Top 6 Acoustic and Electric Guitars for Beginners

For beginners, buying your very first acoustic or electric guitar can be a hard task, to put it mildly. A daunting process, to say the least. The plethora of options available at one’s disposal can be overwhelming. There’s brands to choose from, and then there’s, quite literally, hundreds of thousands of different models to choose from.

Apart from the many different brands and models available, there are other factors which also need to be considered.

Luckily, help is available. Read on to see my pick of 6 of the best guitars – 3 acoustic and 3 electric guitars – available out there for beginners.

Acoustic or Electric

If you’re reading this, it’s safe to assume that you’ve made up your mind if you’ll be taking the acoustic or the electric route, because that is the first and foremost step when it comes to choosing a guitar for yourself, and especially if it’s your first axe.

However if you haven’t chosen between the two, I suggest you either read up elsewhere, or stick around, as I’ll be doing an article on it. In simple terms, if you’re a complete novice, go with an acoustic guitar as your first axe of choice. Why you should do that is a debate for another day.

Also, as a rule of thumb, avoid super-cheap guitars, regardless of whether you go for an acoustic or an electric guitar. Because personally, I’m a big believer in the fact that you get what you pay for.


You can walk into your local store to pick any one of these up, or you could go to any online guitar store such as Guitar Center (who have a HUGE inventory of guitars) and have it delivered to your doorstep. 

Choose a good online guitar-learning course along with your new guitar. Here is an excellent, balanced review of two of the best online guitar-learning courses - Jamplay and GuitarTricks.

3 Best Acoustic Guitars

Let’s cut straight to the chase here. Here are my personal picks for the best acoustic guitars:

1.  The Seagull S6 – Its light, sturdy, has a solid top, boasts a double-action truss rod and a tapered headstock for easy, precise and stable tuning. What that all really means in English is that it’s a great guitar for starting out and learning your trade because of its strings being easy on the fingers, its great tone and above all, its cheap retail of $400 bucks. In short, it’s a great guitar for beginners and excellent value for money.
2. Yamaha F310 – Yamaha produce some of the best acoustic guitars in my opinion, and their F310 is certainly no exception. It’s cheap, looks great, is durable, has a great finish and can produce an absolutely great sound. It also has a narrow fingerboard, so it is extremely easy on fingers and hence very user-friendly. All-in-all another great guitar for beginners (and seasoned acoustic guitar players as well!).
3. Yamaha FG730S – Another absolute gem by Yamaha, and my personal pick of the 3 acoustic guitars. Ask any guitarist who knows his guitars and he’ll recommend a FG730S to a beginner, hands down. The FG series is quite popular among the acoustic community, and it’s easy to see why. It’s cheap (well, relative cheap) which means it’s suitable for all wallets. It has a great design, a wonderful finish, but most of all, it’s the sound and ease of play that really sets it apart. The FG series, and in particular the 730S produces a very high-quality tone and sound, especially at the entry-level guitars. The frets are comfortable to use and very easy to play. Moreover, Yamaha uses quality parts on this, and the FG730S is a well-assembled, high-quality acoustic guitar.

3 Best Electric Guitars

So that was my pick of the 3 best acoustic guitars for beginners. Now let’s have a look at 3 top electric guitars for, yes you guessed it, beginners!

1. Epiphone G-310 SG – The Epiphone 310 is modeled after the highly-priced Gibson SG series of guitars, sounds just about the same, and looks like one as well. So what, you might think, will make you buy this over a Gibson SG? Well, the answer is that price! The G-310s are made and manufactured using cheaper hardware and cheaper pickups. It is one of the best value-for-money electric guitars out there, and like I said, looks and sounds almost the same as its much-more-expensive Gibson counterpart. The G-310  features an alder body, a mahogany neck and a rosewood fingerboard. It has a perfect action, stays in tune, is durable, and is perfect for all rock genres, including hard rock, classic rock or blues rock. A very versatile yet cheap electric guitar for the beginner!
2. Yamaha Pacifia HSS Deluxe – Once again, a great value-for-money guitar. The pacifia, as is the case with Yamahas, is a well-made electric guitar, which is well-constructed, has a great finish, is well-assembled and uses high-quality parts – an agathis body and a rosewood fretboard/neck with dual single-coil pickups. The pacifia is great for beginners because it has outstanding tone and sound, and is one of the easiest guitars to play; hands down one of the top pick-up-and-play guitars in the market right now.
3.  Ibanez RG2EX1 – rounding off my pick of 3 best electric guitars is the Ibanez RG2EX1. It’s a Stratocaster-style guitar, with a single-coil pickup which produces a sharp and cutting tone, and choosing this over something like a Epiphone Les Paul was a hard decision, a close call. I went with the Ibanez because of the brand reputation, and its bang-for-the-buck proposition; it costs a measly 300 bucks which is a great price for a starter electric axe. The RG2EX1 is a great piece of machine for any metal fan and player! Especially for those who are into thrash metal genre, and play music similar to what the big-4 sounded like (Slayer, Anthrax, Metallica, Megadeth). The Ibanez has a rich, clean sound, is not noisy at all, has excellent high-gains, and apart from thrash, is also suitable for playing rock and jazz genres. A great guitar for amateur metal-heads!