The Ultimate Electric Guitar Buying Guide

Buying an electric guitar is one of the most exciting purchases you’ll ever make — and one of the easiest to get wrong. There’s a dizzying number of shapes, brands, pickup configurations, and bridge types out there. In this guide, I’m going to walk you through everything I’ve learned about buying electrics over 45+ years of playing, teaching, gigging, and repairing guitars. No sponsorships. No brand loyalty. Just practical, experience-based advice.

The video above goes through all of this in detail, with me demonstrating on five different guitars from my own collection. If you’d rather watch, settle in — there’s a lot to cover.

If you’re just looking for a specific area, here’s a table of contents to help you find that:

Start With a Budget

Before you walk into a music store, have a rough price range in mind. Electric guitars come at every price point, and there are good instruments at most of them.

Under $300 can get you a playable guitar if you know what to look for — especially used. Between $300 and $600, you’ll find solid options with decent pickups and hardware. From $600 to $1,000, you’re into really well-built instruments. Above that, you’re paying for premium materials, name-brand pickups, and American or Japanese craftsmanship.

Factor in the cost of a professional setup ($50 to $150), a case or gig bag ($30 to $80), and an amplifier if you don’t already have one. The amp matters as much as the guitar to your sound, but that’s a whole separate discussion.

Don’t Buy By Color, Brand, or Model

I know the pink Kramer and the black Hagstrom look great. But looks should be the last thing you consider — not the first.

Here’s the order I recommend. First, how does the neck feel? Second, how does the guitar sound? Third, how does the body fit your frame when you sit with it? Fourth and last — how does it look?

I own some guitars that most people would call ugly. One of my favorites is a beat-up Ibanez I got for $45 that looks like a mutated Explorer. It’s ugly as sin and I love it because it plays like a dream. I’ve also walked past gorgeous guitars in stores because the neck felt wrong in my hand. Trust feel and sound over appearance every time.

The Neck Comes First

This is probably the single most important thing when choosing an electric guitar. The shape and feel of the neck will determine whether you want to pick it up every day or leave it in the corner.

Sit down with the guitar. Wrap your hand around the neck. Does it feel comfortable? Can you picture yourself playing this thing for hours? If you have smaller hands, look for a slimmer, flatter neck profile. If you have bigger hands, you might actually prefer something with a little more meat to it.

Some necks have more of a curve to the fretboard (called the radius), and some are flatter. A flatter neck tends to be better for faster playing and techniques like finger tapping. A more curved fretboard can feel more natural for chord playing. Neither is better — it’s personal preference.

While you’re holding the guitar, run your fingers along the edges of the fretboard where the frets meet the wood. If the fret ends feel sharp or rough, that’s something to be aware of. It’s fixable with a setup, but it shouldn’t be severe on a new guitar.

Pickup Types Explained

The pickups are the “microphones” of your electric guitar. They turn string vibration into an electrical signal that goes to your amplifier. Different pickup types produce very different sounds.

Humbuckers

A humbucker is two single-coil pickups paired together. The name comes from the fact that they “buck the hum” — the two coils cancel out the electrical noise that single coils are known for. Humbuckers tend to sound warmer, thicker, and more powerful. They handle distortion and overdrive really well.

My Hagstrom Viking has a pair of covered humbuckers, and they sound fantastic — smooth blues tone from the neck pickup, punchy rock from the bridge. If you’re into blues, rock, metal, or jazz, humbuckers are a strong choice.

Single Coils

Single-coil pickups have a brighter, more chimey sound with more treble and clarity. They’re the classic Stratocaster and Telecaster sound — think Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Mayer. The trade-off is they can hum and buzz more, especially under fluorescent lights or near electronics.

My G&L Strat has a clever take on single coils — they’re stacked (two coils arranged vertically) so you get the single-coil brightness with less noise. That’s a Leo Fender design, and it works really well.

Lipstick Coils

These are a specialty pickup most people don’t know about. The original Danelectro guitars from the 1950s used actual discarded metal lipstick tubes as pickup housings. They have a sweet, chimey, almost bell-like tone that’s different from both humbuckers and standard single coils.

My Danelectro reissue has lipstick pickups and the clean tone is beautiful — it’s become one of my go-to guitars for recording and teaching. Jimmy Page played slide on a Danelectro. Stevie Ray Vaughan used one on his Family Style album. They’re worth trying if you get the chance.

Bridge and Tailpiece Types

The bridge and tailpiece on an electric guitar affect tuning stability, sustain, and what you can do with a tremolo bar (whammy bar). Here’s what you’ll see on most electrics.

