The budget guitar category has to be the most fiercely competitive, with more options than ever before vying for your hard-earned cash. Nowadays, as this guide to the best cheap electric guitars proves, you don’t need to spend a fortune to get a great instrument. We have high-quality options in every style imaginable, from Yamaha, Epiphone, Squire, Gretsch, Ibanez and more. So, whether you’re looking for a budget-friendly Stratocaster, an inexpensive hollow body, or an affordable shred guitar, you’ll find it here.
These cheap electric guitars used to be reserved for new players searching for a beginner-friendly option, but with massive strides forward in quality control and trickle-down technology, they can now be a viable option for intermediate players looking to upgrade their first guitar or even pro players seeking a backup six-string.
Buying Guide
These guitars may not have all the bells and whistles of the high-end six-strings on the market, but they aren’t meant to compete with such luxury instruments. Instead, the purpose of these guitars is to provide fantastic playability and great looks, all for a song.
In this buying guide, we’ve outlined our choices for the best cheap electric guitars available for you to order right now, and we’ve also included some helpful buying advice at the bottom of this page to help you make your decision.
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Best cheap electric guitars: Our top picks
As we said before, the budget electric guitar bracket is more saturated than ever, making it very difficult to know where to begin. For absolute beginners or the player looking for a budget S-type guitar, the Yamaha Pacifica 112V is the perfect starting point. Robust build quality, elegant looks, and a surprisingly good tone for the price – what’s not to love?
Perhaps versatility is what you’re looking for? Well, in that case, you can’t go wrong with the PRS SE Standard 24 (Best Acoustic Guitars Under 300). This Swiss Army Knife of an instrument can produce almost any tone you can think of at a seriously low price – all while managing to retain the high-quality PRS are known for.
Today’s top deals on the best cheap electric guitars
Advanced Acoustic Technologies
On the inside, the guitar uses LAVA-developed L2 Preamp with Freeboot technology for its pickup system. The L2 Preamp can boost sounds without plugging the guitar into an amp, as the Free Boost technology uses the guitar back as a speaker. The L2 Preamp also provides onboard chorus, delay, and reverb, so with the touch of a button, players can add effects and shape their sounds, even when they’re outdoors without pedals or amps.
The guitar also uses LAVA MUSIC’s signature 4-MASS technology. It brings the guitar a parametric structure engineered by simulating the vibration dynamics of the top, body, neck, and internal air, making them resonate in perfect unison to produce a full, bright tone.
WHEEL Breaks Out The Acoustic Guitars For “Synchronize”
Progressive metal unit Wheel is back with a new EP Rumination due out November 10 and is now streaming their acoustic-heavy single “Synchronize.” The single has a very certain Tool-meets-Peth vibe to it, and seems perfect for the cooler fall weather that’s slowly coming upon us.
“This song has been in the works for the last five years, which even by our standards, is a really long gestation period – I had the idea for C part and the ending back in 2017 and finally came up with thematically appropriate parts to complete the structure at the end of last year,” said Wheel of the single.
“I was playing acoustic guitar professionally in several bands for years before we started Wheel and I have been considering the possibility of using the instrument in our material again for ages – I’ve just been waiting for a song that I felt was interesting enough to justify its use.
“The lyrics are about reconciliation – this is something I could over-explain very easily but I don’t want to make it all about me. I think the subject is something many of us struggle with and although I don’t think forgiveness is arbitrary – there are cases where it is absolutely fine not to forgive; more often than not it is better to let go and to heal than to hang on to destructive anger, guilt and pain. I’ve never found it easy to write positive lyrics but they felt absolutely right for this track.”
