Before You Go Looking

Cost

I've heard people say that any instrument under $500 is strictly an entry-level guitar. They go on to say that the real jewels of the guitar community start at about the $1500 range. For those of you used to seeing the pawn shop walls covered with $99 - $150 guitars, this may be something of a shock. It was for me.

But this should not discourage someone with a $300 budget. Sure, if you compare the sound and construction of cheap instruments to expensive ones, the differences DO begin to jump out at you. But there are still very good buys out there in the "below $400" range, and knowing what to look for in an instrument can help.

The point here is that you can spend just about as much as you want on an acoustic guitar. The challenge is to get a good value in your instrument, balancing cost with your needs. Since most of us are dealing with finite means, deciding on your price range should probably be one of your first steps in a guitar purchase.

Use Part 1: Where you take it.

Should "how you want to use it" matter when you're deciding what kind of guitar you need? The answer, of course, is yes. Inasmuch as you probably wouldn't buy Waterford Crystal to take with you on a backpacking trip, you might think twice about where this instrument will go, and how much money you want to risk by taking it there. Only those of opulent means would intentionally buy an expensive Martin D-28 for beach trips, exposing it to sand, sun, and surf.

If you plan to get a guitar you can take to the beach or go out camping with, then you probably ought to find an inexpensive instrument that meets all your minimum requirements in playability. A hard-shell case can help protect your guitar, but what it's exposed to when you take it out of the case might be more damaging than what it sustains on the way there. Any travel guitar will be exposed to all kinds of stress: not just the everyday bumps and nicks that you get dragging it around with you, but even the potentially great variations in humidity and temperature that your playing locations may impose. All these things can wear on an instrument. Extremes in temperature can weaken the glue used to put a guitar together, and wide variations in humidity can warp and crack a guitar's top and neck. And while superior craftsmanship can serve as insulation against some of these perils, almost no guitar will benefit from laying in the sand or dirt; fewer still will profit from having a beer poured in the soundhole.

The beach example used earlier was partly in fun, but partly serious. Sea air does terrible things to your car, boat, and any metal fixtures on the coastlines. So does rain or other types of moisture; so can the sun. Over time, these elements will be every bit as damaging to your guitar as they are to other pieces of equipment. I think few of us players can look at an instrument with cruddy, corroded, barely functional machine heads without cringing. Don't laugh - unless you take care, that COULD be you.

Those of you who are looking for a guitar to take "on the road" with a musical ensemble will probably want to look for something a little better than the "bare-bones minimum." But the caveats of the beach guitar still apply to a touring instrument.

If you DO want to travel with a good instrument, you'll need to protect it. A good gig bag is the minimum protection you should allow your instrument; many electric guitar players seem to find them adequate for their gigging needs. But unlike an electric guitar, which can probably sustain a stout blow with a pointed object and remain playable (if blemished), an acoustic guitar is much more fragile. Consequently, a hard case provides much better protection, and is probably a good investment. Those fiberboard cases offer nominal protection; heavier-duty hardshell cases give you more security.

If you think you can keep the instrument relatively well-protected (not just during travel, but during use), then you can feel better about shopping for a mid-range instrument. If you're doing a solo act (where the guitar will be your primary accompaniment), then you'll probably want a better (sounding) guitar than if your will if you are strumming through a weak PA to be heard over a full rock or country band. Common sense is still the rule here: if you are more likely to find yourself in a mosh pit than an orchestra pit, then getting an instrument that is only a couple of notches above "disposable" makes sense. 

If you're intending to use this instrument for recording, however, pull out all the stops. Get the best instrument you can afford. Seriously. Not only is it easier to be careful and gentle with an instrument in the controlled environment of a recording studio, but the pricier guitars will sound better, and in the studio, sound is the most important thing. No amount of compression or EQ can make a cheap guitar sing like a vintage studio acoustic. While this can be said of almost any guitar, I think it is particularly true of an acoustic.

Style: So you wanna be a Rock N' Roll star?

I'd like to address a couple of general instrument style options here; I plan to touch on instrument construction and varieties a little later. What kind of acoustic will best fit the style of music you want to play? And where do you plan to play it?

These questions suggest two different angles: strings (nylon vs steel), and construction/appearance. For the time being, I'll cover the construction/appearance angle here. Strings will be covered under the Acoustic Basics page.

The way I see it, there are three guitar "builds" that are worth mention here. The Ovation-type, synthetic materials guitar, the "Traditional" guitar (including types with a built-in pickup), and electric-acoustic hybrids, which strive to incorporate aspects of both electric and acoustic guitars.

Ovation Roundbacks

For those of you who watch a lot of MTV, this is what you're used to seeing. Ovations (and the less expensive Celebrity and Applause guitars) are made from non-traditional materials, with unusual, non-traditional designs. From what I've read, most of the roundback designs are shaped so as to focus the sound out of the sound hole, theoretically making the instruments sound louder.

These types of guitars leave something to be desired in terms of pure acoustic sound quality. As a partial consequence of the construction materials (I think), they also tend to sound very mid-rangey (unplugged). They simply won't resonate the way that a high-quality, all-wood instrument will.