Stop Tailpiece and Tune-O-Matic

This is the classic Gibson setup — a fixed bridge with a separate tailpiece that anchors the strings. It’s simple, stays in tune well, and if you break a string, the rest of the guitar barely goes out of tune. Great for beginners and gigging players alike.

Trapezoid Tailpiece

Common on hollow and semi-hollow body guitars like my Hagstrom Viking. The strings are suspended from a hinged tailpiece at the bottom of the body. It contributes to the warm, jazzy tone these guitars are known for. Easy to restring and reliable.

Floyd Rose (Locking Tremolo)

This is the system Eddie Van Halen helped develop. It’s a floating bridge with a locking nut that lets you do huge pitch dives and come back perfectly in tune. My pink Kramer has an original Floyd Rose, and I can drop the bar all the way to nothing and it comes right back to pitch.

Here’s my honest advice: don’t buy a Floyd Rose as your first guitar. They’re fantastic for what they do, but they’re temperamental. You have to use the exact same gauge and brand of strings every time. Changing tunings is a pain. If you break a string, the whole guitar goes wildly out of tune and you can’t finish the song. They require mechanical know-how to maintain. If you already own one, learn the mechanics. But for a first electric, stick with something simpler.

Fulcrum Tremolo

A modern Strat-style tremolo with two pivot points instead of six screws. My G&L has this design with locking machine heads instead of a locking nut. It’s a good middle ground — you can use the bar for vibrato and subtle pitch bends without the complexity of a Floyd Rose. It won’t do the extreme dive bombs, but it handles normal tremolo use well and stays in tune better than the old six-screw systems.

Solid Body, Semi-Hollow, and Hollow Body

Electric guitars come in three basic body constructions, and each one sounds and feels different.

A solid body guitar (like a Stratocaster, Les Paul, or SG) is exactly what it sounds like — a solid piece of wood. These are the most versatile and the most common. They handle high gain and loud volumes without feeding back, and they come in every shape and style imaginable.

A semi-hollow body (like my Hagstrom Viking) has tone chambers carved out of the body but keeps a solid center block where the pickups and bridge are mounted. This gives you a warmer, more resonant tone than a solid body while still handling moderate gain pretty well. That center block acts as a feedback block — it keeps the guitar manageable at higher volumes. Chuck Berry, BB King, Alvin Lee, Larry Carlton — a lot of great players built their careers on semi-hollow guitars.

A full hollow body is built more like a violin — a frame with a top and back glued on. These sound beautiful for jazz and clean playing but will feed back aggressively at higher volumes with distortion. I’ve got an old Japanese hollow body that sounds gorgeous clean but you can’t crank the gain on it. If you’re mostly playing clean styles or low-gain blues, a hollow body is worth considering. For rock and anything with distortion, stick with solid or semi-hollow.

Bolt-On vs Set Neck

You’ll see two main ways the neck attaches to the body. A bolt-on neck is held in place by screws (usually four or five) in the back of the guitar. A set neck (also called a glued or pinned neck) is permanently glued into the body.

Some people will tell you a set neck is “better.” I disagree. A bolt-on neck can be just as good — it depends on the manufacturer and the quality of the build. My Kramer has a bolt-on neck and it’s one of my best playing guitars. The advantage of a bolt-on is that it’s easier to adjust and replace if something goes wrong. Set necks tend to have a little more sustain, but the difference isn’t dramatic enough to make your buying decision over.

Understanding Action and Intonation

Action is the height of the strings above the fretboard — how far the string has to travel before it touches the fret when you press down. Lower action makes the guitar easier to play. Higher action requires more finger pressure and can be frustrating, especially for beginners.

On all my guitars, the action is set low. Some are a little lower than others depending on what I’m using them for — my tapping guitars (the Kramer, the Ibanez Jem, the SG) have extremely low action because that technique needs it. My slide guitars have higher action and heavier strings.

A guitar with bad action can make you think you’re not strong enough to play bar chords or that you’ll never get certain chords to ring clean. The problem isn’t you — it’s the setup.

Intonation is about string length. When your guitar is properly intonated, it stays in tune all the way up the neck. Without proper intonation, you might tune your open strings perfectly but find that chords at the 10th fret sound terrible. A good technician will set your intonation as part of a standard setup.

Every Electric Guitar Needs a Setup

I don’t care if you paid $300 or $3,000 — every guitar needs a professional setup. This isn’t optional. It’s part of the purchase.

Guitars are made of wood and metal. They travel from factories in China, Korea, Indonesia, or Mexico, sitting on boats for a month, on docks, in warehouses, and in music stores. The wood shifts. Hardware loosens. What played fine at the factory might need attention by the time it reaches your hands.

