You Will NEVER Guess The MOST Important Feature When Buying A Guitar

Hey, guitar enthusiasts, buying a guitar is a very important step in your guitar journey, especially if you're buying your first guitar. Because if you buy something that is uncomfortable, that's hard to play, it's going to make you want to give up playing versus keeping having fun with it and learning songs and practicing. If you don't like your guitar, you're not going to want to play it. So I want to go over some of the most important things you need to consider when you, when buying a guitar and ways to save yourself a little bit of frustration and what to look for when you go shopping.

So the first thing I want to talk about is budget. I do not think that this is the most important thing when buying a guitar, but I have some tips here that you may find helpful. Now if you're someone who, who's not on a fixed income and you're like, I really, really want to get something nicer to get started with, I would recommend going above the $300 range. And the reason for that is you're going to get a better quality guitar. You're going to have more options and choices to choose from and just the quality of everything is going to be a lot better at a higher price point. Do you have to go and buy, you know, a 2000 or $3000 guitar here? No, you don't have to do that. But, but if you could buy, you know, somewhere in the 300 to $500 range, particularly for an acoustic guitar, that will get you a much better quality. Now if you're someone that's on a fixed income, I have a lot of students like Lauren, I'm on a fixed income or I'm on Social Security. What do I do? Because, you know, I am on a limited income and I recommend doing this. I actually recommend trying to find a nice used guitar with one caveat. Okay, so, so you can go on to Facebook, Marketplace, you can go on to Craigslist or, you know, whatever is local to you where you can find used guitars. Don't look for a beat up guitar like a guitar that's been sitting in the basement for years. What you're looking for is someone who's advertising a guitar that maybe they bought one or two years ago because they wanted to learn to play guitar and they never played it. Oftentimes you can find 500, $600 guitar is being sold for just a couple hundred dollars because they're trying to get rid of them. I recently had a student who told me he bought a beautiful Taylor guitar. I think it's somewhere was around retail of 3,000. Some guy bought it, he never played it. And I think he sold it to him for like half off. And I mean, that was a more expensive guitar. But stuff like that does happen. Even in the used guitar space. Look for something that looks newer. You know, there's model numbers. You can look up the model number, you can see how expensive the guitar is. And if you can pick up a used guitar, a used guitar, lightly used in the. That's usually 300 to $500. And you could pick it up for one or $200, then guess what, you've made a great purchase and you've gotten a better guitar to start off with. And if that's not an option, ultimately do the best you can. But the most important thing to keep keep in mind when purchasing a guitar is how comfortable it is to hold. So many students do not take this into account. And with guitar, one size does not fit all. Size really does matter when it comes to guitar. And I'm not just talking about the length of the guitar. I'm also talking about the body shape of the guitar, which a lot of students don't understand. So the first guitar I started off with was a really clunky Ibanez dreadnought guitar. Now I'm about five. Five. I'm not the tallest person in the world, but that's what my sister bought me and that's what I learned on. I probably wouldn't recommend that for a new student, especially if you're, you're smaller. The great thing about dreadnought guitars and jumbo sized guitars is because the body of the guitar is so big, it has the biggest and boomiest sounds. You'll get some really, really great tones coming out of the guitar. Guitar. But for a lot of people who are shorter, they can feel like they're climbing over the guitar. Now what I prefer is a guitar that's slightly smaller than that called a grand auditorium. And you can see that my crafter here, this is a grand auditorium. And my Taylor guitar over here is also a grand auditorium style guitar. The great thing about grand auditoriums is they still have a great booming sound to them, but they are a little bit smaller and they are a little bit easier to manage. Now if you're someone is, you know, even much smaller and you're like, listen, these are still too big. I feel like I'm really like hugging this giant piece of wood. What I would recommend is going to a parlor size guitar. Now a parlor size guitar is much thinner in the width of the body, the. The length of the guitar, it's sticking still a full size guitar. So it's probably the smallest, fullest size guitar you can get. A lot of my female students love parlor slyers guitars. Now the thing is, because the body is smaller, you're gonna get a smaller sound out of it. Okay, so that should make sense. The bigger the body of the guitar, the more space, the more hollowness you have inside the guitar, the bigger the sound you're gonna get. But I know a lot of my female students who really, really love parlor sized guitars. So keep that in mind. Because when you pick up a guitar, you know, and you hold the guitar, you can see here, I've kind of just got this little hump perched on my leg here on my thigh. And I just have my arm over the guitar. And if you feel like you're doing this, like, if you feel like your shoulders coming up, because sometimes the butt end here can. Some of the guitars have these really big butts to them and you can feel like your shoulders up here. You don't want that. You want to feel comfortable just resting on the guitar. So. So if you're doing that and you're feeling like, oh, you're feeling like it's too big, just try a small, smaller size guitar. Comfort is the most important aspect of a guitar and a cool feature I want to show you on my tailor. I don't know if you'll be able to see it here. Yeah, yeah, you can. With the light. There's a little bit of an edging on this corner because this is where my arm goes. Whereas my crafter just has like a really straight edge. So that's something you might want to consider for comfort. I know a lot of students, sometimes, you know, they rest their arm here too hard or too long and they start kind of getting a little bit of numbness in their hand because the edge is digging into their arm. So that's another consideration. Not all guitars have that. Another thing