After playing guitar for so many years, many friends always come to ask about how to choose their first guitar. I have collected and used folk songs, classical music, various electric pianos, and even some travel guitars to share some of my experiences for your reference. There are already many experiences shared online. There will be more details, but for novices, more details also means more complexity and difficulty to grasp.

1. Overall

No matter what kind of guitar here, it must pass this test.

Workmanship vs. Sound Quality

Every musical instrument has workmanship and sound quality considerations. For novices, workmanship must be a priority. Because:

1. Workmanship mainly includes feel, which directly affects the practice experience. The better the feel and the longer the practice time, the better the learning results will be.

2. A well-made piano has a higher chance of good sound quality because of its attention to detail. It’s hard to imagine a piano with poor workmanship having good sound quality.

3. Sound quality ≈ money. If you spend money, no one will read this article. As an entry-level guitar, you need to focus your budget on workmanship.

Three elements of workmanship

1. Basics:

Trademark, identification code: Qin’s ID card.

For a branded guitar, its trademark and identification code will be difficult to destroy. Because we need to be able to identify the brand many years later and tell us: "Look! Our guitar is good, it can last so long!"

As for inferior brands, they are often improvised in guitar factories. Received a batch of guitars, stamped with trademarks and other information. In the early days, the trademarks of poor brands could be scraped off with fingernails, but now some brands are gradually using hot stamping, adding trademark plates and other methods.

But mature big brands always process trademarks, identification codes, etc. onto the guitar wood before painting the original guitar, and then paint it. Finally, the trademark and identification code are smooth to the touch. There will be no unevenness. This is the foundation of big factories.

Smooth: basically does not hurt your hands.

The big manufacturers are absolutely smooth and don’t hurt your hands. Even the joints of the strings are handled in a humane way.

For the sake of cost, small factories can only do this.

2. Feel:

To put it simply: without frets, the lower the string, the easier it is to press. Specifically:

Neck: Straight

Straightness is the basis for calibrating the feel. An uneven neck will lead to inaccurate intonation and the risk of frets.

Of course, if you play a lot, you will also come up with the technique of making the string height very low, and then slightly bending the neck towards the sound hole surface to prevent fretting.

But for a new guitar, we still use a straight neck as the standard. As shown in the picture:

Figure 1: Neck changes

12th fret string height: lower

String height: refers to the bottom of the 12th fret string to 12 The distance between the upper planes of the fret column. As shown in the figure:

Figure 2: The 6-string distance is 2.50mm~3.0mm

Simple physical theorem, the lower the string is pressed to the fret, the smaller the change in the opponent's The pressure will be less. Therefore, when it comes to the feel of a piano, the first thing to look at is the string height.

Most small factories on the market have not worked hard on this. Especially acoustic guitar (acoustic guitar).

The most expensive guitar I have ever tuned is more than 5K CNY.

The most exaggerated thing is a certain brand of classical guitar: so much has been polished off. One can imagine how painful the original piano feels.

Figure 3: Exaggerated degree of polishing

12th fret overtone: small deviation

This refers to the comparison between the intonation of the overtone and the true tone of the 12th fret. There should be no gap. So obvious that it can be discerned by the human ear.

This factor is mainly related to the pitch deviation in the high and low ranges. The 12th fret overtone-true tone deviation is small, and the deviation in the high and low ranges is also small. At the same time, it also prevents music with overtones from sounding weird.

On acoustic guitars, because there is not much adjustability, this is what most guitars lack. Even some pianos over 5K have this problem. I haven’t encountered this problem yet with pianos above 10K.

From the perspective of labor costs: When I fine-tune the bridge of an acoustic guitar, the ideal state is one hour of complete manual work. Normally it takes 1.5 to 2 hours to complete a fine adjustment.

For factories, I don’t know what equipment can handle this problem quickly.

Judging from the entry-level guitars circulating on the market: there are also guitars with very low string heights, but the overtones at the 12th fret are consistent with the true tone. It hasn’t been found yet.

