If you are a beginner looking for your first electric, then no problem. These are the 4 main factors you want to consider when buying an electric guitar for a beginner.

1. Size and Weight

If you’re buying a guitar for a young child (under 12), it’s a good idea to choose a smaller-sized guitar, such as our AS34. Weighing around 2.5 kg, it’s light and easy for small hands to hold and play.

On the heavier side, guitars like the AG1 can be much more challenging for younger beginners. These guitars typically weigh around 4 kg, which may be too heavy for many young players.

The AS1 model is a good in-between size and weight! At around 3.5 kg, it's not too heavy, making it a fantastic choice for most beginners. 

2. Pickups

Most beginner guitars come with 3 single-coil pickups, like the AS34. Single coils are great for clean sounds, but they're not great if you're going to be playing with any form of distortion.

The 'Single Coil' pickup

If you're going to use distortion, you want to get a guitar that has a humbucker pickup on it. A humbucker pickup looks like the image below in the AS1 model. It's got 2 pickups side-by-side, and by having these pickups side-by-side, it reduces the noise and hum in the guitar.

You also get humbuckers that are covered by a metal plate, like our AG1 guitars. Inside the metal casing, there are still 2 pickups side-by-side, and you still get the humbucker noise-cancelling effect.

3. Tremolo

For beginners, we normally recommend against using tremolo, especially in the early stages of learning. Tremolo can cause a lot of problems with tuning if it's used incorrectly. So there are lots of different types of tremolos. The most basic type, like we have on our AS1 guitars, is used on lots of different types of guitars. This tremolo itself doesn't cause a lot of problems because it's quite simple. But we would still recommend that people avoid using this style of "trem" if they're a beginner. 

The second choice is a roller-style trem like we have on our 58TRMguitars. These tremolos, when used incorrectly, will cause a lot of tuning issues on the guitar. Don't let this scare you off! There's a small learning curve, but it's fairly simple to wrap your head around them.

The worst style of trem system for a beginner is a Floyd Rose or double floating style trem. In these styles of guitars, if any of the strings have a tuning problem, it generally puts the whole guitar out of tune. This can be a real problem for beginners, especially if they're not used to using this style of trem just yet.

4. Style

If you look at all the guitars on our website, they all have a different style and a different look. If you really like the way one of them looks, or if it looks similar to a guitar that one of your heroes might have played, that's the last factor we would consider when buying an electric guitar for a beginner.