Find Your Instrument

FIND YOUR INSTRUMENT

How to Choose a Guitar

First off, defining the style you want to learn is the most important step before making the decision on what kind of guitar to get or buy.

It may well be you have the opportunity to borrow a guitar from a friend, neighbour or family, which is great if you are starting on a low budget. But sometimes the instrument available doesn't serve the right purpose. You want to play rock but the guitar you are borrowing is a classical guitar. Not the best combination. Or it was made 30 years ago and now the strings present a huge action height. Too difficult for a beginner.

Below we will help through all the steps to get the right instrument for you.

START HERE

EDUCATING

YOUR MUSICAL "YOU"

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I

Classical, Acoustic or Electric. Which one should I pick?

It all depends on what style of music you are striving for.

- Electric Guitar (steel strings): Hard-Rock, Blues, Jazz, Metal

- Acoustic Guitar (steel strings): Country, Pop Songs, Jazz

- Spanish or Classical Guitar (nylon strings): Classical Music, Pop Songs, Flamenco, South-American Music

Electric Guitar

(steel strings)

Hard-Rock, Blues, Jazz, Metal

Acoustic Guitar

(steel strings)

Country, Pop Songs, Jazz

Classical Guitar

(nylon strings)

Classical, Pop Songs, Flamenco,

South-American Music

The genres mentioned above may give you an idea of what guitar you should pick, but if you have no particular preference for a style then we recommend you starting with the Spanish or Classical Guitar for the following reasons:

Steel strings have a lot of tension when compared with nylon, which means you have to push strings down harder. We always recommend to start with a nylon stringed guitar to beginners to build up finger strength.

A classical educated guitarist gets to learn a huge variety of techniques from fingerstyle, chord strumming to picking technique (plectrum) demanded by the vast repertoire available. Once you have learned the basics you can divert and focus on one specific style/genre.

UniGuitar is a classical music driven platform. And classical is awesome!

II

What is a good quality guitar?

A good quality instrument doesn't have to break the bank. Nowadays we find very nice instruments available for a price ranging from 100.- up to 500.- (depending on where you are shopping from).

Characteristics of a good instrument for beginners:

Comfortable and not too heavy. Choose a balanced weight instrument and pick the right size for you.

Good tuning. It's very important to play with an instrument that tunes well, your ear training will depend on how well-tuned your instrument is.

Low string action. The action of your guitar will dictate how easy it is to play with. The bigger distance from the fretboard and action strings have, the more difficult it will be to play.

Full sound. No trilling or deaf notes. Although this is the ultimate requirement for each and every guitarist, it isn't on top of this list because good sounding guitars are expensive. As a beginner you will be playing mostly in your practice room and not in concert halls, thus the projection of the instrument is not a priority. As a beginner you should first cover the requirements mentioned above first and then if you still have budget for a high quality built guitar with deep basses and clear trebles, then go for it! Your ears will be delighed.

III

Our recommendations

Here we list our recommended guitars to get started (with no particular order). By experience, the cheapest instruments on the market end up being expensive on the long term, they aren't built to last. So make sure you try a few guitars first, taking the requirements mentioned earlier into account.

Yamaha C40, C40M, C40BL (price: 110.- up to 160.-)

Cordoba C1M, C3M, C5, C7 (price: 200.- up to 500.-)

Alhambra 1C, 2C, 3C (price: 300.- up to 500.-)

Above we listed the best price-quality models available. There are cheaper models that will also do its job, but Cordoba and Yamaha build reasonably priced instruments with very good quality, well tuned and with a nice tone.

What else do I need to start learning to play the guitar?

Visit this guide.

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