Best Guitar For Beginners

Are you looking to find the best beginners guitar for your budget, but you aren’t sure what to look for? Our pros break down exactly what you should be checking for and how much money you can expect to pay.

Make sure you read on all the way through, to learn what the guitar brands wish you didn’t know about choosing beginners guitars.

Beginners Guitar Buyers Guide

The very first thing to consider is whether you want to learn acoustic or electric guitar. Both have good points and a good argument can be made for starting with either type. Due to the string set up and bendability, it is probably easier to learn on an electric guitar than an acoustic. With that said, the tonal quality from an acoustic is hard to compete with.

So now we’ve confused you somewhat, we hope you get a good night’s sleep and are now in a position to choose the best guitar for you. Our advice with all things guitar related, is to get as much information as you can, by reading online reviews and selecting the one that best suits your budget.

Guitar Head

The guitar head is the wooden bit at the top with the 6 tuners attached to it. At the bottom of the head where it is attached to the neck, is the nut, this is usually made from bone or plastic, the strings feed through the grooves in the nut to be sure the strings are in the right position running down the neck.

Tuners

Sometimes called machine heads, these are where the strings are attached to, when you twist the tuner the string tightens changing the note or pitch of the string. Be sure that the tuners stay in position when you pluck the strings, they should hold the string at the same position you set it to.

Neck

This runs the length of the guitar supporting the strings. You need to hold the neck to feel whether it’s comfortable or not. Try holding the neck and pushing one of the strings. With the other hand pluck that string, it should sound clear and have a resonant tone. Check that the neck is straight, with no bends or twists.

Fretboard

All along the front of the neck is the fretboard. The frets are set at regularly spaced intervals to change the note up the fretboard. The fretboard should be scratch free and the frets themselves need to be without any burrs, with perfectly straight edges.

Strings 

There are 6 strings suspended from the tuners to the base of the guitar. They are made from differing gauges of wire changing the note depending on the thickness of the string. Thick strings give a louder tone but are harder to play. Lighter strings are easier to play but break easily.

Bridge

The bridge supports the strings at the bottom of the guitar allowing the strings to vibrate either over the soundhole (acoustic) or over the pickups (electric).

These are all the main parts of the guitar: get familiar with these and know what they do and how they do it. Just a quick mention on the soundhole and/or the pickups.

Soundhole

If you’ve gone for an acoustic guitar you will notice the soundhole cut right into the bottom, middle part of the guitar. This is where the sound is released after vibrating around the guitar body.

Pickups

If you went for an electric guitar, you will have 1, 2, or 3 pickups depending on the make and model of guitar you have. The pickups work by magnet, there are 6 magnets in each pickup, one for each string. These are connected by fine coiled wire that transmits the sound to the amplifier.

If you have chosen an electric guitar plug it in and check that the pickups all work, and that the tone and volume control work too. 

Frequently Asked Questions