Here is one topic that has been hotly debated - should you buy a thousand-dollar guitar or a hundred-dollar guitar for your child? In today’s post, let’s assume you are buying your child their first guitar ever. This is important because this will be an instrument that they will be spending hours and hours practicing on and using during their guitar lessons!

As with all products and services, it is our innate human ability to compare everything under the sun. The most common indicator of the quality is its brand. When you buy a guitar with an established brand, you are paying for a certain level of aesthetic, craftsmanship, quality material and quality control. Established brands like Rolex and Ferrari both make excellent products, but their ‘cheaper’ counterparts like Casio and Toyota also make equally practical products. Both serve the same purpose but with vastly different price tags.

It goes the same way with guitars and we are going to zoom in on some of the factors that differentiate an expensive and cheap guitar: -

Smiger LG2 — *Brand of strings used*

*Quality of the electronic hardware*
*Contour of the guitar body*
*Fret material*
*Fingerboard contour & shape*
*Neck material*
*Ornaments & inlays*
*Resale value*

Looking at these factors, it can be easy to see why buying an expensive guitar may be more logical. Some of these can be changed/upgraded/modified, while others are essentially ‘you pay for what you get’. Things like the wood choice for the neck and body are set in stone when you purchase the guitar while strings can be changed.

Since we are shopping for the long term, getting a guitar that is ultimately comfortable (both for the student and also your wallet) is the decision point. Buying a cheap guitar may cause you to have to spend more on getting things adjusted before it becomes playable. This causes more problems than desired because a guitar that doesn’t play comfortably will result in your child not wanting to play it.

In short, both guitars (expensive & cheap) will make sound, but one may not be the sound decision to get.

Starting out with a better quality guitar can be an inspiration for the student to play better and play more. If things don’t work out or your child wants an upgrade, it is also easier to sell a better quality guitar on the second-hand market.

Not sure how to pick out a quality guitar or something that works within your budget?

Here at Guitar Emerge, we sell guitars that are good quality and at good price points. Brands like Shijie Guitars & 10S Guitars can easily fight the well known brands like Fender which are way above the $2k price point. Check out our store page.

If you prefer a well known brand guitar, we will also provide our students with a FREE service where we bring you down personally to the guitar stores to select your first guitar. We test it with you so that you know it will be a comfortable instrument to learn on.

We also offer our students the flexibility of using different types of expensive guitars during their guitar lessons and our teachers will be able to guide them along in terms of the guitar differences as well as provide comfortable studios for learning.

If you have a budding rockstar at home wanting to try out the instrument or are looking for a guitar teacher in Singapore, sign up for our free trial guitar class, only at Guitar Emerge.

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Guitar Emerge is a specialised guitar school which provides guitar lessons in Singapore. We solely focus on Electric Guitar Lessons, Acoustic Guitar Lessons and Ukulele lessons.

Our guitar classes are conducted in Jubilee Square #03-08 (5 mins from Ang Mo Kio MRT) and 147 Potong Pasir Ave 1 #02-89 (1 min from Potong Pasir MRT). Our 5 studios are nicely renovated, with high end guitars and equipment for students to use. Learning guitar in a conducive environment is important as it will accelerate your learning.