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How to Choose an Entry-Level Guitar Under 1000 RMB
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How to Choose an Entry-Level Guitar Under 1000 RMB

With over two decades of guitar playing experience, I've had my fair share of adventures in the music scene. Although I've stepped back from band life, I still enjoy playing and singing occasionally for friends, earning a bit of a reputation for my guitar knowledge. Often, people ask me to recommend a guitar under 1000 RMB. So today, I'll share some insights on selecting an entry-level guitar within this budget.

Choosing a Guitar Under 1000 RMB

As the saying goes, "you get what you pay for." With a budget under 1000 RMB, it's unrealistic to expect every component of the guitar to be high-quality. Therefore, it's crucial to allocate your limited budget wisely, focusing on essential components while being flexible with less critical or merely decorative features.

Key Components of a Guitar

The crucial components are those directly related to sound production.

How a Guitar Produces Sound: When you pluck the strings, vibrations are transferred from the bridge to the soundboard, creating resonance. These vibrations also travel to the sides and back, resonating through the air inside the guitar, and finally projecting sound through the soundhole. The soundboard not only transmits sound but also amplifies it along with the back and sides.

Clearly, the soundboard plays a pivotal role in the guitar's sound production.

1. Choosing Between Laminate and Solid Wood

Laminate refers to composite wood, made by bonding multiple thin layers together.

Solid wood is directly cut from logs, requiring older trees and more material, making it more resource-intensive to produce.

The quality of a guitar is primarily judged by its sound. Since sound is produced by vibrations, solid wood vibrates more effectively than laminate, offering superior sound transmission. Thus, solid wood guitars generally produce better sound compared to laminate ones.

In summary, when selecting a guitar under 1000 RMB, prioritize materials that directly impact sound quality, like opting for a solid wood soundboard if possible.

When it comes to guitar construction, the hierarchy of wood configurations from basic to premium is as follows:

Laminated Wood: Both the top and the back/sides are made of laminated wood.
Solid Top (Laminate Back and Sides): The top is made of solid wood, while the back and sides are laminated.
All Solid: Both the top and the back/sides are made of solid wood.

In the current market, most guitars under 1000 RMB are made with laminated wood. If you search carefully, you might find a few solid-top models, but all-solid guitars are rare in this price range, and even if available, they may not be trustworthy.

Conclusion: Opt for a solid-top guitar if possible.

2. What Material to Choose for the Top?

As mentioned earlier, the material of the top plays a crucial role in determining the sound quality of a guitar.

Spruce, cedar, and koa are among the woods commonly used for guitar tops. However, spruce is the most popular choice because of its beautiful grain, lightweight yet strong properties, and its ability to deliver direct, powerful, richly layered sounds with high clarity.

Here are some common types of spruce, arranged from left (stronger sound) to right (richer overtones and vitality):

Engelmann Spruce: Extremely light, with stronger overtones and weaker fundamental tones. The dynamic range is slightly lower, and loud playing may cause sound distortion, making it suitable for musicians who prefer complex tones for gentle playing.
European Spruce: Produces bright and clear tones with ample dynamics. To achieve optimal sound quality, it requires "playing in" over time, making it more suitable for those with some guitar experience and maintenance knowledge.
Adirondack Spruce: Highly durable with a wide dynamic range, offering strong and powerful tones with a higher volume ceiling. It's often used in vintage sound guitars and is ideal for players who prefer vigorous strumming or intense playing.
Sitka Spruce: Offers the best balance across low, mid, and high frequencies, versatile enough for both aggressive strumming and delicate fingerpicking. It is bright, powerful, long-lasting, and can be made slightly thinner than many top-tier materials due to its density.

Conclusion: For beginners without specific requirements, Sitka spruce is an excellent choice for the guitar top.

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3. Back and Side Plates, Fingerboards, and Necks: How to Choose

3.1 Back and Side Planks

The materials used for making back and side planks are required to be hard and sturdy. This is mainly to ensure that the vibration energy of the strings is not overly dissipated and can fully vibrate inside the resonance box and be transmitted out effectively.

