Best beginner acoustic guitars: solid tops from $200 to $350

An acoustic guitar is harder to play than an electric and simpler to buy. Harder because the strings are thicker and sit further from the fingerboard, so fretting a clean chord takes more hand strength in the first month. Simpler because there is nothing to plug it into — the guitar, a tuner and a set of spare strings is the complete purchase.

Which means the shopping question narrows to one thing quite quickly. Every pick below states its Starter Path band and what it is not good at, and we have not played any of them — the method is on how we pick.

Solid top versus laminate: the one spec worth paying for

A guitar top is the large flat face with the sound hole in it, and it does most of the work of turning string vibration into sound. It is built one of two ways. A solid top is a single piece of wood, usually spruce, sawn thin. A laminate top is several thin layers glued together, like plywood.

A solid top flexes as one piece and keeps changing. The wood fibers loosen with vibration over years of playing and the instrument gets louder and more responsive — slowly, but genuinely. A laminate top is stiffened by its glue lines and sounds the same in year ten as on day one. Neither is a defect. But if a beginner is going to own one guitar for a decade, a solid top is the version of that guitar that rewards the decade.

The reason to care right now is that the price of entry for a solid top has collapsed. The Yamaha FG800 specifies a solid Sitka spruce top with scalloped bracing in the same price bracket where laminate-top guitars still sell. There is no longer a good reason for an adult beginner to buy a laminate-top full-size acoustic.

The body-size problem nobody mentions

Most beginner acoustics are dreadnoughts, which is the big square-shouldered shape everyone pictures. Dreadnoughts are loud and full and they are also large: the FG800 body is 412 mm across and between 100 and 118 mm deep.

For an adult of average build that is fine. For a twelve-year-old, or a smaller adult, it is a real obstacle — the strumming arm has to reach over the top edge and the fretting arm has to come around the side, and if the box is too deep for the player’s torso both of those go wrong at once. The player compensates by hunching, the wrist angle gets worse, and everything becomes harder than it needed to be.

The fixes are a concert-size body, which is the same scale length in a smaller box, or a genuine 3/4 instrument like the JR1 for a child. The JR1 body is 317 mm across against the FG800’s 412 mm, and that 95 mm is the entire difference between a child being able to hold it and not.

What to skip

The full-size acoustic with a laminate top sold at the same price as a solid-top FG800 or CD-60S. These still exist in quantity, usually from brands whose listings talk about the color and the included accessories rather than the top. If two guitars cost the same and one has a solid top, the choice has been made for you.

And skip the very cheap full-size acoustic for a child. Acoustics are the worst instrument to buy too big, because unlike an electric there is no low-action escape hatch. A child on an oversized acoustic with high action is fighting the instrument with every chord. If the budget is tight, a ukulele is a far better use of the same money than a bad full-size acoustic — nylon strings, a small body, and chords that a small hand can actually form.

FG800 or CD-60S: how to choose between them

These two are close enough that anyone declaring a clear winner has not read both spec sheets. They trade blows.

The Fender uses mahogany back and sides against the Yamaha’s nato and okume, and it has rolled fingerboard edges — the corners of the fingerboard are softened rather than left square. That is a small thing that matters a lot in month one, when a new player’s hand is sliding up and down an unfamiliar neck and a sharp edge is the difference between practicing for forty minutes and stopping at fifteen. The Fender is also slightly shorter in scale at 25.3 inches against Yamaha’s 650 mm, which very marginally lowers string tension.

The Yamaha answers with scalloped bracing — the internal struts under the top are carved away where they can be, which lets the top move more freely — and with the flatter 400 mm fingerboard radius that suits chord playing slightly better than the Fender’s rounder 12 inch. Both have die-cast tuners and a solid spruce top.

If the player has small or sensitive hands, take the Fender for the rolled edges. Otherwise take whichever is cheaper on the day, and you will not have made a mistake either way.