to have higher test and IQ scores than others! Learning new things on the guitar, playing new songs, improvisation, studying music theory, and learning different guitar-playing techniques keeps your brain active and fresh, allows you to remain mentally alert and active, and can help with retention and help with intellectual capacity-building.

2. Playing the guitar also helps you from a physical point-of-view

A large part of playing the guitar has to do with your body and your physical well-being. How do you think the likes of Angus Young, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and Kirk Hammett continue to play the guitar despite being in the business for many, many years now? By keeping themselves physically-fit and in top shape! And that is one of the advantages of playing the guitar; it will allow you to correct your posture, build stamina strengthen your arms, fingers and hands, and become more energetic. Warming up before playing increases blood-flow in your body, and loosens up your joints and muscles. Playing the guitar will keep you in top shape for many years, provided you do it the correct way.

3. It helps develop important personality traits, attributes and characteristics

…such as discipline, patience, self-motivation and time-management to name just a few of these personality traits and attributes. Learning to play the guitar is quite tough (as anyone who’s ever attempted to do it will attest to). Doing so will develop a sense of patience, persistence and perseverance in you. The discipline that is needed to master the instrument will help you in your daily routine with countless other tasks in your everyday life. Furthermore, learning the instrument and everything that accompanies the process of doing so will allow you to be more self-motivated, and finally, practicing regularly (every single day, for instance) will help you become more regular with other tasks in your life, allow you to set schedules and follow them, and be more sensitive to the importance of time!

4. Making music helps relieves stress

It is a universally-known fact that listening to music is a great stress-reliever. If listening to music relieves stress, then actually making music – or in your case, playing the guitar – will allow you to relieve ten times more stress! Having a bad day or a crappy week, why not pick up that Les Paul and play some Guns n’ Roses (or whatever helps you relieve stress). The sound of the acoustic guitar has been known to be very soothing and relaxing, and playing the guitar can help relax the mind, and even lower blood pressure and tempers!

5. It helps kill boredom

One of the best things about playing the guitar is that there’s never a dull or a boring moment in your life! So you find yourself alone at home with nothing to do? Got a few minutes (or a hours) to kill? Looking for the best possible way to spend on your free time? Simply pick up your trusty axe and start playing!

6. You can play the guitar just about anywhere

For me, this is one of the best things about playing the guitar, you can simply pick it up and play it anywhere that you might be. An acoustic guitar, in particular, is very portable instrument which you can easily carry around with you if you’re travelling somewhere (such as on a road trip, to the park, a trip to the beach, etc.) and they don’t call it the ‘campfire classic’ for nothing! Fire up that grill in your backyard, pick up your acoustic guitar and you’ll be easily able to entertain not only yourself, but also your friends and family! Invited to a party, why not take your acoustic guitar along with you!

7. The bragging rights

Playing the guitar is a skill that only a few people in the world can acquire. Not everyone can play the guitar, and a large number of people who attempt to learn the instrument give-up halfway through the process. In addition, the fact that you can play the instrument can be a great conversation-starter and gives you great bragging rights (and not to mention, a way to show-off) as well! Guitar players always bring up the fact that they play, and the next time you see a hot girl at a bar or a party, you know what you can tell her if she asks what you do!

8. Playing in a band gives you the opportunity to work as a team

Apart from some of the personality traits an attributes that we discussed earlier, playing in a band, for instance, gives you the opportunity to play with other musicians, which develop a sense of teamwork. Working in a team is one of the most essential skills out there; it allows you to grow as a person and a human being. Playing with other talented musicians enables you to collaborate with them in order to make great music. In addition playing in a band also lets you learn from other musicians and expand your musical horizons as well!

9. Playing the guitar helps develop social skills

As a guitar player, you’ll get the opportunity to speak with a large number of people, work with other musicians, collaborate with band mates, and generally meet with, come across and interact with many different people on a daily basis. In fact, if you go on tours, you might even come across people from different cultures, places and countries. All this will help develop your social skills.

