Online Guitar Lessons

As a beginning guitarist, have you ever thought of quitting your guitar? Why your guitar sounds bad no matter how good you squeeze the fretboard? Why your fretting fingers can’t stay longer on the fretboard without having pain?

If you think that you can use any cheap guitars for practicing you could be wrong. Some parents bought cheap guitars because they thought the children would abandon their guitars once they experienced the difficulties, however giving them cheap guitars might also discourage them to continue practicing.

Cheap guitars are OK as long as they meet the condition below:

The first thing to check is the guitar neck. Don’t buy a guitar with bowed neck. To check this you can press the sixth string at both first and 12th frets. It should leave a tiny gap only between the string and the frets.

Other important factor to check is the guitar playability. You should feel comfortable playing any chords at any places on the fretboard without difficulties or suffering muscle tension and fingers pain.

You should pick a guitar with low action. Action is the clearance between the thickest string’s bottom to the top of 12th fret. A measurement of 3mm to 4 mm is desirable. With low action you need less pressure to form chords and this means you will have less pain in your fingers. This increase the guitar playability.

The other important thing to check is intonation. Good intonation means you will get any note at any place on the fretboard tuned right. Have you experienced out of tuned notes when you press your fretboard but when played open chords the pitch is perfectly fine? This is a good example of bad intonation. If you can’t tell the difference between good and bad tuning you can always use a guitar tuner.

It is quite difficult to find cheap guitars that can meet those criteria, especially for beginners. Get an experienced friend to guide you in the guitar store and let him/her recommend some guitars for you to try. Choose one that feels right in your hand and don’t pay attention too much on the guitar appearance. You don’t need a fancy good looking guitar. It may fool you easily.

A budget guitar that meets the basic criteria above is worth buying. With very limited budget you can’t expect much but you won’t get a crap guitar either if you follow this guideline correctly.