17th February 2022 

What Guitar Should I Buy?

People sometimes ask me to recommend a type or make of guitar to get, especially as a first or second guitar.

Someone may be an absolute beginner, thinking about their first guitar. Or they may already have a cheap one, but they would like to progress to the next stage.

So I thought I’d take a look at the best options for a good starter guitar – and I’m going to try to keep it simple.

We’ll look at three categories of guitar:

Classical (nylon string)

Acoustic (steel string)

Electric (6 string)

This article is not going to cover bass guitars, 12-string guitars or electro-acoustic guitars (acoustic guitars with a built-in pickup to allow them to be plugged into an amplifier).

Buying second-hand is an option, and good bargains can be found. But for this Blog I am only going to consider buying a new guitar.

One further point. It’s OK to buy online, but don’t limit yourself to Amazon. They don’t always have the best prices, and there is less ‘curation’ of the models offered. If you go to one of the online music stores such as Gear4Music, Bax or DV247 you may get a better selection, with the poorer models weeded out. Gear4Music also do their own range of instruments, mostly aimed at beginners, and the models I have seen are affordable and of decent quality.

Classical Guitars

Classical Guitars are acoustic instruments – they don’t need amplification because they have a sound-box.

They are great to start learning on, especially for children.

Here are some reasons why: 1) the nylon strings are softer on the fingers; 2) the body and neck are both smaller/shorter than a steel-string acoustic; 3) they don’t require the extra expense of an amplifier; 4) decent starter models are a little cheaper than for the other two styles of guitar.

Children under 11 will usually start on a three-quarter size instrument, or even half-size for smaller children.

Whilst it is possible to find a nylon string guitar online for under £50, the makes that I would recommend for a beginner are:

Jose Ferrer      (starting at about £80)

Valencia          (starting at about £80)

Gear4Music    (starting at about £50. They do a Deluxe model for about £70 which is excellent)

The ¾ size models are about the same price as the full-size models for these manufacturers.

For the next level up (maybe paying between £100 and £150), you would probably be looking at Yamaha, Epiphone and Ortega.

Acoustic (Steel-String) Guitars

Usually the term ‘acoustic guitar’ applies to steel-string guitars with a sound-box. These guitars generally have a larger body than a classical guitar and a longer neck. The two most famous makers of acoustic guitars are Martin and Gibson, and these are the brands most commonly used by professionals. But they can cost thousands of pounds!

Nevertheless, you should be able to buy a perfectly decent acoustic guitar for between £100 and £150. And I am going to suggest that you need look no further than Yamaha and Epiphone.

Epiphone is the ‘budget’ wing of Gibson, and they make affordable versions of the classic Gibson models, as well as some of their own designs.

I can’t really recommend a better acoustic guitar to start with than the Epiphone DR-100. You should be able to find one for about £130. It comes in three colours: black, natural wood and my favourite, ‘vintage sunburst’.

Epiphone DR-100 Yamaha F310

The Yamaha model I would suggest is the F310, available in a natural finish, or in Tobacco Brown sunburst. You should be able to find an F310 for £120, so it is slightly cheaper than the Epiphone.

They are both lovely instruments to play (and to look at!) and you won’t go wrong with either. For me, the Epiphone has the edge - on the models I’ve played the ‘intonation’ (the tuning further up the neck) has been perfect.

Electric Guitars

There is a huge range of electric guitars available, and I am going to confine myself to the more affordable ones.

It is important to remember that if you are buying an electric guitar you are going to need an amplifier as well. If you don’t already have an amp, then that is going to be an additional expense.

In my view, the amp is just as important as the guitar – a great guitar, even a Fender or a Gibson, will still sound terrible through a bad amplifier! Whereas even the cheapest guitar can sound good through a nice amplifier.

There are a lot of cheap guitar and amplifier ‘packages’ or ‘bundles’ available, but for any package under £150 you can be fairly sure that the amp will be a cheap one.

So I wouldn’t consider a ‘package’ unless you know that the amplifier is decent. I will recommend a couple of packages at the end of this article, but I am going to start with the guitars. I’ll do a short section on amplifiers after that, and then the packages you might look at.

The Electric Guitars

I will keep this simple.

For your first electric guitar, get a Squier, an Epiphone or a Yamaha.

Squier is Fender’s ‘budget’ range, Epiphone is Gibson’s budget range. Yamaha is the biggest instrument maker in the world, and it has good quality control – they don’t make ‘bad’ guitars.