For some piano shops, they will also use an abrasive belt to polish the string height. Dealing with overtone intonation is such a troublesome manual step that it's really hard to find a more conscientious business.

In addition, the focus of this process is still on the factory processing process. If the factory will deviate too much from the lower bridge. Later processing on the bridge can only improve it and make the deviation smaller, but cannot solve this problem.

All intonation: small deviation

This refers to using a more detailed tuner (indicated by the deviation) to tune each string and each fret after tuning the reference note. to check the pitch.

The workmanship here is that each fret must be installed according to the designated position. Otherwise, the intonation will be very strange: "The open strings are obviously in tune, but the sound they play is always wrong?"

What we need to pay attention to at this time is the intonation of the main range, such as the 5th fret and below. All strings, and the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd strings above the 5th fret. Just don't deviate too much, because the fret columns set in traditional settings will definitely deviate, which is related to basic physics. If there is no deviation, the frets will be crooked.

So deviations are normal, but they need to be within a small range. The human voice cannot be clearly heard.

3. Smoothness:

Smoothness refers to all the adjustment parts, the resistance is smooth and effective.

Knob: Smooth

Whether it is the winding knob or the switch knob on the circuit. When used, the resistance is normal.

For the circuit, the changes are normal and there will be no abnormal noise or poor contact.

Tone adjustment: valid.

After passing the above inspection, we need to check the effectiveness of each circuit component and adjust each component. Our human ears should have discernible changes. (Wood ears can also tell the difference).

If it doesn't work, the component may be damaged.

Three principles of sound quality

Basically this is a subjective question. But objectively, due to the same sex of people, some basic elements can be used for reference. Just as there are thousands of people, there are still certain rules or tendencies in beautiful appearance.

1. Sustain: as long as possible.

Just as we say whiteness is rich and beautiful, wealth and beauty are not mentioned, whiteness is a basic point. On the guitar, sustain is a basic point.

Long sustain does not necessarily mean good sound quality. But if the sustain is not long, the sound quality must be bad.

From a physical level, sustain is the product of just the right materials and workmanship. The sustain is long enough, which proves that the workmanship and materials of this piano are not bad.

So, please choose a piano with long sustain.

Note: Sustain: refers to the length of time after playing the piano, allowing it to sound naturally until the sound is no longer audible.

A poor piano will have a sense of jumping off a cliff and suddenly disappear after a certain volume. (This is also similar to compression processing)

2. Subjectivity:

Back to subjectivity, the most basic requirement for sound is that there should not be two extremes:

Like mobile phone speakers, there is no bass.

This will give people a feeling of being without foundation and noisy. Like children quarreling.

Like a stuffy jar, it buzzes and cannot be heard clearly.

It’s like being in a deep hall, with a bunch of people talking loudly, and then communicating with the friends next to them. Sometimes even yelling indicates difficulty. Makes it hard to hear.

All instruments need to find their place between these two extremes.

Things to pay special attention to. This is not only a requirement in the acoustic state. For electric pianos and electric guitars, when connecting speakers, they must also be within these two extreme ranges. Otherwise, please change the piano.

3. Material:

As discussed above in the debate between workmanship and sound quality, materials do have an impact on sound quality. The general direction is: plywood piano, top veneer piano, and full single piano. Specifically, there are maple, fir, and rosewood. How do these affect and what is the effect? For newbies, please don’t pay too much attention to these. According to the market situation in October 2016:

<$500: basically a plywood piano.

>$500-2000: You can choose some single-sided pianos.

>$3000: There are some options for all single pianos.

>$5000: Now we can talk about the impact of wood on sound quality.

2. Classification

Guitar main points

Acoustic guitar (acoustic guitar): It can make sounds independently.

Electric guitar: It must be connected to speakers to hear the sound.

In order to meet the performance needs. There are also xylophones and electric box pianos. The difference is:

Electric acoustic guitar box: It mainly uses sound vibration to collect sound, with the purpose of restoring the sound of the xylophone.

Electric guitar: The main string vibrates and cuts the magnetic field lines to collect sound (electromagnetic effect), aiming for a unique tone.

