Beginner electric guitars - What to look for and expect

Before you buy a beginner electric guitar, or throw your old one away.

I get a little troubled when I read a user review of a beginner electric guitar, and the reviewer badmouths the guitar, when I know for a fact that the guitar in question is a sleeping beauty.

There are quite a few entry level guitars that are actually of comparable quality to the expensive brands they copy. Some of them are actually made by the same company, as a cheaper alternative to their top of the range guitars.

Fender, for instance, has the Squier range, and Gibson has the epiphone range.

Here are a few things that just about any guitar should have done to it before being judged.

1.) The frets should be leveled and crowned before any comment on the playability of the instrument. This process brings all the frets to a uniform height above the fretboard, which eliminates most of the unwanted fret buzz and enables the strings to be set a lot lower. This process is best carried out by a professional luthier (Guitar builder)

2.) The intonation should be set. This is simply setting the bridge saddles on the guitar so that the strings play in tune all the way up the neck. This is quite simple to do, one just has to check that the note at the 12th fret is exactly an octave higher than the open string. I usually check this by playing the harmonic at the 12th fret and compare it to the fretted note.

If the fretted note is higher than the harmonic, I adjust the bridge saddle back, making the string length a bit longer, and vice versa.

Some beginner guitarists buy their first electric guitar and complain that it won’t stay in tune. Admittedly, some beginner electric guitars have cheaper tuning machines, but I’m still of the opinion that with due care and attention, even these can be made to stay in tune.

Here are some tips to help your beginner electric guitar stay in tune.

• When putting new strings on the guitar, try to have no more than 3 windings around the tuning post. This helps the string settle more tightly around the tuners - plus it’s a lot less hassle than turning forever trying to get all the string on.
• New guitar strings need to be stretched in. It’s just something about the metal actually stretching before it reaches the end of its elasticity. You can do this by holding the string down at the 12th fret, and gently tugging inbetween the 12th fret and the bridge - You have to be gentle, but not too gentle. I have broken a string or two like this, but that was from one set of strings a long time ago, and I think they where duds.
• Always tune up to the note, even if the string needs to be loosened to get to the right pitch. It’s better to go down below the desired pitch and tune it back up from there. This means the string tightens around the tuning post again as opposed to just being loosened.
• Make sure the frets are leveled and the intonation is set correctly. If the strings are too high off the neck fretboard, the extra distance when a note is fretted can cause the string to play sharp.

When looking at beginner electric guitars, or any electric guitars I’m interested in, here’s my main criteria before I buy.

1. Wood - Of utmost importance. The guitars tone comes mainly from the type of wood used. Everything else on the guitar will either compliment the tone or inhibit it. Don’t be fooled by the acoustic guitar enthusiasts who say that “Good wood equals good tone” doesn’t apply to an electric guitar. It most certainly does. Here are my favorite tone woods - Mahogany, Alder, Maple, and possibly Ash. There are some other tone woods that could be considered good quality, like Basswood, Agathis and Poplar, but they’re not woods I’ve really tried.
2. Pickups - The guitar pickups on cheap electric guitars have improved quite a lot in recent years, after all, the parts needed to make a good pickup aren’t expensive. I like to see pickups on a guitar that are made by a well known company, like for instance, Dimarzio pickups or Seymour Duncan pickup. Sometimes they may just be designed by them, which is also cool. If I’m looking at a Top guitar companies products, then I tend to be less worried about the pickups being brand names. Worst case scenario, I can always buy good quality but cheap replacement pickups from Kent Armstrong.

Decide beforehand what kind of music you want to play, then buy the right guitar for the job.

Too often I read reviews by beginner guitarists, who’ve bought a Stratocaster style guitar, and then complain that it sounds lousy, cos they’re into death metal or something, and the guitars not suited to that kind of music.

If you want to play heavy rock, you should buy a guitar with humbucking pickups.

If you want to play blues, then buy a semi-hollow or hollow body guitar.

If you want to play blues rock or country music, consider buying a stratocaster type guitar.

Here’s the kind of guitar I think offers an all round solution. A stratocaster type guitar with a humbucker pickup in the bridge position. This gives you the nice fat sound of a humbucker for playing rock, and that nice single coil twang in the other positions for playing bluesy stuff.

For the budget conscious, I think one of the best Fat Strats is the Squier.
I took the liberty of borrowing a friends Squier Stratocaster, so I could record some sound samples.
The guitar I borrowed wasn’t the Fat Strat, but the one with three single coil pickups. I was quite pleasantly surprised by the sound of this guitar.
I had always thought - And I still do - that single coil pickups in the bridge are not good for rock.
This guitar proved me wrong.
Here are the sound files.

Squier bridge pickup distorted mp3
Squier bridge pickup Distorted Solo mp3
Squier Clean sounds mp3
Squier neck pickup overdrive mp3

Squier by Fender Affinity Series Fat Strat Electric Guitar Metallic Red

Hmm…… Looks like a Fender Stratocaster, sounds like a Fender Stratocaster, it must be a Fender Stratocaster.

Nope - It’s a Squier, and an Affinity series at that. The cheapest in the range, and it’s made from the same wood as some of the best sounding Stratocasters - Alder wood.

While I found the feel of the guitar neck to be a bit thinner and flatter than most Fenders, it was actually quite a fast action, and I took it down even closer to the fretboard. I hope Martin doesn’t mind.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 at 1:01 pm and is filed under beginner electric guitars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.