Acoustic VS Electric Guitar For Beginners

Hey guitar enthusiasts, welcome back. In this lesson we're going to be talking about acoustic guitars versus electric guitars. What's better for beginner? Let's talk about it in this video.

Now, everything in life has trade offs and that is no exception with guitar. There are definitely pluses and minuses to an acoustic guitar. There are definitely pluses and minuses to the electric guitars you see behind me. So why don't we start off with the acoustic guitar since that's the one that's in my hand. So my acoustic guitar here, the pro is that it's pretty loud without an amp, alright? Now electric guitars usually have to go and buy an amp to hear it. Where an acoustic you can get away without an amp. So it's one less piece of equipment that you need. Another pro about an acoustic guitar is that the strings are thin, thicker, which means you're going to build your calluses on your fingertips much faster on an acoustic guitar versus an electric guitar. One additional pro about an acoustic guitar is that the strings are more forgiven or the string noise. With electric guitars, usually you're plugging them into amps and these amplifiers, these pickups. So you can see on my electric guitars here, I have these little pickups, alright, that send a signal into the amplifier. Well, when you make a mistake, the amplifier amplifies that mistake. The other thing is that mistake keeps ringing and depending on how good your pickups are, it can ring for a very long time and cause kind of muddy sounds and distortions on your guitar and make your chords not sound as good. Now with the acoustic guitar that can still happen, but it's a little bit more forgiving and, and can make you sound a little bit better at the beginner stages. Now let's talk about the cons of the acoustic guitar. So a con of the acoustic guitar is because the strings are thicker. Yes, you can build calluses faster, but the trade off is it requires more hand strength to play the strings. Now you could always go and put lighter gauge strings on your acoustic guitar to make it easier to play. But if you're an older player or someone who has weaker hands, I often recommend that you go to an electric style guitar just because the strings are much thinner and it's usually much easier to play in the beginning than the acoustic guitar. Now a pro is that because the acoustic guitar is harder to play, if you practice something on an acoustic guitar first and then you take it over to one of your electric guitars, it's going to be a lot easier on the electric. So that's kind of a practice tip I use with beginners. Practice something on the acoustic guitar. So if you're working on your chord changes, say you're working on this C, this G to C chord change, okay? And you're going back and forth, and it's really hard on the acoustic. Do that for a couple minutes, Then bring it over to one of your electric guitars here and try it for a couple minutes on the electric guitar. And you might notice that it's a lot faster. Used to do this a lot with students when we would learn guitar solos, because it's, again, harder to play a solo or play a riff on an acoustic guitar. So if you really push yourself to go as fast as you can on the acoustic, when you take yourself over to the electric, going to be a lot easier to play. Now, with the electric guitars, like I said, the pros are that it's a lot easier to play. The strings are much thinner. And you can do other things much easier. On an electric guitar, for example, like bending strings. If you're going to get into playing solos, it's much easier to bend a string on an electric guitar versus an acoustic guitar. And if you've been doing string bends, you know, it can be very hard sometimes to get those bends into tune. So it's much harder to get them in tune on an acoustic than it is with an electric. Now, the other cool thing about the electric is that you can plug it into an amplifier and you can add some really cool effects. You can do that with an acoustic. But I think the electric guitar is served much better with effects pedals, wah wahs, all kinds of distortion effects, things that you can add to change the sound of your guitar. Now, the downside of a lot of electric guitars is the sound setup. Electric guitars can tend to be a little bit more maintenance. Why? If you see down here on my Gretch, I have this bridge, and on my Ibanez here, I have this bridge here. Now, over time, things expand and contract. And this happens with acoustic guitars, too. Usually acoustic guitars. You can adjust the truss rod, and you're going to be pretty good. But sometimes with electric guitars, they require a complete setup, which means we have to do some intonation work. So a Luther or someone who does a guitar setup would adjust these bridge pegs, these settings down here for your strings, to make sure that the guitar stays in tune, not only from Fret 1, all the way down to Fret 12 and beyond. Now, in terms of maintaining your strings and keeping your guitar clean, there's really no difference there. Just understand that, you know, there might be a little bit more maintenance requirements on electric guitars because of the electronics and the way the bridges are set up. Now I want to talk about a con for electric guitars that I know is a con for me. You can see here, I have an electric guitar. This is my duo Jet, my Gretsch, my George Harrison. It is, it's hollow inside. It's a hollow chamber guitar, what we would call a hollow body guitar. And this makes the guitar much lighter. I have a very hard time playing something like a Les Paul because electric guitar is this one. It's solid wood, so it's much heavier. It's a solid piece of wood. This Ibanez is actually very, very thin. This is the Ibanez SA series. I can't play really thick electric guitars because the weight of the guitar puts a lot of stress on my shoulder and it wasn't very comfortable for me. But the great thing about electric guitars versus the acoustic is that there are so many options. I mean, there's options on acoustic, but in terms of like colors and styles, electric guitars are where it's at. So if you're someone who likes the style of an acoustic, but you like the playability of an electric, you might want to go with something like a semi hollow, you know, acoustic electric or what we call a hollow body electric guitar. The fretboard is set up with, with the playability of an electric guitar, but it is hollow, so it's a little bit louder. You may not need an amp. I would still recommend getting an amp, but it kind of is a happy medium between a solid body electric guitar and a full blown acoustic guitar. Hey, guitar enthusiasts, just wanted to let you know if you're new to guitar. I do have an absolutely free guitar crash course. Just go to laurenbateman.com crashcourse and you can sign up there. It's. It's absolutely free and we'll get you started. So which one should you start with as a beginner guitar player? Honestly, that's up to you. If you're someone who's more into singer, songwriter, style of music, then I would definitely go with an acoustic guitar. Especially if you're going to do a lot of finger picking. If you're someone who's into classic rock, rock and roll, the blues, I would probably pick up a hollow body electric or a solid body electric with a really nice amp. But ultimately I always tell students you should have at least one acoustic guitar and one electric guitar just for the practice reasons I talked about alone earlier in this video. So those are the pros and cons of electric guitars versus acoustic guitars. Don't forget to like this video, guys. I hope you appreciate the content that I put out here. YouTube's gonna throw a couple more videos up there. Go check those out. And I hope to see you guys in another lesson video real soon.