A lot of guitar beginners gave up in their first year or even less. They either faced difficulty in producing good sound with their instrument or they couldn’t bear the finger pains.
If you think that you can use any cheap guitars for practicing you could be wrong. Some parents bought cheap guitars because they thought the children would abandon their guitars once they experienced the difficulties, however giving them cheap guitars might also discourage them to continue practicing.
If you are thinking of buying a budget guitar make sure it meets the criteria below:
The first thing to check is the guitar neck. Don’t buy a guitar with bowed neck. To check this you can press the sixth string at both first and 12th frets. It should leave a tiny gap only between the string and the frets.
Other important factor to check is the guitar playability. You should feel comfortable playing any chords at any places on the fretboard without difficulties or suffering muscle tension and fingers pain.
You should pick a guitar with low action. Action is the clearance between the thickest string’s bottom to the top of 12th fret. A measurement of 3mm to 4 mm is desirable. With low action you need less pressure to form chords and this means you will have less pain in your fingers. This increase the guitar playability.
The last thing to check is intonation. Good intonation means each note pressed on any fret across the fretboard should stay in tune. A guitar may sound OK when you play open chords but once you are moving your chords along the fretboard you may experience out of tune chords. This is a due to bad intonation and nothing related to the guitar tuning at all. Use guitar tuner to take some measurement in case you are in doubt.
Cheap guitars tend to sacrifice the guitar playability and/or intonation. If you are unsure it’s a good idea to get one of your friend that has guitar experience to guide you and recommend you some guitars to test. Based on his/her recommendation you then choose one that is comfortable in your hand. Guitar appearance may fool you easily.
If you follow this tips correctly you can get a fairly good guitar at a reasonable price. Don’t waste your money for something you can’t play.