Beginner Buying Guide (Acoustic Guitar)

Body:
The body of an acoustic guitar consist of a top, back and sides. It comes in many shapes and sizes. Such differences give an impact on the guitar’s sound and excitement in playing. For instance, some acoustic guitar bodies include a cutaway which ease the access to the higher frets.

Bridge:
The bridge of the acoustic guitar serves as an anchor to transfers the vibration from the string to the guitar’s top. Most people believe that the material of the bridge would not particularly influence the sound quality of the guitar.

Neck:
The thickness and width of the neck is usually dependent on the size of the body of the guitar and the number of frets the neck has. Generally, the size of your hand is the main key when it comes to choosing a suitable guitar neck as you would not one something that is difficult to play with.

Action:
The space between the fretboard and the strings is commonly known as action. When choosing an acoustic guitar, it is important to ensure that the action is neither too high nor too low. Action that is too high would be difficult for beginners to press while action that is too low would usually create an unpleasant buzzing sound.

Electronics:
Many acoustic guitars come along with a built in pick up and equaliser. An advantage you get from it would be that it could be useful in minimising the “surrounding noises” that you get when doing a recording.

Wood:
According to guitar makers, or luthiers, the sound quality of the acoustic guitar is highly influenced by the type of wood being used. There are a number of woods which are commonly used, each delivering a vast difference in the tone quality of the acoustic guitar. For instances, Spruce is a standard choice for making the guitar’s top as it is able to create a powerful direct tone while retaining the clarity of the sound when played forcefully. On the other hand, the mahogany top acoustic guitars usually have a strong “punchy” tone to it. Another common wood used nowadays is laminated plywood. Honest speaking, if you are looking for a good sounding acoustic guitar, AVOID this. For more information on wood and how it affects the sound quality of the acoustic guitar, do visit Musician's Friend

Dos and Don’ts in Choosing an Acoustic Guitar

Dos
Listen!
This is the most important point! Decide on the type of sound you are looking for or prefer.

Ask!
Ask the sales person to what is the best acoustic guitar for a beginner. And if you do not know how to play, ask for a demo so that you could listen to the differences between the guitars.

Try!
Play with it a little (even if you are a complete noob!) This is so that you know what you are buying is somewhat close if not exactly what you want.

Recommendations!
If you have a friend who have been playing acoustic guitar for some time, ask him or her for their advice. They might know what sort of guitar to go for and what to avoid. If they don’t know, ask around or maybe even your music teacher. Besides that, you could try looking for online reviews.

Brands!
Yes! Brands are important! Choose a notable or famous brand, as they would usually have higher quality and reliability products. Not only that, you can be assure that they have good services if anything goes wrong with your newly bought acoustic guitar. Check out some of the foreign and local brands that we recommend for newbie.

Negotiate!
No matter what, negotiate the price! Who knows? The sales person might like you and give you a special discount when his boss is not around. Shh.. It’s our little secret..

Don’ts
Kiamsiap! (Overly price sensitive)!
Avoid going for a guitar simply because of its low price tag. As we all know, good things in life are rarely free. Even if you are looking for something within your budget, make sure to always rate it from 3 different aspects, and that is quality, service and value. Worse come to worse, buy it after you have the right amount of budget to get the acoustic guitar of your choice.

Design
Yes, that pink acoustic guitar is beautiful but what good is it if the sound quality is terrible? It will still make you stand out as a musician, but you wouldn’t want to be remembered as a “Guitarist with the worse Guitar” right? Hence, remind yourself the saying about do not judge a book by its cover!

Made in Myths!
RM 200 for an acoustic guitar that is made in Australia?!?! Not very likely. It might be designed in Australia but made in the land of the Chinese. The point here is that if you plan to get a foreign made guitar, do not expect it to fall under such a low price. Be wise. Here’s a general rule that would be helpful:
RM 300 – RM 1800 = China / Indonesia Made
RM 1800 – RM 4000 = Korea / Mexican Made
RM 4000 & above = Japan / USA / Europe Made

Have fun!
Written by William Chew for Music Bliss




This post has been edited by MusicBliss PJ: Sep 27 2012, 02:52 PM

Nice post. Useful for beginners ... maybe the mod will sticky this ?

not claiming to be an expert. but as i understands it, neck width for acoustic are pretty much standards to 43mm. some exception applies, but 43mm is the most common. only the neck thickness/profile changes. fret numbers for acoustics are pretty much 21-22 depending on models.

also, you might want to address body style.

you left out godins...and their off-springs.
canadian made, US assembled.
below rm3k also got.

Wow... Such a expensive hobby. I can play guitar coz i owned a cheap kapok gitar. It very hard to play with that big neck. But it okey. Still get it sound nice. But surely, i maybe looking for quality made guitar soon. Thank for the tips

Can you enlighten more about the quality of each tier? and which one is better such as rm1800 china/indonesia made and rm1800 korea/mexican made?

I own three guitars, two of them are for beginners, bought them 7 years ago, and both are 800 ringgit

For this price (800) you can't get a solid back and side (but only three layers wood) or a excellent quality top wood , which means the tonal quality sucks. You might not realize the differences unless you've played them for a long time and started to get to know how a high end quality guitar sounds like,

which leads me to buy my latest guitar, a 11500 ringgit lakewood (m32 custom, made in germany). I would say at this price you can clearly listen to every characteristics each individual wood species would show, like woody warm for mahagony or crispy clear and bassy for rosewood. Also, with a solid wood back and sides and excellent top you can expect the woods to open up eventually as time passes, which means they would eventually be more responsive and unique sounding.

I played guitar for over 25 years. I cannot find any sound superiority from a special edition Martin rm18k to a Seagull rm2k.

The first guitar I had, over 25 years old. Was a cheap laminate guitar. After 25 years, it sounds more fantastic than my full solid wood guitar.

Once a guitar is over rm800 or rm1k, there is hardly any difference to me. Of course many people claim their ears are more sensitive.

In youtube, there are many guitarists with over 1mil views playing cheap guitars

Skill triumph over equipment most of the time.

Yea i agree with you
Last year i tried a seagull , then a 8k martin, sounds quite the same to me, in fact i prefered the seagull. After i told the shopkeeper about that he got triggered and told me it's my ear being not sensitive enough
LOL