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!