Here we put the electric piano into the xylophone and list them separately without being specific. Because you can’t tell the difference between electric xylophones and non-electric xylophones from the feel.

Next, let’s look at these guitars in detail from the feel (strings, fingerboard) and tone:

Folk guitar:

It is the beginning of modern music , the guitar developed.

In order to make it easier to press chords when playing and singing, the fretboard is narrower than that of a classical guitar. At the same time, it adapts to the ergonomic curvature requirements of the fingerboard. Classical guitars have flat fretboards, while other guitars have curved fretboards, especially in the lower frets.

In order to have a more prominent tone when playing with the band, steel strings were chosen. This requires greater strength on the fingers.

In terms of timbre: Due to the increase in the mid-to-high frequencies brought by steel strings, the cabinet of the folk piano needs to be larger to ensure the quality of the low frequencies. Therefore, folk instruments are generally larger than other instruments.

Classical guitar:

A product of the pre-electrical era.

The strings are made of nylon strings (previously gut strings), which are soft to the touch. In particular, because the strings are thick and soft, your hands will have a rolling feeling when playing, which will have an additive auxiliary effect in the right-hand fingering technique.

At the same time, because the soft strings have little tension, there are no adjusting steel posts in the neck of the classical guitar. With the steel production of that era, what a luxury it was to have a steel post in a guitar!

The fingerboard, because it involves a lot of techniques, will be wider and straighter. This gives the left hand plenty of room to perform tricks.

In terms of tone, because it is made of nylon strings, it will have a soft and round feeling.

Electric guitar:

A guitar designed for electroacoustic performances. At first, it was just a magnetic pickup installed on folk songs, and then slowly developed into a unique system.

The strings remain folk steel strings, because non-metallic strings cannot cut magnetic lines. But for more high-position playing. The strings are of a relatively thin type, which makes the strings of electric pianos relatively soft in a conventional sense. But in fact, for different needs, the strings of electric pianos come in the widest range of thicknesses. If there is a distorted rhythm guitar, it needs to be thickened to enhance the low-frequency characteristics.

The fingerboard retains the narrow fingerboard requirements of folk music as its mainstream configuration. Specific to the product, in order to better demonstrate the skills of the left hand, some electric pianos also have classical wide fingerboards. Even in order to take into account the rhythm of the low position and the main tone of the high position, there are electric pianos that are narrow and round in the low position and wide and flat in the high position.

In terms of timbre, the most is the various distortions we hear now. Then combine it with various effects to get all kinds of strange sounds. This also leads to the fact that to play an electric keyboard well, we must not only learn the knowledge of the guitar itself, but also learn more knowledge about music production in order to control the electric keyboard well.

Folk guitar vs electric guitar: Choose acoustic guitar

Xylophone can be played anytime and anywhere. When we are in the living room, outside, or in bed, we can play whenever we want. At the same time, xylophones are generally lighter. Electric pianos are generally heavy and can be placed on the lap to press against the legs. Carry it on your back and press it on your shoulders.

The electric piano must be connected to the speaker in a fixed position. And more music knowledge, such as effect adjustment and timbre play. It will take up a lot of practice time in the beginning to get a feel for things on a music production level. Not recommended for beginners.

Folk vs. Classical: Choose Folk

Folk is designed for playing and singing. The fingerboard is narrow and easy to hold, and the strings are hard and insensitive to strength. For those who are attracted to the field of guitar by playing and singing, Direct practice object.

Classical music has a wide fingerboard, soft strings, high strength requirements, and is more suitable for professional learning. Because the duration of playing a piece of music will be much longer than that of folk guitar.

Note: If you are a child learning guitar, it is best to start with small classical guitar, because the child's fingers are not strong enough.

3. Others

In other details, we still have some factors that require us to make a decision.

1. Folk acoustic guitar

Missing corners: There must be missing corners.

The cutaway xylophone is a compromise for high-position lead playing. (Electric pianos do not have this problem)

In principle, the sound quality will be lost. But in actual combat, the low-end ones don’t care about the timbre. The high end has compensated in other ways. Therefore, the impact of missing corners on sound quality has become a factor that can be ignored.

