In this guide we’ll take a look at the best electric guitars for the money.
We’ve compared sound, design, build quality and cost
to give you our top recommendations.
What Is The Best Electric Guitar For The Money?
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More Detailed Electric Guitar Reviews
Epiphone Les Paul Standard Plus-Top Pro Electric Guitar
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Epiphone Les Paul Standard Plus-Top Pro Electric Guitar Review
Have you always wanted to buy a Gibson, but you love everything about them except the price? Then you should definitely check our Epiphone Les Paul Standard Plus-Top Pro! It’s an amazing bargain that could easily have cost much more.
The best thing about it is just the feeling you get when you’re playing it. When I play the guitar, I want it to feel like it’s almost part of me and that it feels natural to play and that’s exactly what this one is like. The fret edges are very smooth and the neck thin, which I’m a big fan of.
Sound
If it wasn’t for the sound, we wouldn’t even be playing the guitar, so that’s always the first thing you should be thinking about when you buy a new instrument.
Epiphone Les Paul is super in this regard. It has a very nice sound that varies depending on if you’re playing with the neck or bridge pickup, or both. Use the bridge pickup for a metallic, vintage sound or the neck one for a richer tone or combine them to mix the two.
I honestly think that if you’d do a blind test with this guitar and a Gibson, chances are that neither you or I would be able to guess which one was more expensive. There is certainly nothing wrong with the sound, it’s awesome!
Design
Just looking at this guitar is a nice experience, it’s stunning! It’s available in Translucent Blue (which you can see in the video I linked to below, it looks much nicer in real life than in some pictures online), Wine Red, and Vintage Sunburst.
The blue one is my personal favorite, it looks really expensive and the wood shines through in a really cool way.
Who Should Buy It?
Since this guitar is quite affordable, it would be easy to assume that it’s only for beginners, but I genuinely believe that even advanced players could fall in love with it, I know I have!
It’s high-quality and looks great and sounds like a much more expensive guitar. I mean, what more could you ask for?
What Does It Sound Like?
Fender Standard Stratocaster Electric Guitar
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Fender Standard Stratocaster Electric Guitar Review
Is there something more classic than a Fender Standard Stratocaster? I don’t think so! This is the perfect electric guitar for those who want to buy something that’s a very safe choice. You know what you’re going to get and it never disappoints.
Sound
Three single-coil pickups in combination with a vintage-style synchronized tremolo bridge provides you with a bright, balanced tone that’s perfect for rock n’ roll. It throws you instantly back to the 50’s and 60’s and makes you think that things were better back in the days, after all.
Design
The Stratocaster is available in the colors Brown Sunburst, Tobacco Sunburst, Black, and Arctic White.
It has a modern neck with a C profile, which means that it’s perfect no matter if you prefer to play with the thumb on the side or the back of the neck.
The body is made from alder, which is the type of wood that Fender has used for their guitars ever since 1956. Why change something that works, right? Alder makes the tone bright and balanced with lots of overtones, but still provides a good attack.
The guitar also has a vintage-style tremolo bridge with 6 fully adjustable saddles. It has a large steel block which makes for good sustain.
Who Should Buy It?
This guitar is high-quality and is a good choice for beginners and intermediate players.
What Does It Sound Like?
ESP GH600BLK LTD GH-600 Signature Series Gary Holt Electric Guitar
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ESP GH600BLK LTD GH-600 Signature Series Gary Holt Electric Guitar Review
Do you love heavy metal? Are you a fan of Gary Holt? Then you should really check this awesome guitar out!
Gary Holt is an amazing guitarist that you might recognize from the bands Exodus and Slayer. He has together with ESP designed a guitar that is extremely high-quality and just perfect for metal. Here is a video where Gary tries one of them straight off the shelf and he seems to be really pleased with it!
Sound
This guitar makes it possible to achieve that awesome metal tone or a more classic rock tone, depending on what pedals you use. It has a Floyd Rose tremolo bridge which holds the strings down safely. When you have tuned the guitar, you can lock the strings down at the nut.
When you’ve done so, you won’t have to tune it for weeks. This is a perfect feature for shredding guitarists. No matter how fiercely you play, you won’t have to worry about the guitar going out of tune. This allows you to focus on the actual music and saves you a lot of time in the long run.
Let’s say that you practice every day and need to tune it 365 times a year. If it takes you two minutes to tune the guitar, that equals 730 minutes, which is more than 12 hours!
Now, two minutes doesn’t seem like much time, but it does add up. What if you practiced scales for two minutes every day instead. Which would benefit your guitar playing the most?
If you buy this guitar and lock the tuning in place you might only need to tune it once every month, which means that you’d only spend 24 minutes per year tuning it!