would be this kind of om style of the guitar with the cutout. That's just a personal preference. I don't think it does anything for comfort. I. Unless you're someone who's eventually going to get up to here playing. I just like the aesthetics of it. So I don't really think it provides much in terms of a comfort difference, but definitely something to keep in mind. I like it. All my guitars have the cutout here, but that's just for aesthetic reasons. That's my preference. It does nothing for comfort. Now One more note. I want to make about the size of a guitar. I don't have one here, but they do have what are called three quarter size guitars. Now, these are guitars that are about the quarter of a.3 quarters of a size of a real guitar. So the scale or the length of the fretboard is shorter. That means the spaces between these frets are smaller. And I have some older students, particularly those who have arthritis and have trouble with stretching their fingers and hands, who prefer a three quarter size guitar. You can get them in electric, you can get them in acoustic, and they prefer that because they don't have to stretch their fingers as far. So that is also a consideration, especially if you're someone who is older and you do suffer from arthritis and you feel like you would like that shorter scale. We call that a scale on the guitar, how long the fretboard is. All right, so you'll get a shorter scale guitar and the frets will be a little bit closer and you won't have to stretch out your hands as much. Just wanted to put that in there as an extra side note on the size of a guitar. So while I think comfort is honestly the most important thing to shop for, over time you're gonna start getting better at hearing the sound of your guitar. And I've had many students who've bought a guitar and it was really comfortable. They're like, I didn't like the sound of it. I just hated the sound of it. It was too bright, it was too tinny. And you'll have to understand there's different things you can do after you purchase the guitar that will change the sound. And I'll talk about that in a couple minutes. But also, the wood that your guitar is made out of is going to completely change the sound of it. We call those different tone woods. We have mahogany, walnut, ebony, rosewood. There's so many different types of woods that can make up the different parts of a guitar. But the first thing I want to note is because this can sometimes be a simple fix for a lot of students, can also make things easier to play on the guitar too. So a lot of times students that go home, they get a guitar and they're like, this thing is so bright, I don't like it. Is there anything I can do? And there is. So there's different types of strings you can buy on a guitar. And what I tell people, I'm like, your guitar might have what we call 80, 20 bronze. Very common guitar type, 80, 20 bronze that you would use on an acoustic guitar. And. And they have a very bright tone to them. They have. They're kind of like in your face, very bright in your face, punchy. Sound great, if that's what you're going for. But my preference, I go a little bit to the warmer side. I use what's called a phosphor bronze guitar string. It's just a little bit warmer, a little bit more of a balanced sound, and it can take some of the edge off if you're feeling like, oh, the sound of your guitar is just a little bit too harsh. It really can really warm things up. I use that on both my crafter and my tailor as well. Now, when changing strings, keep in mind, again, we're talking about sound. The thinner the string, the easier the guitar is to play. But also, the more metallic, the more tinny the guitar is going to sound. I kind of play right in the middle. I use light or custom light strings. I tend to go a little bit thicker on the tailor, a little bit lighter on my crafter, so I use twelves, so which would be considered light strings on the tailor. And I use 11's custom lights on my crafter. Again, I think it provides a good balance without being too tinny. And I always use the phosphor bronze. Now, let's talk about different wood tones, just so you have some knowledge going into this. So this guitar that I have here, my crafter, is made out of bubinga wood, has a rose wood fretboard, and this is a much warmer sounding guitar. Okay. Because of the wood that it's made out of. My tailor is made out of ash wood, which also has a very, very warm tone to it. And then you have mahogany, which is a very, very common wood. Using guitar, it's pretty expensive. So sometimes what guitar makers will do is they might just make the back in mahogany, or they might just make the sides of mahogany. And then they'll put a spruce top on it. So spruce will have a much brighter sound to it. Okay. Other woods that you know, walnut, maple, also have brighter tones to them. Cedar is another one that has a brighter tone to it. So, you know, can you get guitars that are made completely in mahogany? You can, but obviously it's much more expensive. So sometimes you'll find a guitar that has mahogany on the sides, mahogany on the back, but the top is different. Okay. The top might be spruce, the top might be cedar, it might be koa. It might be something else. And koa is another common wood that you'll find guitars made out of that has A warmer sound. So all of these different things are going to change the sound of your guitar. So if you go into a guitar store, pick up different guitars and different wood tones, I would say, you know, the darker woods here. So this is, like I said, this is the ash wood, a rosewood, a mahogany. The darker woods are going to tend to have slightly warmer tones to them. And I'll turn the side of my guitar so you can see you get the. The brighter top. I don't know if this is a spruce top. I'd have to look.

But you can see the rest of the guitar is pretty dark, so it has those warmer tones coming in. But that's very common that you can see the top of the guit is made with a completely different wood. So play a bunch of, you know, play a bunch of guitars. In the beginning, you're probably not going to hear huge differences. But the most important thing, make sure it's comfortable to hold. Play it a little bit if you can, see if you like the sound of it. But understanding that you can always change the strings out to make it sound a little bit different. But absolutely, if you're buying a new guitar, the most important thing to keep in mind is make sure it is color comfortable to hold. Now, if you enjoyed this video and you want to hear more about my first guitar, the pros and cons of it, and how I adjusted to that, go check out that video right over there.