Beginner Guitar Player Questions
What are the best strings for beginners?
The best strings for beginners are coated light-weight strings. Why? Usually beginning guitar players need to build up their callouses on the ends of their fingers. Learning to play the guitar with coated strings makes it much easier on your fingers while you learn to play chords and scales. The lighter gauge helps
Can you recommend a good guitar for beginners?
The first thing you'll need to do is decide if you want an acoustic guitar or an electric guitar. See below for my recommendations.
Acoustic Guitars - For beginning acoustic guitar players, I recommend purchasing a Yamaha Acoustic Guitar. Yeah I know.... Yamaha??? Trust me. They make great guitars for the money. Yamaha actually makes really nice bass guitars too. Go to your local Guitar Center and try out some Yamaha Guitars. You'll be very surprised. What makes them great? They are built really well, are very full sounding and hold their intonation very well.
Electric Guitars - For beginning electric guitar players, choosing a guitar really comes down to the style of music you want to play. If you are wanting to eventually 'shred' on the guitar and play a lot of metal, and like 'crunchy' distortion, I would go with an Ibanez guitar. If you want something a little warmer and thicker that has a nice rock tone, go with a Les Paul style guitar. If you want a brighter twangier sounding electric guitar, go with a Fender Telecaster style guitar. The traditional Fender Stratocaster electric guitar is great for all around rock. Now that I've given you my name brand recommendations, keep reading for some cheaper alternatives that might fit your pocket book a little better.
Cheaper Alternative Electric Guitars
If you want your first guitar to be an acoustic, I still recommend purchasing a Yamaha Acoustic guitar. If you want your first guitar to be an electric guitar though, you have some alternative guitar options. I highly recommend purchasing an electric guitar from Rondo Music. Rondo sells Les Paul look-a-like guitars that are AWESOME. They are the closest you can get to buying a real Les Paul. They are made in Korea so they are cheaper but are made extremely well and ARE BETTER than the Gibson Epiphone Les Paul Style guitars. To the left is the Agile Dauntless EMG Silverburst Electric Guitar. The hardwear and neck are great, it comes with EMG pickups and only costs around $280. Not bad considering most Gibson Les Pauls cost over a thousand bucks! I recommend purchasing an Agile AL-2500 or higher, but the lower-end ones are really good too. At first I was skeptical, but when I read the reviews on Harmony Central I decided to purchase one. I bought the Agile AL-3000 with a Rootbeer finish. Click here to check out the guitars. Note: If you browse to around page 13 under 'electric guitars' you should start seeing the Agile Guitars.