Design
The guitar features an Eclipse design and is black with red pickups and details. It has 22 extra jumbo frets and the neck is U-shaped. It looks really cool and has a lot of attitude and a big personality.
It has a mahogany body, mahogany neck, and an ebony fingerboard. Now, ebony is not cheap, so it’s really nice to be able to get that at this price point.
Who Should Buy It?
I believe that this is a great option for metal guitarists and especially fans of Gary Holt. It’s a good instrument that works for anybody from beginners to advanced players. It’s good if you like the color red because the red pickups are quite distinctive.
Ibanez Iron Label S Series SIX6DFM Dark Space Burst Electric Guitar
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Ibanez Iron Label S Series SIX6DFM Dark Space Burst Electric Guitar Review
Ready for another review of a heavy metal guitar? I thought so! This is a real dream for all you Ibanez lovers out there! It features cool, unique pickups and has an absolutely beautiful neck! Good stuff!
Sound
As I mentioned, this guitar is perfect for heavy metal. It has a really handy volume knob that makes it easy to quickly adjust your volume. The pickups are so-called DiMarzio Fusion Edge Pickups and are only available on guitars in this range, they’re unique. They give you a really nice and crisp tone.
It has locking tuners that make sure your instrument stays in tune and never lets you down.
Design
I absolutely love the neck of this guitar. It has a 3-piece maple/bubinga nitro wizard neck that just looks amazing. It’s proper craftsmanship and will definitely get you lots of compliments from fellow guitarists.
The guitar is available in the colors Blue Space Burst and Dark Space Burst and they both look really nice and expensive.
Who Should Buy It?
This is the perfect guitar for somebody who wants a metal guitar that has a nice color and isn’t just black, like so many of them are.
PRS SE"Floyd" Custom 24 Electric Guitar
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PRS SE"Floyd" Custom 24 Electric Guitar Review
PRS SE “Floyd” Custom 24 is a great electric guitar for those who want a classic instrument for some old school rock n’ roll! It’s affordable, sounds awesome and has a unique look.
The Custom 24 has been around in one way or another since 1985 and has been incredibly popular. However, it had one ‘problem’. It didn’t have Floyd Rose double-locking tremolo. Well, that problem is solved and this guitar satisfies even the pickiest guitarist!
Sound
As I said, this is a classic style guitar that brings modern technology and old-school rock together in a wonderful mix. It sounds really nice and is a joy to play.
Design
The guitar has a beautiful maple top and a mahogany body and neck. The neck is really thin. What I personally like the most about this design is the bird inlays on the fingerboard. They look really cool and give the guitar some personality. The funny thing is that I don’t even like birds!
It’s just nice to have a detail like that which makes it special. I always prefer designs that are quite traditional but that have something fun going on. That way I don’t get bored with my instruments or grow tired of them. Balance is the key!
Who Should Buy It?
So what would make you pick this guitar over any other? Even though the sound is good and it’s nice to play, those things don’t really make it stand out among its equals. I’d say that it’s the design that will make you buy it instead of some other model.
What Does It Sound Like?
Schecter C-1 Platinum Satin black Solid-Body Electric Guitar
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Schecter C-1 Platinum Satin black Solid-Body Electric Guitar Review
If you read through my review of ESP’s Gary Holt guitar and felt like it wasn’t really your cup of tea, but still want to find a good metal guitar, then this is the one for you. The Schecter C-1 Platinum is a really nice instrument to play, it sounds awesome and features a sleek, minimalistic design.
Sound
This guitar is designed with heavy metal in mind, but it’s perfectly possible to play softer music as well. The tone is warm and fat and the heavy body provides a good resonance.
It has active pickups which seem to do the trick. I was a bit puzzled at the beginning because I wasn’t able to hear much difference between these pickups and passive ones, so I looked it up. Turns out they’re designed to sound like passive pickups. The advantage of active pickups is that they don’t transmit as much background interference and hum as the passive ones do.
Design
This guitar looks confidently minimalistic. It’s black and matte, which looks and feels amazing. The silver details look very stylish. If you’re the kind of person that would rather buy things that look timeless and classic so that you don’t grow tired of them after a few years, this might be the guitar for you.
On the other hand, if you’re the type that wants to buy unique things that you never stop loving and that you want to show off to your friends, there are guitars that look cooler.
It just depends on what you’re looking for. I personally really like this design. It’s also available in silver, but I must say I definitely prefer the black one. For some reason, the silver one reminds me of a refrigerator, which is just a bit weird.
Who Should Buy It?
Schecter C-1 Platinum is a good guitar that is reasonably priced. I would recommend it for beginners and intermediate players who want to buy a guitar that they can use for a few years. If they later move on to playing harder music and pursue a career as a guitarist, they will most likely feel the need to upgrade eventually.
