To satiate my recovered and expanding interest in guitar, I decided to use some money from my bonus this year to purchase a nice electric guitar. While I love playing acoustic—they sound beautiful, are easy to pick up, and always feel comfortable to me—electric guitar opens up a new world of effects, sounds, and styles. Plus, with a pair of headphones, you can have the full experience without much noise for everyone around you. Not wanting to waste my money, I dove into research
You never know what you don’t know when approaching a new topic, and I knew very little about electric guitars last month. From my time owning a cheap electric guitar, along with more experience in the acoustic world, I knew cheaper guitars would likely have less reliable electronics, less stable tuning, and worse intonation overall.1When playing on a higher fret, you want the note to sound as in-tune as possible. Cheaper guitars tend to have less precision in the fret placement, causing some really rough-sounding chords as you move around the neck. I wasn’t considering an entry-level guitar, so I started researching what differentiated guitars at a mid to high price tier. I found many resources, but I’d say Sweetwater Guitars and Darrel Braun Guitar were the most consistently useful, with relatively little fluff.
Perhaps the most important factor is the style and arrangement of pickups. You can have single-coil or humbucker2These could just be called double-coil pickups, but they were invented at a time when a term like “humbucker” could be considered cool, so the name stuck. pickups. Humbuckers were originally designed to reduce electronic feedback that single-coil pickups are known for, and the mechanism for doing so gives them a much deeper, warmer sound. Single-coils are the sound of funk, jazz, and blues. They have a brighter sound that really punches through a band, or can be mellowed out for rhythm guitar. Humbuckers are for heavier rock and metal; think of Slash with his Les Paul.
However, once you start looking at electric guitars, you’ll notice they all have two, maybe even three, pickups. There will be one at the neck and one at the bridge, and a few (most notably Stratocasters) have one in between as well. Then, there is a switch or lever on the guitar that lets you adjust which pickups are actively in use.3I knew on my first electric, a Squier Stratocaster, that moving the switch changed the sound. I had no clue how, so it was really pleasing to finally know. This changes the timbre somewhat significantly. So, a huge part of my decision was initially resting on what pickups I wanted. After listening to many comparison videos across the internet, I was pretty convinced I wanted at least one humbucker.
The next factor worth considering is the scale, radius, and profile of the neck. The scale is just the length of the neck, but implies how far apart the frets are. A larger scale guitar will have frets farther apart; this can be a little confusing if you switch between guitars and your fingers need to adjust. The radius is a measure of the fretboard: what radius of circle are you taking an arc of to make the fretboard? A smaller radius means a tighter curve, which can be more comfortable to hold and play chords on. A larger radius is flatter, and is considered better for fast playing with many notes. Finally, the profile tells you the cross-sectional shape beneath the neck: is it more like a “C”, or a “U”, or something else?
Naturally, I couldn’t intuit what I wanted, but having the information allowed me to make a representative list of guitars that spanned these neck factors so I could form some opinion.
One specific feature is whether you want a tremolo, or “whammy” bar. Depending on the guitar, this could just be a nice add-on, or really screw with your tuning.4Stratocasters and similar guitars have a “tremolo” bridge. This means the tremolo bar literally moves where the strings are attached to the body, and this causes the strings to get out of tune pretty quickly if you make heavy use of the bar. Gretsch has a cool technology called “Bigsby”, a terrible name, which I don’t understand. But, it manages to allow tremolo with a fixed bridge, which apparently means tuning integrity is not an issue. I didn’t care either way, so I didn’t let it affect my decision. If a guitar comes with a tremolo bar, you don’t have to use it.
Finally, there’s body shape and ergonomics. This is both a look and feel category. If I didn’t like the color or body shape of a guitar, I wouldn’t be inclined to play it very often. If it didn’t feel good in my lap, I’d be uncomfortable before too long. I’ve always been a fan of the Telecaster body shape, but I wasn’t too devoted to it in particular. Some guitars, like Ibanez, have a “pointy” look that I dislike. I also wasn’t exactly looking for something like a Flying V.
With all this in my head, and a list of specific guitars, I headed to a Guitar Center near Oakland. Luckily the guitar section wasn’t too busy, so I proceeded to spend 90 minutes noodling on at least fifteen guitars.
I quickly realized that there was an additional aspect to the neck feel that hadn’t come up in my research: the finish. I was finding that many of the guitars with a colored finish on the neck had a tackiness to them that a natural wood neck did not. These gave me a “nails on a chalkboard” feeling as I played. I tried some guitars that didn’t pass the eye test, but I could determine whether they’d be suitable without taking them off a rack. I believe all the guitars I ended up debating between had natural wood finishes on the neck.
Another important realization that only came right at the end: the pickup configuration doesn’t matter too much given my use case. I would be playing this guitar in my apartment, using a terrible amp with or without headphones. Given how much amplifiers help produce the sound, I eventually resolved not to get caught up on the pickup configuration for this purchase. I wasn’t opinionated enough to priortize that over playability and feel.
Here’s where things get a little spicy: I knew this guitar would also be a piece of furniture. I had already planned to purcahse a nice stand for it, so it would be ready to go whenever I felt like playing. To that end, I told Erin I wouldn’t buy a guitar she hadn’t already looked at without running its design by her. It wouldn’t be a deciding factor, but I wanted to be thoughtful.
I came across a beautiful semi-hollow Paul Reed Smith guitar whose finish was an opinionated yellow color. The brand is reputable, it played beautifully, and I thought it looked excellent. However, the yellow color gave me pause because none of the guitars I had previously shown Erin online were anywhere near this color. I sent a picture to her, only to remember a little later that she was indisposed and I shouldn’t expect a response. So, I was faced with walking away empty-handed (admittedly a perfectly reasonable, adult decision to make), or trying more guitars and picking one I liked just as much, but which was a clearer win on the design.
I opted for the latter, and wound up with a wonderful Telecaster.
I’ve had it for a few weeks now, and still love picking it up and playing every chance I get. Telecasters are a bit on the heavy side—they don’t have any ergonomic cut-outs like many other guitars—but it still feels fantastic and there’s something about the simplicity of its two single-coil pickups that lets me focus on playing. I’m pleased with where I ended up, and feel confident I picked a guitar that will last me a very long time. With some recent experience at a local luthier shop, I know I can bring it in for a relatively small price to get it set up perfectly, since they are never particularly good from the factory. It’ll be with me for a long time, and that’s really exciting.
- 1When playing on a higher fret, you want the note to sound as in-tune as possible. Cheaper guitars tend to have less precision in the fret placement, causing some really rough-sounding chords as you move around the neck.
- 2These could just be called double-coil pickups, but they were invented at a time when a term like “humbucker” could be considered cool, so the name stuck.
- 3I knew on my first electric, a Squier Stratocaster, that moving the switch changed the sound. I had no clue how, so it was really pleasing to finally know.
- 4Stratocasters and similar guitars have a “tremolo” bridge. This means the tremolo bar literally moves where the strings are attached to the body, and this causes the strings to get out of tune pretty quickly if you make heavy use of the bar. Gretsch has a cool technology called “Bigsby”, a terrible name, which I don’t understand. But, it manages to allow tremolo with a fixed bridge, which apparently means tuning integrity is not an issue.