But plugged in, the Ovations are hard to beat. Many of the upper-end instruments include some sort of preamp and active EQ; their signal-to-noise ratios are great, and the outputs are generally pretty "hot" (i.e., loud). Further, the sound quality tends to be pretty darn good; you don't need a whole bunch of stuff in-between the instrument and the PA to make the sound usable. And the fact that you can plug them straight into a direct box can really simplify your life on the road.

Another benefit of the Ovations is that many of them seem to be designed with the soloist in mind; in my experience, the necks seem narrower and thinner than most acoustic guitar necks - almost like an electric's neck. The action on most of them seems similarly low, making them pretty easy to play. Combine this with the cutaway that most models seem to have, and you have a guitar with some REAL lead possibilities. If you're going to spend a lot of your time shredding on the acoustic, then this might be something to take into account.

As a last item of note, I've found the backs of most of these types of guitar to be pretty good in the scratch-resistance category. If you're a country music player and tend to wear one of those shield-sized, ornate belt buckles, this could be a REAL plus (unless you like to wear your axe up under your chin....). The sturdiness of the Ovation roundback is something I can speak to from experience: I've been less than kind to mine, and the back seems none the worse for the wear.

Traditional guitar

However, whereas Ovation guitars are pretty much DESIGNED to be run through the P.A. system or an amplifier, many traditional guitars are not. This means that (like an Ovation), they'll have to be fitted with a pickup of some sort, or that you'll have to amplify it with a microphone through the P.A. Some instruments (archtops, for instance) may prove difficult to fit with an inconspicuous pickup, and may REQUIRE a microphone. Though a good microphone will have its sonic rewards (in terms of accurate reproduction of your sound), those of you who have had the experience of micing an acoustic for a moderately loud live performance can speak to the challenges that this brings. Though they may seem pretty loud at times, when you get right down to it, acoustics are really pretty quiet instruments. To make them audible through a PA system (especially if you're playing in an ensemble), you're going to have to crank that microphone up pretty loud. A high-gain microphone onstage is a feedback problem waiting to happen.

I'm not going to get into pickup systems here just yet, but I DID want to point out one of the challenges inherent in using some traditional instruments on a modern stage.

Electric/acoustic hybrid

I almost see Gibson's Chet Atkins solidbody acoustic falling into this range. It's a VERY nice guitar, and produces a wonderful classical guitar tone when plugged in; but since it's really a pretty solid block of wood, is it really an acoustic, per se? Your call. Me, I can't tell. 

For the first-time buyer: Calluses

This may seem a strange angle to take at this point, but I think the discussion of needs should turn to the type of physical demands that each type of instrument will make on your body. Dedicated players will be ready to make the "sacrifices" in question, but the casual or experimental player may be a little more hesitant to invest in an instrument that will "challenge" them physically. I intend to address this issue here.

I'm sure we've all read articles from famous players talking about playing their instruments until their fingers bled. Well, face it: learning to play guitar will require some physiological changes in your fingers. You're gonna need calluses, no matter WHAT kind of guitar you play. And unless you're going out of your way to cultivate them, you only get that kind of fingertip calluses by playing.

Having said this, however, there are some ways you can minimize the damage caused by strings cutting into fingers. If your goal in purchasing a guitar is simply to learn to play simple chords for sing-alongs, then a couple of other factors come to mind.

In my opinion, Nylon-strung guitars are probably the easiest on your fingers. Only an electric guitar strung with super-light strings will be so forgiving to the novice digits. I learned to play campfire songs on a nylon-strung guitar, and found that the skills I learned on that instrument translated fairly easily to the steel-string. But the instrument itself carries some limitations: nothing you do to a nylon-string guitar will give it the volume and "cut" of a steel-string. If you want to play rock and roll (or country, for that matter) and think that buying a nylon-string guitar is a good idea for learning to play, be prepared to purchase a second guitar - a steel string - when you've "learned." 

Next in line, oddly enough, are the 12-strings. Damage to the fingers caused by 12-strings works on what I like to call the "bed of nails" principle. Essentially, the stress of the strings pressing against your fingertips is spread across 2 strings rather than one, resulting in less painful fretting. 12-strings also tend to be about 1 1/2 times louder than their 6-string counterparts (subjectively). Remember, you're strumming twice as many strings to get the sound. The only reason that the sound isn't twice as loud is that the "extra" strings are only half the size of the "main" ones. This affects their output volume; plus, the close spacing means that there is less room in-between strings for the pick to accelerate before impact.

12-strings, however, have the disadvantage of being primarily rhythm instruments. They're designed for strumming. Most folks seem to find it tougher to play leads on a 12-string. So if you aspire to lead breaks, a 12-string may not offer you the best platform from which to soar.

Last, of course, are the 6-string steel strings. These are probably the hardest on your fingers, but also probably the most versatile of the acoustic guitars. In my opinion, unless you already know you won't be needing a steel string (if, for instance, you are a student of classical guitar, and want to focus exclusively on this genre), or unless money is no object (and picking up a second instrument is no big deal to you), then starting with a steel-string is probably the way to go for a first acoustic guitar purchase. You can really play anything designed for nylon strings on steel ones, and they are more versatile than the 12-strings. And in the long run, you will probably find that the calluses will serve you well in your playing.