How to buy your first guitar

A first guitar goes wrong in a predictable way. The buyer picks a look, pays a price that feels safe, and ends up with an instrument that is physically harder to play than a good one — which the beginner experiences as a lack of talent rather than as a lack of setup.

Here are the six decisions in the order that avoids that. Each pick states its Starter Path band, and we have not physically tested any of them.

One: who is actually going to play it

Everything downstream follows from this and it is worth being blunt about. A guitar bought for a household is a guitar sized for nobody.

An adult or a teenager of roughly adult height wants a full-scale instrument. A child needs a fraction size, and the sizing is by the player’s reach rather than their age — the chart is in guitar sizes for kids. A player with small hands, at any age, should read guitars for small hands before anything else.

Two: acoustic or electric

This is the decision most people make first, and it is less consequential than they think.

Electric guitars are physically easier. The strings are lighter, the action is usually lower, the neck is often narrower and the body is thinner. The catch is that an electric is not a complete instrument — it needs an amplifier and a cable before it makes a usable sound.

Acoustics are simpler to own and harder to fret. Nothing to plug in, nothing to forget, and heavier strings under more tension. The Yamaha FG800#ad is the default acoustic recommendation: a solid Sitka spruce top with scalloped bracing, which is the one acoustic specification that changes what the instrument does over years.

The honest tiebreaker is not physics. It is which one the player wants to hear themselves play, because that decides whether they pick it up on a Tuesday. We argue both sides properly in acoustic versus electric for beginners.

Three: size

Two measurements, and they are independent of each other.

Scale length is nut to saddle, and it sets fret spacing and string tension. The Squier Sonic Stratocaster#ad is a full 25.5 inches; the FG800 is 650 mm. A three-quarter instrument is around 22.75 inches.

Body size is separate and often forgotten. A full dreadnought like the FG800 is 412 mm across and up to 118 mm deep, and a small teenager can struggle to get their strumming arm over it comfortably even though the scale length suits them fine. Scale length and body size are two different objections and a listing rarely addresses the second.

Why scale length matters mechanically is in guitar scale length explained, and the body question in guitar body shapes explained.

Four: the four specifications that decide playability

This is the step first-time buyers skip entirely, and it is the one that matters.

Nut material. The slotted piece at the top of the fingerboard. Soft molded plastic slots bind the strings so they do not return to pitch, which is why a cheap guitar can feel permanently out of tune. Synthetic bone, as on the Squier Sonic, does not.

Tuner type. Sealed-gear tuners hold pitch; open unsealed ones slip and collect dust. This is the single most important specification on a first electric.

Action. How high the strings sit above the frets. High action at the first three frets is where a beginner spends their first six months, and it is what makes their fingertips hurt enough to stop. It is also adjustable, which is why step six exists.

Scale length, published. Not because the number itself is hard to guess, but because a seller who publishes it is a seller confident in it.

If a listing gives you none of these and instead gives you a color name and a photograph, that omission is the answer. The full version of this argument is in are cheap guitars worth it.

Five: where to buy it

A shop lets you hold the instrument, which resolves the size question in under a minute and is worth a trip for a child in particular. It also means a human has taken the guitar out of the box, which is not nothing.

Buying online is fine for a model whose specifications are published, because the risk you are avoiding in a shop is mostly variance between unbranded instruments. Buying a well-documented guitar sight unseen is low risk; buying an unbranded one is a lottery either way.

Used is the genuinely underrated option for an adult, and the reasoning is in used versus new first instrument.

Six: budget for a setup

On any guitar under a few hundred dollars, a proper setup changes the instrument more than moving up a brand tier does.

Factory setups are cut to a production tolerance, not to a player. Nut slots left high make the first three frets much harder to press, and that is exactly where a beginner lives. A well set-up inexpensive guitar beats a badly set-up expensive one, reliably.

What is actually involved is in what a guitar setup actually is.

What you still need on day one

A tuner. A Snark clip-on chromatic tuner#ad reads pitch through the headstock rather than a microphone, so it works in a room with a television on. This is not optional: an out-of-tune guitar sounds wrong no matter how correctly it is being played, and a beginner cannot tell which problem they have.

An amp, if the guitar is electric. The Fender Frontman 10G#ad is the default: ten watts, a six inch speaker, and a headphone socket that is worth more than the wattage in a shared house. Alternatives are in best beginner guitar amps.

A strap, spare strings and picks. Cheap and genuinely used. The full list in priority order is in guitar accessories you actually need.

What all of this should add up to is in how much a beginner guitar should cost, and the models themselves are in best beginner guitars.