What Should I Look for in a Student Guitar?

At GuitarsOnline we know that today’s students are tomorrow’s concert performers.

So as a student beginning your classical guitar journey, it’s critical to begin on the right path.

I'm often asked for recommendations as to the best guitars for students, so here are my thoughts, together with input from some of our renowned classical guitar teachers. 

In this article, I’m going to focus on what you should be looking for in a student guitar, for the first 2-3 years of your classical guitar journey.

Entry Level / Just Getting Started <$400 budget

As a student starting out with your first classical guitar, the wrong guitar can damage your love of the instrument forever. Therefore, it’s important that you keep a few things in mind.

Remember there is a big difference between cheap and inexpensive. Cheap guitars are typically cheap for a reason - poor quality means poor quality sound. However a good quality, inexpensive guitar, gives you the chance to start strong as you further develop your skills, experience and playing ability.

Guitar Construction - Solid Top vs Laminated Top

The neck, fretboard and body of a classical guitar can be made of different woods, each one complementing the other - but for an entry level guitar, the most important component of the guitar is the top (or the soundboard).

It’s where the bracing and the soundhole are placed, which both help to shape the sound of your instrument. The top is one of your guitar’s first points of contact with the strings, as the vibration of the strings reaches the rest of the guitar via the top wood.

A solid top guitar, is where the top of the guitar is made from a single piece of wood, such as cedar or spruce. This piece of wood has been carefully picked, carved, shaped and fitted, but remains a single piece – from source to instrument.

A laminated top guitar, is where the guitar top is made of multiple pieces of wood, where these much thinner layers are joined together using a combination of heat, pressure and adhesives and is a much cheaper form of manufacture. While the visible wood on the top may be say cedar, because you can’t see what’s underneath the top layer, the rest of the laminated top could be anything from plywood to plastic resin.

Summary: Playability and quality of tone rich resonance.

To make music you need a solid top guitar (Cedar or Spruce) - It is hard to make music on a laminate or plywood guitar.

A solid top in a guitar is critical, because the solid top is the engine of the guitar. Unless the maker specifies it is solid Cedar/Spruce, it will almost certainly be laminated, resulting in poor quality of tone, a lack of responsiveness and unsatisfactory volume and projection.

Another key consideration for students, is the resale value of your guitar. As your skills develop over the years, you will need to move up to a guitar that enhances your playing ability. In our experience, laminated guitars offer very poor resale.

Method of Construction

There are two primary methods of guitar construction:

The Spanish Method/Spanish Heel, categorised by an integrated neck-body construction.

This is a feature of high-quality handcrafted guitars, where the guitar body and neck are built as a single integrated unit, making the neck-body connection very strong and ensuring a powerful sound, The end result, is a guitar with a more expansive and generous amplitude and wider and richer harmonics.

The Dovetail Joint, where the neck is added to a completely assembled soundbox.

This is a feature of higher volume, lower skilled, production line guitar manufacture, where the guitar body and neck are built independently, and assembled together at the end, often resulting in a more “boxy” muffled sound.

A guitar built with a Spanish Heel design, is a characteristic of a more powerful sounding, handcrafted, higher quality guitar.

Technical issues

Guitar Set-up ; The guitar needs to be easily playable for a beginner (standard classical set up is 4mm to the from the top of the 12th fret to the underside of the 6th string), with no buzzing, accurate tuning and quality machine heads to maintain it in tune.

Check the first string resonance - The thin nylon string (the first) needs to ring out amply and generously, since the player will be striking it to carry the high notes of the melody line and if the sound is faint or dies quickly the music played will never sound right.

Check the 3rd string - This is a transitional string between wound and nylon string and can often be lifeless.

Check the 4th string, 4th and 5th fret for buzzes, which you will often find on poor-quality guitars.

Sound Delivery  

Beyond these minimum requirements overall you are looking for guitar that is musical and generous in its sound delivery.

Cheaper guitars in this price category often look glossy but when played are dead and sound like they are not projecting. This is because the “glossy look” comes from an over-lacquered sound board that cannot vibrate.  Nothing you do as a player will change that.

Year 2 Students : $400 - $800 budget

At this level, you’re a student who’s been playing for 1-2 years and you have both ability and playing experience.

Beyond the minimum requirements of the entry level guitar when comparing them back to back you should be able to hear more complex resonances and snappy delivery with even balance across the strings.

You are looking for improved musical colour and musicality that a better top and bracing structure deliver.

 Within this range, we can recommend our:

Antonio Pinto 1C Solid Top Gloss RRP $599
https://www.guitarsonline.com.au/antonio-pinto-carvalho/antonio-pinto-1c-high-gloss-lacquer

Intermediate Students : $800 - $1000 budget

At this level the soundboard (guitar tops) should be higher grade resulting in improved tone and projection and dynamics and beauty in the note with more complex overtones and sympathetic notes cascading.

You should also find the guitar easier to play and to achieve sound effects.

Intermediate-Advanced Students : $1,000 - $1,300 budget

This is the start of mid- range guitars.

These feature, better quality tops, improved internal structures such tone bars and more refined lacquering processes resulting in improved volume and projection and string separation.

These guitars should deliver power and presence. Strong base notes, ringing trebles and rich harmonics make this level of guitar more pleasurable to play.

This level of guitar is ideal for student looking to sit exams and looking for the added fire power and ease of execution of technique or somebody just looking to get the most out of limited practice time.

Bottom line

At the moment you can buy a good solid top Spanish made Alhambra for under $400 such a guitar will re-sell second hand at 70% of whatever the prevailing price of the new version is. as there are always other students looking for a good entry level guitar.

So, if you consider the initial purchase price, less the (estimated) second-hand resale value – over several years of use, this quality entry level guitar has cost only $120 – while in comparison, the cheap guitar has typically zero resale value.