A setup covers action adjustment, truss rod adjustment, intonation, pickup height, fret leveling if needed, and making sure the nut slots are at the right height. Budget $50 to $150 depending on what the guitar needs. Even my $850 Hagstrom — a well-built guitar — needed a setup before it played the way I wanted.

If your guitar doesn’t stay in tune, if bar chords feel impossible, if certain chords sound out of tune even when you’ve tuned the open strings — these are setup issues, not player issues. I cover everything that goes into a proper setup in my guitar setup and maintenance guide.

Finding a Good Technician

Find somebody who really knows what they’re doing. Ask guitar-playing friends who they use. Go to a reputable music store and ask who does their repair work. If you know any gigging musicians, ask who they trust with their instruments.

A good guitar tech usually has a one to two week wait. If they can take your guitar immediately, that might not be the best sign. Every good technician I know has a backlog because they do quality work.

Don’t let your neighbor who “tinkers with guitars” do the job. Don’t do it yourself unless you’ve put in the time to learn properly. I do my own repair work, but it took years of experimentation and learning — and I started by practicing on cheap guitars, not my good ones.

If you find a tech who’s also a luthier (someone who builds guitars), even better. They understand instruments at a deeper level because they’ve built them from scratch.

Buying Used: Where the Real Deals Are

Some of my best guitars were bought used for a fraction of their original price.

My pink Kramer came from a pawn shop window for $200. It was beat up and missing its tremolo bar. I put about $300 of parts and labor into it. For $500 total, I’ve got a guitar that was nearly $2,000 new and would cost over $1,500 to buy today — if you could even find an American-made one.

My G&L Strat fell out of the back of somebody’s truck at 40 miles an hour. I got it for $800 with a hard shell case. Put about $300 of work into it. For $1,100, I own a $2,500 guitar that plays perfectly and you’d never know it was damaged.

When buying used, check the frets — pull the strings back and look for wear grooves. Deep grooves mean heavy use and might eventually need a refret ($150 to $200). Sight down the neck to check for straightness. Feel the fret edges for sharpness. And if the guitar sounds good and feels right in your hands, most other issues are fixable with a setup.

Don’t be afraid of a beat-up guitar with a great neck. The cosmetics don’t affect how it plays.

Get a Case. Seriously.

Every guitar needs a case. If you walk out of a music store with a bare guitar — exposed to cold, heat, rain, whatever — you’re asking for trouble. A gig bag costs $30. A hard shell case runs $50 to $80. If you’re going to move the guitar around regularly, get the hard shell.

I’ve had students bring guitars in for a setup, and when they come to pick them up I ask where their case is. “I don’t have one.” I tell them straight — I’m not giving you this guitar until you get a case. I didn’t put all that work into it just to have it exposed to the elements on the way home.

Protect your investment. It doesn’t matter if the guitar cost $200 or $2,000.

Shopping at the Music Store

If you don’t play yet, bring a friend who does. Even a friend who plays a little can help by strumming some chords so you can hear the differences between guitars.

If you don’t have someone to bring, go to a reputable music store and be honest. Tell whoever’s helping you: “I’m just starting out, I don’t play yet, but I’ve done some research and I’ve got a budget of [whatever it is]. Can you help me find something that feels good and sounds good?” Any decent music store will respect that.

The worst thing you can do is pretend you know more than you do. Be upfront about your level and your budget. Ask them to play some guitars for you. Listen to how they sound. Then sit down with the ones you like and see how they feel. Ask yourself: does this feel comfortable? Could I sit with this for hours?

Don’t buy right away. Go home and think about it. Visit another store. Come back. If you find a better price somewhere, mention it politely — most stores will work with you.

What About Amplifiers?

I wish I had time to cover amplifiers in this guide, but it’s really a separate topic. What I’ll say is this: the amp is just as important to your sound as the guitar. Once your guitar is set up and playing well, you need a decent amp to hear what it can really do. It doesn’t have to be big or expensive, but it should be decent quality. I’m a tube amp guy personally, but that’s a discussion for another day.

Find the Guitar That Connects With You

At the end of the day, the right electric guitar is the one that makes you want to pick it up and play. Not the one with the most features, the biggest brand name, or the coolest color. The one that feels right in your hands and sounds good to your ears.

If you’re also looking at acoustic guitars, I’ve got a companion acoustic guitar buying guide that covers the same ground for acoustics — body types, wood, action, setup, and everything else you need to know.

And if you’re ready to start learning, come check out the Riff Ninja Academy. You can try it free for three days and see if my teaching style works for you. I’d love to help you get started.