How To Select an Acoustic Guitar for Beginners?
Buying your first acoustic guitar can be extremely confusing. Guitars come in different shapes, sizes, materials, brands, price points and several other factors of consideration. If you're a beginner, it can be difficult to know what actually matters.
To make your life easy, our in-house guitar and sound experts have penned down a clear guide to help you understand how to select a guitar for beginners and most importantly - understand your requirements yourself before you buy a guitar online or visit your nearest music store to talk to a salesman.
Whether you're looking for a beginner guitar or simply wondering how to choose an acoustic guitar amongst many guitars available, start with the questions below.
Before You Start: Know Your Requirement First ?
Before you talk to a sales person, you need to have the answers to the following questions:
What is my budget?
As per the general understanding, as the budget range increases, the guitars sound better and are more durable - but you don't necessarily need to buy the most expensive guitar to get a good instrument. Good construction and quality control can be found at different price points, even at low price points.
However, as a practical starting point for an Indian buyer, we recommend keeping a budget of around ₹7,000 or above for your first guitar. This is not an industry-mandated minimum; it is a practical recommendation based on our years of experience as players and retailers.
What guitar size suits me?
The guitar should be comfortable to hold in the playing position.
We have observed that beginners often prefer larger guitars as they offer greater projection and a stronger low-end response, but you should only go for that if the size is comfortable to you. Afterall, if you need to keep playing it for years, that should not be uncomfortable on your arms while playing.
Will I mostly play at home or travel with it?
If your guitar will primarily stay at home, a decent-size guitar or a full-size guitar may be perfectly suitable if that is comfortable to hold in the playing position.
If you expect to travel frequently with your guitar, consider a smaller or more compact body that is easier to carry and handle. Travel guitars are a separate category of guitars. Explore the following guitars below -
Once you have a rough clarity on the above, you are good to visit an online music store to talk to a sales representative or a nearby retail outlet.
Questions to Ask To Your Sales Representative
If you visit a guitar store — or speak to a salesperson online — ask these questions in this order.
Q1. What guitar size and body shape suits me?
Acoustic guitars come in different body sizes and shapes. Some common options are listed below -
- Dreadnought
- Concert and smaller-body guitars
- Auditorium/Grand Auditorium
- Jumbo
-
Travel guitars
You may also see cutaway and double-cutaway designs, which provide easier access to the higher frets.
We suggest selecting a guitar in the following order:
- Comfort
- Shape
A larger-bodied guitar generally emphasizes the lower frequencies, producing a fuller, bassier sound. Smaller-bodied guitars tend to have a more focused sound with relatively greater emphasis on the higher frequencies.
In short, larger guitars generally sound fuller and bassier, while smaller guitars tend to sound brighter and more focused.
Even if you prefer the sound of a larger-bodied guitar, we recommend choosing a guitar that feels comfortable to play, as you’ll be playing it for years to come.
Q2. What is the guitar made of?
The below is a clear representation of the different parts of the guitar you should be knowing about.
Ask about the materials used for:
- Top / Soundboard
- Back and sides
- Neck
- Fingerboard
- Bridge
-
Nut and saddle
Each part should be made of a tonewood used globally in guitars. Such tonewoods are - Spruce, Cedar, Mahogany, Rosewood, Maple, Sapele and various other woods and composites.
While a particular material does not automatically make one guitar better than another, it does shape the tonal characteristics, while equally important is the construction. We recommend you play the guitars to compare the sound. If you are a beginner, ask the sales person or any guitarist nearby to play it for you. Once the selection has been boiled down to a couple of guitars that suit your size and style, sound quality is the thing that remains.
Q3. How easy is the guitar to play and properly set up?
As tonal character, equally important is the playability of the guitar — how easy it is to press and navigate across the fretboard.
While choosing a guitar for beginners, it is particularly important to understand several other factors that affect the playability of the guitar.
The primary factors include:
- String action
- Fretwork
- Nut height
- Neck profile
- String gauge
String Action, Neck Relief and Fretwork are the factors which might change with temperature, humidity and string tension and might change as the guitar is stored in the warehouse. A guitar that is difficult to fret or has excessively high action can make it difficult to play and affect intonation.
Ask your guitar technician to get the guitar neck straight to ease the playability.
At 7th Chord, the guitar is quality checked for the above factors before shipping it to our customers.
Last question to the salesperson — is the guitar properly intonated? Intonation refers to how accurately the guitar stays in tune across the fretboard. This is something that you learn when you start learning guitar basics.
Q4. Should I buy an acoustic or an acoustic-electric guitar?
An acoustic-electric guitar is simply an acoustic guitar equipped with electronics that allow it to be connected to an amplifier, PA system, or recording equipment.
This is a question that beginner buyers get confused about the most, and even salespeople aren’t able to answer it.
We say, it totally depends on the use case. If you wish to play on stage where the volume and tonal controls are not nearby, you do need them at your fingertips, and the equalizer does exactly that job. This helps you tweak your sound in real time.
If you are playing at home and want to connect your guitar to a nearby guitar amplifier, you could just add a piezo-electric pickup later that’s relatively cheaper and control the sound from the amplifier control panel itself.
If you wish to buy a semi-acoustic guitar, some great options are shown below:
Visit our guitar collection by clicking here. If you have any queries about which guitar would be best for you, call us at +91-9315781508 for free assistance.
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