The advantage of missing corners is that it makes our piano more suitable for our needs.

So, you must choose a notched piano.

Size: Choose larger.

One of the physical characteristics is that a larger space means more places for adjustment, and the sound quality often means better.

General: 39 inches for classical music and 41 inches for folk music.

Electric acoustic guitar: can be connected to speakers.

Because of the current economic and technological development, there are no big obstacles in terms of sound quality and price when buying an entry-level electronic keyboard or electric keyboard. Compared with the convenience of performing, it is best to buy a guitar that can be connected to electricity.

2. Electric piano

Single/double shake: Single shake is recommended.

For beginners, there are not many music related to the rocker, mainly focusing on the lead part of modern rock. For beginners, the process from learning to performing can be a bit long. There is a slight conflict with human nature's requirements for learning rewards, and the result is often that you can't persist after practicing.

At the same time, in terms of workmanship requirements, the single swing is better, the wood is stronger and the spring is harder. The chance that the whole piano is in bad condition is not very high. The double swing relies on the balance of string tension and spring to keep the lower bridge in a neutral position. If the workmanship is improper and the technique is improper, the pitch will fluctuate up and down within a piece of music. Especially when novices are not yet sensitive to pitch, it will happen. They only know that it feels wrong and they don’t know what is wrong.

In addition, there are some electric guitars without a tremolo, which are not recommended here. Just like choosing a cutaway guitar, the price does not change much, but there is still some possibility of expanding the scope of use.

So when choosing an electric guitar, I recommend one with a single rocker as a starting point. In the future, you can purchase a suitable piano based on your own preferences and music style.

Pickups: FISHMAN Fisherman (a well-recognized brand in the industry) recommended double Debo vibration pickup

This is also a choice related to tone. The recommendation is based on your favorite musicians. , adopt the same configuration scheme of single single, or single single and double.

In actual combat, novices are always concerned about their technical level. The general audience still has a vague understanding of sound quality; for novice performers, the environment usually has a negative impact on the sound quality. Please spend more of your budget on other aspects.

Color: Natural log

If you have no special preference, log color is the best color. This is because of the quality of the wood, which is difficult to hide in the original wood color.

Because the original wood color is on the wood, apply a transparent varnish. Any wood quality problems can be discovered. Whether there is a problem with other colored wood depends on the conscience of the manufacturer.

In life, there is a difference between bare face and heavy makeup. Beauty without makeup means beauty at heart. She looks beautiful with heavy makeup, but can she be sure that she won’t look scary after removing the makeup?

Finally, choose the first piano that suits you based on the details we talked about above.

Price: 100-500

Most guitars at this level are made by merchants using the worst plywood in order to save costs. The quality cannot be guaranteed, let alone the pitch and timbre, so they are collectively called "fire sticks". This kind of guitar has serious frets, making it difficult to press the strings and prone to noise. The high-position strings cannot even be fretted, which consumes our patience in practicing. I would not recommend any guitar in this price range.

Price: 500-700

This price is basically an entry-level guitar for beginners, but it is out of the category of fire sticks. In addition to buying an ordinary plywood guitar, buy a junior guitar It’s no problem to play a single guitar with a top.

Compared with plywood guitars made of plywood made of artificial and machine-made high-pressure wood, the sound frequency of single-board guitars made of solid wood boards is clearer and richer, which can achieve better ringing effects and improve the tone. It's a big improvement, and the tone of the single-sided guitar will get better and better after playing for a long time (the so-called open tone).

The first recommended model is the energetic single-top guitar VEAZEN Fesson CLR300. Reference 598

The configuration of single-board guitar, the energetic folk guitar series: VEAZEN Fesson CLR300 It is favored by everyone for its excellent sound quality and high cost performance. So this entry-level VEAZEN CLR300 is mainly designed and positioned for students and the younger generation of beginners. The materials are also carefully selected, with spruce veneer, Sapele back and sides, and rosewood fingerboard. It has a smooth feel and a warm tone. For this price range, it is very good. There are also 40-inch, 41-inch and several colors available. If you are a novice and don’t know much about guitars, this guitar is a good choice.

