Lauren Bateman recommends beginner guitars by brand and fit. She favors smaller OM-size bodies over dreadnoughts, which she calls "like boat oars," and suggests the Taylor GS Mini, Ibanez, Gibson, Martin, and Seagull S6 depending on player size.
People ask me all the time, what's the best beginner guitar? And I hate making suggestions. I'll make some that that are great. I usually recommend brands. Taylor's. Great. I have a lot of students who really love the GS Mini, especially my female students because they have a smaller body. I love Ibanez. Gibson is great. Martin Seagull. The Seagull S6 is actually a really great guitar that a lot of my students have. The thing that's most important is that you actually find a guitar that fits you. So there's different sizes of guitar. So there's what we call a dreadnought guitar. And I typically don't recommend them for beginners. They're so big we call it. They're like boat oars. You can row a boat with them because they're so big. They have a great sound because they're really big acoustically. But I prefer something that's more like an OM size guitar. It's a little bit smaller. I don't feel like I'm climbing over the guitar. I'm only under five' five, so I'm not a big person.