Generally we are looking at guitars in the £150 to £220 price range, with one exception – the Epiphone Les Paul SL, which you can sometimes find for around £130.

I could go into a lot of detail about what are the differences between the various styles of electric guitars, and what the differences between single-coil, P90 and humbucker pickups are. But to be honest, it’s not that important! Many guitarists will recoil in horror at this statement, but the point is you can get great rock, blues and pop sounds from all three of these makes and pickup styles. What’s important when buying your first guitar is playability and how much you love it and want to play it!

In the end your choice often comes down to which guitar you like the look of!

So spend as long as you like looking at different shapes and colours of guitars, and choose the Squier, Epiphone or Yamaha that you are most attracted to and can afford.

Here is a quick rundown of some of the models they offer:

Squier

Squier’s approach is to have ‘ranges’ of the same shapes of guitar. The ‘Bullet’ range is the cheapest, starting at about £140, and you can get a Stratocaster, a Telecaster or a Mustang in this range. (Update 08/06/2023: the 'Bullet' range has now been replaced by the 'Sonic' range. Prices and models are similar to the Bullet range).

The most popular range is the ‘Affinity’ range, starting at about £190. In this range they also offer the Jaguar, Jazzmaster and Starcaster models. The Squier Affinity Stratocaster is probably the best selling electric guitar in the world, and a good option at around £190.

Squier have other ranges beyond the Affinity, such as the Classic Vibe and Contemporary collections but with these we are leaving the ‘starter guitar’ concept behind, and moving into the ‘mid-range’.

Epiphone

The Epiphones are nearly all based upon Gibson designs, particularly the Les Paul shape, but also the SG and the 335.

The most affordable model is the Les Paul SL – this has two single-coil pickups and is lightweight, being made from a relatively thin piece of poplar wood. You can get one for £120, and I think it makes an excellent first electric guitar. (Update 08/06/2023 - this model has now been renamed the 'Les Paul Melody Maker' and retails for about £130).

However, if you prefer a guitar with ‘humbucker’ (twin-coil) pickups, which many guitarists believe will give you a thicker, heavier sound, then you can get a Les Paul Special for about £150, or an SG Special for the same price.

Yamaha

The Yamaha Pacifica regularly appears in reviewers’ lists of the best electric guitars under £200. It is based upon the Fender Stratocaster shape, but usually has two single-coil pickups and a humbucker, which gives you the option for a ‘heavier’ sound when you need it, particularly for solos.

The two most affordable models are the 012 and the 112. The former starts at about £175 and the latter at about £200, so from a pricing point of view they are similar to the Squier Affinity range.

They have the reputation of being very well-made, playable, lightweight and reliable, and so a good choice as a starter guitar.

But as I have already said in this article, any Yamaha guitar is great, so choose the one you like the look of and can afford.

Here are pictures of three of the guitars I have mentioned:

 Squier Stratocaster             Epiphone Les Paul                         Yamaha Pacifica

          Affinity                                      SL                                    012

    (£190)                             (£130)   (£175)

Amplifiers

Ideally, for your first amplifier, I would say you want an amplifier with the following features:

·        Good sound

·        Loud enough to use in a small band setup – so minimum power rating of 20W.

·        Ideally, some additional built-in effects such as reverb or echo (nearly all will come with an Overdrive/Distortion effect)

·        Under £150

‘Modelling’ amps are a good solution, as they ‘emulate’ a range of classic amplifier sounds, and also have plenty of built-in effects. However, most cost more than £150 unless they are low-powered ‘mini-amps’. (Mini-amps are fine for practising on your own and for recording, but no good for gigs or rehearsals). Popular brands of modelling amps are Fender, Line-6, Vox and Boss.

Here are a couple of options that meet most of the above criteria:

     SubZero Tweed V35RG Guitar Amp  (£80)           Mooer Hornet 30W  (£117)        

The Sub-Zero is a 35W analogue amp with a 50s/60s styling and a built-in reverb effect. You might want to get an additional effects pedal, but the reverb and overdrive are a good start.

The Mooer is a modelling amp with a range of different amplifier sounds and effects. At 30W it’s also powerful enough to use in a small band.

Packages

As I mentioned previously, the problem with most of the guitar/amp bundles is that the amplifier is poor quality.

Here are a couple of guitar and amp ‘packages’ currently available where the amp is pretty good. They are worth considering:

Matt G, 17/02/2022