The second recommended model is the recently popular plywood practice guitar: KEPMA D1C Reference 599

KEPMA guitar is a new domestic brand, although it was established not long ago , but its successful marketing has given it a position that cannot be underestimated among today’s domestic guitar brands. Of course, many people say that Kama's guitars are more about marketing than the product itself. But from my point of view, as an entry-level guitar, you obviously can’t place excessive demands on it. As far as this D1C is concerned, the configuration is also made of spruce plywood, Sapele back and sides, and rosewood fingerboard. Obviously from the configuration point of view, there is nothing wrong with the configuration of a qualified entry-level guitar. The tone and feel are also stable at the level of a practice piano. Compared with some fire stick products, at least the probability of being cheated will be smaller if you choose it. I can only say that at a price of about 500 yuan, it is still a piano worth considering.

Price: 700-1000

At this price, you can buy better single-top guitars and big-brand laminate guitars.

The third VEAZEN classic single piano VZ200 reference 899

VEAZEN VZ200 series (made of high-quality spruce top, rosewood fingerboard, mahogany back and sides ) is a guitar with a good reputation in the entry-level single-board guitar circle. The guitar with a standard D-shaped body has a deep bass, distinct sound layers, and a clear tone, suitable for strumming and other fast-paced songs. The workmanship is fine and rigorous, and every detail is very attentive. The 200 series adopts a bright paint finish and a rounded and notched corner design. There is also an electric box version available, equipped with classic pickups. Overall, it's a good value for money and has good sound and feel.

The fourth model is the familiar entry-level plywood Yamaha F310 Reference 999

The Yamaha F310 is a long-lasting beginner folk guitar that is best-selling around the world, and everyone trusts the Yamaha brand . The 41-inch large speaker has a very good resonance effect. It has a spruce top, a rosewood fingerboard, and the back and side panels are made of luan wood. Yamaha's workmanship, from the smallest to the lowest-end models, is very fine. The first thing I feel when I get it is that it feels good in the hand. Entry-level plywood from a major brand has relatively average configurations and average sound quality. Since it is a low-end series, don’t expect too much amazing performance. Of course, you won’t be disappointed. Whether you are playing singing or fingerstyle, the experience is very good. It is worth mentioning that fake Yamaha products are rampant, especially in offline piano stores, so you must be cautious when choosing a piano.

Price: 1000-2000

Guitars in this price range are generally mid-range models, and there are many choices. If conditions permit, they are still more recommended.

The fifth model is the best-selling top model CORT EARTH 70, reference 1598

It uses a spruce top and mahogany back and side panels. CORT guitar is also a first-line brand in the guitar industry, and domestic acoustic guitars are relatively popular. The overall feeling is that the sound is bright, the volume and ring are pretty good, it feels comfortable in the hand and is comfortable to hold, and some small details such as paint, frets, and the joints of various parts of the piano body are all handled well.

The sixth model is the latest VZ90 series released by VEAZEN, starting at 1,580 yuan.

Faison guitars are a conscientious brand that has been popular and liked by guitar enthusiasts in recent years. VEAZEN's new mid-to-high-end face mask VZ90 series, which has just been launched, still continues its consistent style of high quality and cost-effectiveness. This new product has jumped to a new level in terms of appearance details and tone and feel. The entire production process is above the industry average. It is a guitar that is very worth getting started. The configuration uses Sitka spruce veneer mahogany back and side panels and Sitka spruce veneer rosewood back and side panels. There are also four barrel types to choose from, suitable for various guitar hobbies with different needs. who. If it fits your budget, this should be a good choice.

For novice guitar players, guitars priced below 2,000 are already suitable for beginners to learn guitar. The guitars of various grades mentioned above are functionally sufficient for beginners. After all, you buy a guitar to learn the instrument, not to show off. The biggest winner will be the one who persists and finally succeeds in learning. Learning guitar requires persistence and perseverance! If you still don’t understand, you can leave a message or send a private message.