The Beginners Guide to Buying Your First Electric Guitar

Tips for Buying Your First Electric Guitar

Have you decided that enough is enough, tired of using other people’s guitar whenever you feel like playing? Do you find it difficult to satisfy your thirst for playing guitar when you cannot find any guitar around you? Don’t worry, this time you have got the best electric guitar of your own.

Do you have a divided attention on which electronic guitar to go for? In such moments of confusion, you are advised to consult electric guitar reviews to guide you through and clarify everything for you till you get the most amazing electric guitar of your search.

Even after going through different reviews, it is important if you some of the major things to check when buying an electric guitar. Take a look at the following tips to help you buy your perfect guitar:

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Conduct hardware test

Do you just appear in the shop and buy a guitar just because it is appealing to your sight? Do take your time before you purchase any instrument. In this, you have to test the hardware of the guitar to know their functionality.

You can be greatly attracted by the cheap cost of the guitar but this can be a trick that the manufacturers put you through after using cheap hardware to make the guitar. Test whether the knobs and the switches are properly functioning. The sound can be great but be careful to check the hardware.

Test the guitars with the same amplifier

The reason for using the same amplifier is that there are several amplifiers in the market and each amplifier has its own special sound. Due to this feature, you may not the exact tonal variation when you use different amplifiers in testing the different guitars.

It may mislead you to like the sound produced by a particular amplifier but not the guitar which may be disappointing when you go and test. Test the electric guitars of your choice on one amplifier and you will know the best quality of sound produced by specific guitar and make your selection.

Conduct eye testing

Are you wondering why it should be done and what for? This is very important for your case. Remember the guitars don’t just get manufactured and sold immediately; they have to be stored in stores to wait for the customers.

The stores may not have conditions proper temperature and humidity to support the safety of these electric guitars. Put the head of the guitar close to your eyeball and check if the neck of the electric guitar is straight to the body of the electric guitar. Take caution to even the slightest deformity.

Consider the neck of the electric guitar

This is very important. Bear in mind that neck of guitars are designed in different shapes; some are wide-thin, thin and even c-shaped. The neck size of the guitar you may want will strictly depend on your hand size. So before you buy your first electric guitar, ensure you get hold of it and see if the neck fits your hand.

Pay attention to the intonation of the guitar

This is mostly ignored by many but it is a very important tip to note before you buy your electric guitar. Tell me if the guitar will be useful if it doesn’t produce the intonation that you are looking for. To check the intonation, just try plucking the strings and compare the tone produced with the 12th fret of the guitar. The guitar will be useless if they don’t match.

Consider the buzz action of the guitar

The buzz doesn’t set guitar properly. It can be adjusted which should have been done before taking the guitar to store. Are you worried about how to check the buzz on a guitar? It simple, look at these ideas.

Take a ruler and take the measurement of the string from 12th fret on the fretboard, notice the distance.
You can also play the various strings of the guitar hard enough and listen if you can hear the buzz.
You can also test the buzz by playing the handrail chords on the fret and pay attention to the buzz produced.

Look at the body style of the guitar

It is not advisable to just walk to the music shop and pick any guitar. You should bear in mind that the electric guitars are designed in different body styles, that is, the semi-hollow, hollow-body and the solid-body. A solid-body guitar will be recommended for you since it has an admirable amplification and also provides a number of affects you may need when playing. The semi-hollow guitar may be suitable for the acoustic sound production and higher amplification. Hollow-body electronic guitars are more or less the same as the semi-hollow body electronic guitar.

Check the guitar for tuning

Take caution about this. This is what allows you to enjoy sound produced by your guitar as it enables you to maintain the pitch and have a fine-tuning. There are the open and the enclosed tuning machines in guitar. You are advised to consider the enclosed tuning machine since they offer a great resistance to rust and corrosions hence saves a lot on the maintenance cost as opposed to the open tuning machines.

Consider also the bridge of the guitar

Just like the body style, there also different bridges, the stop-tail, and the tremolo bridges. The stop-tail bridge electronic guitar are recommended for you since it provides a stable tuning being that it is directly fixed on the body whereas the tremolo bridge guitar, even though it makes it easy to curve all the guitar strings at the same time, it may distort the tunes of the strings.

Conclusion

You have to be keen before you buy an instrument especially the music instruments. If you don’t know how to identify a good electronic guitar for your first attempt, it is advisable to consult as many resources as you can to guide you through a better selection.

But do you need to look for the many resources? Here is the best-simplified guide for you. The most important features to check are; how the guitar fits your hands and the quality sound produced when played. All the other may just be added beauties.

This was a guest post by the talented Joseph over at bestguitaradvisor.com – The site is an excellent resource for beginners and seasoned guitar players alike.

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