Cheap Acoustic Guitars Great For Beginners & Pros!
Cheap acoustic guitars are a tricky category due to the wide variety of quality you'll find. Our goal is to steer you to the highest quality and tonally excellent instruments without breaking your bank.
Our 20 years of teaching experience has given us invaluable insights into the good, bad & the ugly when it comes to cheap acoustic 6- and 12-strings.
One thing is most evident in this category: asking prices are not an indication of playability or tone!
...the low quality top is like icing on a bad cake...
Acoustic guitar values are mostly an indication of how and where the acoustic guitars are manufactured. How are acoustic guitars made? Lots of different kinds of wood are used for their various parts--cedar, mahogany, spruce--are common.
But it's the soundboard or top that is most meaningful when shopping for the lowest prices on acoustic guitars. Think of the instrument's top as its face, providing most of the tonal character you hear when playing.
You want a solid top, which means one continuous piece of wood, rather than a laminated top.
Super cheap acoustics and beginner models sold at mega-discount chains usually have laminated tops.
You usually want to stay away from these because the low-quality top is like the icing on a bad cake--the rest of the instrument's components suffer in like manner.
Not surprisingly, the major manufacturers provide the better-quality acoustics--Epiphone, Jasmine by Takamine, Fender Squier Acoustic Guitar, Martin, Taylor and Yamaha.
Again, as in electric guitars, you won't be shopping for a Gibson in this category unless its used or just an incredibly lucky find. Which does happen! In the Used instruments page we'll show you tips and techniques to help find these gems. Bookmark this page, because reviews and ratings are coming!
