When buying an electric guitar for the first time, there are many features to consider. If you are a beginner at playing guitar, you will want to avoid spending an exhorbitant amount while at the same time you will want enough quality in the instrument to make learning on it enjoyable and worthwhile. Fortunately, these days it is very possible to find an instrument which meets both these criteria.
First let us examine the most common types of electric guitars which are available. The most common by far is the solid-body type. Solid-body means the body of the guitar is made of a solid slab of hardwood with no hollow portions other than those routed out for the pickups and controls. The second most common type is the semi-hollow-body. This type is typically solid wood down the center of the guitar body with hollow body sides, usually seen with F-holes via which you can see into the hollow chambers within. Third is the hollow-body type, which means the body is entirely hollow, again usually featuring F-holes. One more type that is much less common is the chambered-body, which means it is basically a solid body guitar but with one or more smaller hollow chambers within the wood itself which you cannot see. All these various types are made in their respective ways for tonal purposes, and which tonal characteristics are prefered is a matter of the guitarist's personal taste. Not included in these categories are acoustic-electric guitars, which basically are acoustic guitars with built-in electronics for plugging into an amplifier. In this article we will primarily address the solid-body type, it being the most common, especially for beginning guitarists interested in electric guitar. However, much of what is discussed here will apply to all body types.
The first thing to look at is the wood it is made from and how it is put together. Certain kinds of wood inherently have better tonal properties than other types, and guitar makers these days usually make adequate wood selections even for inexpensive instruments. Since different types of wood impart different tonal characteristics, the choices in tone wood are often made for the same reason as the different body types: the personal taste of the individual guitarist.
The most important distinction to be aware of is whether the body is made from solid wood or some sort of ply. A plywood body will never equal the tone of a solid wood body, but plywood is much cheaper as a material than most solid hardwoods. Currently, relatively few plywood bodies are made since even most low-end instruments are now made from solid woods, but if you're looking at used guitars, especially much older ones, you will often find plywood bodies on cheaper instruments. Many cheaper guitars from the 60's and 70's were made with plywood bodies. You can often tell even through a coat of paint if the body is a ply by looking at the body edges, where the layers of ply are often discernable with the right lighting angle.
Next look at the neck. If it is an older instrument, look down the neck from one end and make sure it doesn't twist or bend. Exposure to extreme temperature changes can sometimes warp neck wood, producing such a twist, and the instrument will not play properly. This is one reason you should never leave your guitar in direct sunlight, in the trunk of your car during a hot summer day, and so on. In addition, any guitar on which any portion of the outer strings are not over the fretboard enough to fret properly anywhere along its length has serious problems which need repair.
Also make sure there is no significant neck bowing, which means the neck is too curved. If you lay the guitar flat on a table and the neck visibly curves upward at the tuning head end as compared with right at the body join, it has too much neck bow. The neck should be nearly perfectly straight along its overall length. A very slight bow is required for proper fretting on the higher frets, but this is barely perceivable to the naked eye. Unless you know what you're doing, any corrective adjustments should be made by a qualified guitar repair person.
To familiarize yourself with how the neck and body are put together, examine where they join. The two most common joints are glued-in and bolted-on. Both methods are competely valid, and you can find either type of joint even on expensive models. If it is glued-in, take a look at how cleanly the job was done. If it is a bolt-on neck, look for how tight a fit it is. The tighter the fit, the better for imparting good tone. Sometimes you will encounter a neck-through-body type construction, which means the wood of the neck extends all the way through the body with the body sides glued onto it. This is far less common and is rarely seen on lower-end guitars.
