How to choose an electric guitar

Step 1.
The #1 thing to look for is how resonant the guitar is. It really has more to do with the wood used to make the guitar than anything else. If you need to, you can change out the pickups for very little money, but the wood truly makes the guitar. Next up on the list, and of equal importance, is to check for sustain length. The sustain length oftne depends on the wood the neck is made of and how it was installed.

Step 2.
Price should not be your #1 perogative. Some of the most expensive electric guitars I've ever tried had the resonance of a cinder brick, while some of the cheaper guitars sang amazingly well. Remeber, those old Fenders that sell for $1000+ today all started out life as inexpensive solid body electric guitars.

Step 3.
Be sure to run through the fret board and get a feel for how the electric guitar sings. When you pluck one of it's strings, you should be able to get a vibration in the wood that resonates throughout the entire guitar - and it should last well over a couple of seconds.

Step 4.
Almost all new electric guitars need to be set up properly, so a string buzz is fine. Just be sure they fix it before you leave the store. Be sure the fret board is set up properly too. It won't take long and is well worth them doign it for you. And remember, the guitar neck and the level of the strings can all adjusted to your liking. And of course ask them to make sure the 5th and 12th frets are in tune. This can be done with an electric guitar tuner.

Step 5.
Always make sure that the guitar neck fits your hands properly. You don't want to have the nut widths, which set the distance from the E string to high E string, messing with your grip. Every electric guitar is different so be sure to test drive before you buy.

Step 6.
When you buy an electric guitar, you should always buy an amplifier at the same time. Make sure they sound good together before you drop a dime. Keep in mind that the guitar pickups have so much to do with this as they set the gain going into the guitar amp / pedal.
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Step 7.
Be sure to evaluate all the potential electric guitar pickups you could use. Humbuckers were designed to improve the single coil pickups. The type of guitar pickup is not nearly as important as how it voices with the wood. Guitar players from all styles of music use almost every type of pickup combination imaginable. The most important part is the guitar's wood, how the voice of the pickup sings, and of course your body style preference. Nonethelss, if you have a certain timbre in mind, you will have to find just the right pickups that suit that timbre. With this in mind, humbuckers give you more of a growl when cranked, and single coils, such as the Fender singles, have a much more glassy tone, which is great for playing the blues.

Step 8.
Don't forget to consider the output of the electric guitar pickup. Believe it or not, this does indeed make a difference. Those high output pickups drive the tube amp harde, which results in a distorted sound. If you have an electric guitar amp without tubes, then this high output effect is pretty much lost. It will give your pedals a lot to work with though, but the overall effect on a solid state amplifier is pretty much just volume. The vintage style guitar pickups have a low to medium output. We find that you'll get more definition with these pickups due to the fact that they are just not built to drive a guitar amp that hard.

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