How To Buy Cheap Electric Guitars at Guitar Effects Secrets

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How To Buy Cheap Electric Guitars

By andy | August 10, 2007

For many, It would be best to start out with a cheap electric guitar as you are still at the trying out stage. For the more advanced players, do not overlook what a cheap electric guitar can offer you. Sometimes, having a cheap electric guitar by your side can be handy when you are searching for that sound in your head and can’t seem to find it anywhere else with your other high end guitars. Other times, you can always practice modifications on your cheap electric guitars which shouldn’t burn too much of a hole in your pocket.

I love getting cheap electric guitars as they gives me lots of joy when I’m experimenting with their interesting sounds. Here’s an article on the basic requirements needed for your search with that cheap electric guitar. Enjoy!

Look for how resonant the guitar is. This is the number one thing to look for. It has more to do with the wood than anything else. The pickups can be changed for very little money but the wood is the guitar.
Don’t judge by price. There are expensive guitars that have the resonance of a brick. There are cheap guitars that really sing. The old Fenders that sell for thousands of dollars today started out life as an inexpensive solid body guitar.
Run through the fret board and get a feel for how it ’sings’. When you pluck a string, you should be able to get a vibration in the wood that you can hear all over the guitar. It should also last a few seconds.
Realize that most new guitars need to be setup so a string buzz is OK - just make them fix it. It doesn’t take very long to go through the fret board so make sure its setup properly. Keep in mind the neck can be adjusted, so can the level of the stings. The guitar should also be in tune in both the 5th and 12th frets (use a tuner).
Realize that the guitar neck is very important. It has to fit your hands. You have a number of nut widths, which set the distance from the E string to high E string. The other feature the shape of the back of the neck. You have the meaty: Gibson 50’s style,fender C/U shape - the thin: Gibson 60’s style,fender standard thin / V shape - the really thin: Ibanez wizard’s, etc.
Keep in mind that the guitar and the amplifier go hand in hand. The two are going to need to sound good together. The pickups have a LOT to do with this as they set the ‘gain’ going into the amp or pedal.
Look at the kinds of pickups used. The humbuckers were designed as improvement to the single coil pickups. The kind of pickup is not as important as how its voiced with the wood it sits in. Players from all styles of music use all kinds of pickup combinations. Its all about the voice of the pickup, the guitar’s wood, and your body style preference.
Consider the output of the pickup. This makes a difference. The ‘high output’ pickups drive the tube amp harder to get a distorted sound. If you have a guitar amp without tubes this ‘high output’ effect is lost. Its does however give your pedals a lot work with but the overall effect on a solid state amp is just volume. The ‘vintage’ style pickups are low to medium output. You tend to get more definition with these pickups due to the fact that they are not built to drive an amp hard.