Finding the best electric guitar for you is a very personal choice. After all, there are countless shapes and sizes to choose from, all of which suit different musical genres and goals. Then, of course, you have to consider your budget at this time and what that amount of money will buy you.
In our expert guide to electric guitars, we've recommended a host of options across several key price points. These cover every base from beginner guitarists through to gigging musicians and experts, giving all of you tons of inspiration when it comes to finding your first or next electric guitar.
You'll find a wide selection of the most highly rated instruments from our rigorous reviews, ensuring that whichever electric guitar you pick, it will provide years of faithful service and great tone, whether you're playing at home or taking your guitar to the stage or into the studio.
From the best Fender Telecasters or Stratocasters to the greatest semi-hollow, shred and guitars for metal, no matter what kind of music you play, we've got you covered with this pro-round-up of the best electric guitars.
The best electric guitars to buy now
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This latest mid-priced take on Fender's pride and joy features an updated two-point vibrato design, plus three new Alnico V single coils. The satin neck provides a slick playing experience, while there’s little to fault with the build quality other than some slightly jerky tuners.
There’s a hugely usable set of tones across the five-way selector, which recall Fender’s fat Texas Hot single coils and respond beautifully to gain, and treble loss is minimal when rolling back the volume knob. The bridge pickup, which can be weedy on mid-priced Strats, is rich yet cutting - and if it’s still too spiky, the pleasingly responsive tone knob will enable a fairly precise treble cut. That may not sound like much, but it’s actually a big deal, as the two-tone knobs are wired thusly: tone 1 handles neck and middle, while tone 2 adjusts the bridge.
Then there’s that new two-point vibrato, which is one of the smoothest- operating systems we’ve encountered at this price point, with no problems returning to pitch. The familiar ‘loose arm in the socket’ problem still rears its head, but it’s nothing a bit of tape around the thread can’t fix. By their very nature, Strats will always pay homage to the past, but this particular edition packs tones that span the decades and bring the format bang up to date.
The PRS SE range has offered solid, well-built, great-sounding guitars for years now, and the PRS SE Custom 24 2018 is a perfect example. This Korean-built mass of maple, mahogany, and rosewood is a classy-looking guitar. It’s a wonderful instrument to play too - PRS's expertise making eye-wateringly expensive guitars is evident from the moment you pick it up.
The bridge, for example, has a noticeably low profile. This makes palm-muting a much more pleasant experience, especially if you’re used to chugging away on a Floyd Rose-style bridge.
A lot has been made of the SE Custom’s pickups; 2017 models added Korean-made versions of the 85/15 pups used on the more expensive American Core line, dubbed “the perfect pickup” by Paul Reed Smith himself. Largely, they live up to that promise; the bridge pickup is capable of some serious chunky metal tones, which retain definition and clarity even at absurd levels of gain.
Spend some time with the SE Custom 24 and you’ll come to realize that there is no stereotype that fits. And therein lies its beauty. It’s not a guitar or a brand that concerns itself with cultivating a popular image; PRS has always favored more obvious metrics like quality manufacturing, great sounds, and classic looks.
The Streamliner concept is simple: to create more affordable Gretsch guitars without losing their specific DNA. Two new Broad'Tron humbuckers are controlled in classic Gretsch style by a three-way toggle selector switch on the bass side shoulder, a master volume on the treble side horn, and then a trio of controls by the treble-side f-hole for individual-pickup volume and master tone.
The G2622's construction gives a different response and resonance to other new releases from Gretsch and, with these pickups, moves further from the Gretsch sound. And while its construction gives it a more solid, or at least ES-335, character, it's a little airier and less punchy with a softer, squashier tonality.
The beefier pickups certainly don't nail a classic Gretsch tonality - although if that's what you want, the full-size pickups are easy to replace - but they do broaden the sonic potential, especially for more gained styles, while staying close to the classic iconography. If you want a great-value semi-hollow, this is among the best electric guitars for under $500.
Fender's Vintera '60s Telecaster Bigsby pays tribute to the version released in the decade that gave us The Beatles and The Stones. '60s Teles generally had rosewood fingerboards. Here that prized timber is represented by the more eco-friendly Pau Ferro.
Featuring vintage correct 184mm (7.25") fingerboard radius, 21 thin frets and a comfy fat-shouldered C-shaped neck, this guitar is a joy to play, bursting with sustain before you even plug it in.
The pickups are great for country, blues and classic rock and the Bigsby will broaden your sonic horizons further. And we just love the white blonde finish.
The Vintera Telecasters prove just how right Leo Fender got it with his first solidbody electric. The excellent Fender Mexico quality control does him proud too.
The Yamaha Pacifica has long proved a benchmark for quality and specification, and the 112V remains one of the best electric guitars for beginners. The 112 is far from fancy and simply concentrates on the bare necessities. Yet the construction is of excellent quality. Trust us, if looked after this will be a guitar for life.
By design, it's an altogether more modern, brighter and lighter take on a hot-rod Strat. But when we say brighter that doesn't mean overly shrill. In fact, the bridge humbucker will surprise some, it's beefy without being too mid-range heavy and although the coil-split proves a little bland played clean, with a distortion boost it's a pretty useful gnarly and wiry rhythm voice.
It's good to have the choice too when mixed with the middle pickup - switching between the full and split coil here is subtle but, especially with cleaner 'class A' amp voicings, there's enough character difference to be useable. The solo single-coils impress - plenty of percussion and with a little mid-range beef added from the amp these get you to the correct Texas toneland. Neck and middle combined produces a fine modern Strat-like mix - the added brightness will cut through a multi-FX patch nicely.