Buying an Electric Guitar? Here’s What to Expect…
There are few things in life that are as fun as buying a new electric guitar. There is so much to choose from and there is really a model for everyone.
But even if it’s wonderful that there are so many great guitars out there, that can also be a potential problem. How can you know which guitar is right for you?
If you want to know what to look for when buying an affordable electric guitar, then keep reading!
I’ll teach you everything you need to know as a beginner when you’re buying your first guitar!
Budget
One of the very first things you will think about when you buy your guitar is the price. Everybody loves a bargain, right? But it’s good to be aware that you get what you pay for. That is especially true when it comes to musical instruments.
In order to be able to appreciate and fully benefit from owning an expensive guitar, you need some experience and knowledge that beginners just don’t have, so there is no reason to buy a really pricey instrument when you’re first starting out.
You need to use good judgment when you decide what guitar to buy as a beginner. On one hand, you don’t know how much or for how long you will end up playing, you might stop after a year or so when you’ve lost interest. On the other hand, you might continue for the rest of your life.
If you keep playing, you want to be able to use the instrument you’ve bought for a few years. You don’t want to feel like a bad guitar is holding you back, forcing you to upgrade to a more expensive instrument soon after you’ve bought your first guitar.
Think about what has happened to other projects and hobbies you’ve started. If you’re the kind of person that likes to try new things but give up after a while and move on to something else it might be a good idea to buy a cheaper electric guitar.
That way you can try it out and see if you like playing. And if you don’t, you haven’t lost too much money.
If you are buying a guitar for a kid you might need to go smaller than the full-sized guitars I’ve reviewed. If that is the case it makes sense to buy a cheap guitar, because kids grow fast and when they’ve outgrown it there is really no reason to keep it.
Sound
The second thing you need to consider is the sound. What genres do you usually play? Would you like a guitar that works for everything or rather one that’s designed for metal only, for example?
One sound related thing you need to be aware of are different kinds of pickups. There are passive pickups and active ones, that require batteries to work. The passive pickups are maintenance free but can sometimes pick up some noise that you might not want. The active ones give you a cleaner sound free from extra noise and offer a higher output.
Here is a good video that explains all the differences between active and passive pickups. The video also explains how pickups actually work. Many people believe that pickups really are microphones, but they’re not, they’re actually magnets!
Single coil pickups are made up of either one big magnet or six, one for each string and then it’s wrapped up on a single coil of wire. The 6 magnets are also called pole pieces. Single coil pickups are very popular among blues and country guitarists because they make your tone sound very clean, crisp, and pure.
Something that makes some people choose another pickup than single coils is that they often produce background noise and hum that’s quite annoying.
If you want to avoid that disturbing noise you might want to buy a guitar with humbucker pickups. They’re basically two single coil pickups put together. They are two magnets that cancel each other out, so the noise just disappears. They’re bucking a hum and that’s where the name comes from.
One disadvantage of the humbuckers is that the tone isn’t as clear as the single coils, but many people feel like it’s worth it. The output of humbuckers is higher too.
If you don’t want to constantly retune your guitar it can be a good idea to get one that features locking tuners, that lock the strings into place. This way the guitar doesn’t go out of tune as easily. It’s perfect for shredding players that need to be able to trust that their guitar can handle some tough action!
When it comes to the sound of the guitar you can read all the reviews in the world, but it’s not until you’ve actually heard the guitar that you can know for sure if you like the sound or not.
The best way to find out which guitar is best for you is to go to a music shop and try lots of different guitars out for yourself. But reviews are still helpful because let allow you to do research before you go and lets you find out what you’re actually looking for.
You might go from only knowing that you want an electric guitar to being more knowledgeable, knowing what kind of electric guitar that will work for you. There are few other instruments that come in so many different designs and with so many different features as the electric guitar does so it’s good to know what you’re looking for.
One way to do your research is to watch YouTube videos. There are lots of different demos and reviews out there and just by clicking on new links you might find guitars you’ve never heard of before.
Make sure to write a list of the guitars you find that you would like to try and also write down different features that you would want in your new guitar.
Design
The design of the guitar is the first thing you notice about it, but should probably be the last thing you think about when making a purchase.
The sound should always be the most important thing to you, but I must admit it is really nice to have a guitar that makes everybody slightly jealous.
Think about what design that would work with the genre you’re playing, but also what would match the rest of your equipment as well as your wardrobe. It might just be me, but I hate not matching my guitar with my outfit!
Conclusion
Finding the perfect electric guitar is fun, but it requires some work. Any instrument is an investment that has the potential to bring you joy for many years, so it’s definitely worth it making a good, well-informed decision.
Some things are worth paying more for and I would say that electric guitars fall under that category. I hope that this article has helped you to find the perfect guitar for you!