The following are some common wood materials for back and side planks. First, let's explain some terms related to wood sound production.

Resonate Bass: It refers to the resonance of bass. Therefore, the closer the wood is to this aspect, the better the bass resonance of the back and side planks.

• Resonate Treble: "Treble" means high - pitched sound. So, of course, the closer the material is to the right side, the better the high - pitched resonance of the wood.• Pure Tone: This refers to a pure timbre.• Textured Tone: "Textured" means that the sound has a more magnificent ultra - high frequency or even a "scraping - ear" brightness!

Rosewood: It has a hard texture, uniform structure, strong resonance, and obvious feedback to the timbre. However, it is relatively scarce, and it is rarely seen on the back and side planks of guitars below 1,000 yuan (after all, the limited budget has to be mainly allocated to the soundboard).

Myrtlewood: It has been a very popular acoustic wood for decades. Its sound feedback is direct, and it has a warm and sweet timbre, distinct mid - frequencies, and a more "woody" sound, which is suitable for a wide range of music styles and guitarists.

Sapelli: It is similar in appearance to myrtlewood, and its timbre is also close to that of myrtlewood. However, it is not as warm and mellow as myrtlewood. Sapelli is hard and dense, and its sound is more crisp. It is also an excellent wood for use as back and side planks.

Hawaiian Koa: It has a clear sound quality and a balanced sound. When used as back and side planks, its low - frequency response is weaker than that of rosewood, and its high - frequency response is slightly less than that of myrtlewood. The sound of Hawaiian Koa is very bright, and it is more recommended to play with fingerpicks or picks.

Conclusion: Myrtlewood and Sapelli are the preferred choices for back and side planks.

3.2 Fretboard

The fretboard is a long and thin wooden board glued to the guitar neck. It is usually dark - colored and is a part of the guitar that bears a relatively large amount of force. Because every time you press a string, it needs to be in contact with the fretboard, and if the fretboard is deformed, it will easily cause fret buzz and affect the feel of playing. Therefore, the materials for the fretboard are required to be hard - wearing, not easily deformed, and smooth to the touch. Currently, the fretboard materials for guitars on the market include ebony, rosewood, and maple.

Ebony: It has a hard texture, almost no pores, secretes a relatively large amount of oil, is smooth to use, and is easy to maintain. However, it is very expensive and is generally used for high - end guitars (similarly, ebony fretboards are not highly demanded for guitars under 1,000 yuan).

Rosewood: It is even harder than ebony, but it has more pores, and its smoothness is slightly lower than that of ebony. However, because its tonal characteristics match the tonal combinations of the vast majority of acoustic guitars, it is the most commonly used fretboard material for acoustic guitars at present.

Maple: It also has a high density and a hard texture, and its tone is bright, but it is generally only used on electric guitars.

Conclusion: For guitars under 1,000 yuan, rosewood is the top choice for the fretboard.

3.3 Guitar Neck

The guitar neck is also commonly known as the guitar handle. The shape and thickness of the guitar neck are of great significance for the playing habits and feel of the guitar. The guitar neck is required to be hard enough to minimize the loss of vibration energy as much as possible, so that the vibration energy of the strings can be transmitted to the soundboard through the bridge. It is usually made of mahogany, okoume, nato, etc.

Mahogany: It has excellent hardness and stability and an outstanding sustain effect. It is one of the most commonly used materials for the necks of acoustic guitars.

Okoume: It also has a very high hardness. Because its origin is in Africa and its appearance is similar to that of mahogany, it is called "African mahogany". Okoume contains silica components, so it is corrosion - resistant and not easily deformed. It is also a commonly used material for the necks of acoustic guitars.

Nato: Its tonal performance is not as good as that of mahogany, and it is cheap. It is generally used for low - end guitars, but its hardness is also quite good, so there is no big problem using it as a guitar neck.

Conclusion: Mahogany is the first choice for the guitar neck, and okoume is the second.

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