Popular Signature Guitar Models

1. Angus Young Signature Gibson SG

Who doesn’t like ACDC, perhaps the best rock n’ roll and classic rock act in the last 50 years or so! The Aussie rock band is one of the most popular bands of all time, have a large fanbase all across the globe, and continue to sell out stadiums and dazzle people with their music and their live performances despite being in the business for a good 40 years now! On the forefront of their immense popularity and success is the band’s lead guitarist Angus Young – a man ranked 24^th on Rolling Stone Magazine’s Greatest Guitarist of All Time! Young was a big fan of the uber-famous Gibson SG, and Gibson and Young collaborated to make the Angus Young Signature SG, a guitar which had a pickup designed by the man himself (Angus Young Signature Humbucker) in the bridge, and came with distinctive lightning-bolt inlays in the neck as well as a distinctive double-cutaway body design. The ‘Thunderstruck’ comes with a MSRP of around $3200! But that’s a small price to pay if you’re an ACDC fan (with deep pockets) and want to own one of THE BEST signature guitars out there today!

2. Slash Signature Gibson Les Paul

Slash, you might know is the guy who made history with a little band called Guns n’ Roses, has been known to be a big Gibson Les Paul fan – a guitar which he says is the best all-round guitar out there! According to well-attributed sources, Gibson has even  accredited him with single-handedly bringing the Les Paul ‘back into the mainstream’! Perhaps unsurprisingly, Slash has more than 10 Gibson/Epiphone signature models to his name – the most popular of which is the ‘97 Gibson Custom Shop Slash Les Paul Standard known as the ‘Snakepit’. "I had Gibson make this for me in 1996 or 1997. It's got the embossed Slash logo on it and the snake inlay in the neck. It's a gorgeous guitar. I only have one of those and they are very rare" he said about the guitar. Only 100 of these beauties were ever made, making this signature model one of the rarest collectible guitars out there! 

3. John Mayer Signature Fender Stratocaster

John Mayer is someone who, like just about all others on this list, needs absolutely no introduction. Whatever opinion you might have of him as a person, there’s no denying that he is one of the most acclaimed and accomplished musicians of present times, and hence it is only fitting that he has many Fender signature Strat electric guitar models to his name. These limited-release Fender Stratocasters, part of the Fender Artist Series, sound amazing and look just as great as well, even though they might not be the most exciting instruments on this list! The John Mayer Stratocaster costs around $1500, and has an alder body, maple neck, African rosewood fretboard, single coil Strat pickups, and an synchronized American vintage tremolo. The guitar, like other signature models, was created in close collaboration with Mayer.

4. Kurt Cobain Signature Fender Mustang

Easily one of the most well-known and renowned musicians of our times, Kurt Cobain was one hell of a talented musician, singer-songwriter and of course, guitarist – the true definition of raw, natural talent! And just as famously, he is also known as a member of the 27 Club. But I digress; Fender, in memory of the Nirvana frontman introduced the Fender Mustang, a signature electric guitar ‘inspired by a true grunge legend: Kurt Cobain’. A guitar which had a big influence on Cobain and Nirvana’s distinctive sound, and a guitar famously used by Cobain over the years – as can be seen in the infamous ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ video from ’91, or when he extensively used the Mustang during Nirvana’s ‘In Utero’ tour in 1993-94. The guitar had an alder body, 24” scale neck, rosewood fingerboard, a Mustang single-coil neck pickup and a Seymour Duncan bridge humbucker, and the price today for one of these is around $1400.

5. Kirk Hammett Signature ESP KH-2 Electric

And my personal favorite, the Kirk Hammett ESP KH-2! I’ve been a big, big fan of Metallica for as long as I can remember and Kirk Hammett bleeds Metallica! He’s been an ESP player for as long as I’ve seen him play; in fact, the first Hammett signature guitar released by ESP in 2007 was to commemorate 20 years of association with Hammett! This particular modified KH-2 had a price of $9999-a-pop, and only 41 of these were ever made! Over the years, ESP has released tons of Hammett Signature KH-2 models, such as the ‘Bride of Frankenstein’, ‘Skully’, the ‘Ouija’, to name just a few. The Signature KH-2 black retails for $2300, and is actually a modified ESP M-II Deluxe with EMG active humbuckers, and some sweet skull-and-crossbones inlays in the neck!  A must-have for any and all Hammett and Metallica fans, and guitar players aspiring to play and sound like Hammett.