Best Electric Guitars Under 500 Dollars – Guide 2017

Maybe you’re looking for a first guitar. Or maybe you’re looking for another guitar to add to your collection but you can’t or don’t want to spend too much money. Whatever the reason, you may be on the market for a solid body electric guitar with a price tag that isn’t daunting.

Finding quality shouldn’t be reserved for people who can spend thousands of dollars on an instrument. Manufacturers know that, and so there is an array of guitars costing only a few hundred dollars that will meet virtually any guitarist’s needs.

Navigating the field, however, can be difficult. For every inexpensive guitar that is a great value there are dozens that are simply cheap. This guide is meant to help you find your way through the back roads. These are the best electric guitars under 500 dollars.

• Fender Standard Stratocaster
• 4.9 Customer rating
• Back and sides: Alder
• Fingerboard: Maple
• Top: Alder
• Price: $$$

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• Schecter Damien Special
• 4.8 Customer rating
• Back and sides: Mahogany
• Fingerboard: Rosewood
• Top: Solid Maple
• Price: $$$

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• Epiphone Les Paul Standard
• 4.7 Customer rating
• Back and sides: Mahogany
• Fingerboard: Rosewood
• Top: Maple
• Price: $$

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• Epiphone G-400 PRO
• 4.8 Customer rating
• Back and sides: Mahogany
• Fingerboard: Rosewood
• Top: Mahogany
• Price: $$

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• Schecter Omen Extreme-6
• 4.8 Customer rating
• Back and sides: Mahogany
• Fingerboard: Rosewood
• Top: Quilted Maple
• Price: $$

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• Yamaha Pacifica Series PAC012
• 4.8 Customer rating
• Back and sides: Agathis
• Fingerboard: Sonokeling
• Top: Agathis
• Price: $

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Top Six Electric Guitars Under 500 Dollars

Fender Standard Stratocaster

 The Fender Standard Stratocaster is the affordably priced version of its iconic Stratocaster. While not made in America (like, for instance, the American Strat), it is a Fender and not a Squier, meaning it features most of the same parts as its higher-priced brother. It is a versatile, professional guitar at a great price.

The Standard Strat features an alder body and a maple neck and fretboard. It comes standard with three single-coil pickups, which deliver classic “Strat” sound. Like most Strats, it has a Fender tremolo, and it has one volume knob, two tone knobs, and a five-way pickup selector.

This guitar is extremely versatile. Its three pickups in five combinations are capable of producing a wide array of tones. Suited to blues, rock, jazz, and country, this guitar will please almost any player. It is hard to go wrong with a classic.

Schecter Damien Special

 The Schecter Damien Special is a beautiful guitar. It features an impressive flame inlay and a quilted maple top, making it sure to stand out from the crowd aesthetically. It isn’t all looks, however. This guitar is a fabulous and rock guitar at a great price.

The Damien features a mahogany body with a solid maple top, a three-piece mahogany neck, and a rosewood fretboard. It comes standard with two humbuckers and has locking tuners and a fixed bridge. It has one volume knob, one tone knob, and a three-way pickup selector.

This guitar’s mahogany construction and rosewood fretboard make its tone thick and warm, while its maple top adds a bit of a bite, clearing up the sound a little. Overall, it has a dense, thick sound, and takes distortion very well, largely due to its pickups. It is particularly well suited to rock and metal, but it could pull of blues and even jazz-fusion without stretching too far.

Epiphone Les Paul Standard

The Epiphone Les Paul Standard is one of the closest things to a Gibson Les Paul you will get without spending a whole lot of money. Made by Epiphone, a subsidiary of Gibson, this guitar features many of the same parts as the Gibson Les Paul. Les Pauls, in general, are highly sought-after, and are considered by some to be the workhorses of rock guitar. There is a reason for that.

Like most Les Pauls, this is a big, thick, heavy guitar with a mahogany body. Its top is maple, and it has a rosewood fretboard. It comes standard with two PAF-style humbuckers and has two volume knobs, two tone knobs, and a three-way pickup selector. Like most Les-Paul-style guitars, it has a fixed bridge.

The sound of a Les Paul is unmistakable. Big, warm, thick, heavy. This guitar is made to take distortion, and it when it does, it can scream, screech, and wail. But Les Pauls perform equally as well clean; they sound remarkably full sans-distortion (for solid body electrics). This guitar is great for rock and metal, but can equally well find a home playing blues or even jazz.

Epiphone G-400 PRO

Another Epiphone, this guitar is modeled after the Gibson SG. The SG is another iconic Gibson rock guitar, played by more than a few great players. SG’s in general, and this guitar in particular, are known for their hot, gritty tones and for their easy, fast necks.

This guitar features a light, thin mahogany body, a mahogany neck, and a rosewood fretboard. It comes with two humbuckers, and has two volume knobs, two tone knobs, a three-way pickup selector, and a coil tap (to make the humbuckers act like single-coil pickups). Like most SG-style guitars, it has a fixed bridge. The G-400’s neck is very fast, mostly due to the fact that it is engineered so that the action (the distance between the strings and the frets) can be set very low. For that reason alone, many players will play nothing but guitars of this style.

The G-400’s sound screams rock and roll. It is gritty and loud, not as high-output as some more modern metal guitars, but heavy enough to compete for sure. It has a great tone all around, but it shines when it is in front of an overdrive or distortion pedal (or when it is played straight through a cranked tube amp). It is really a rock or metal guitar, but guitars like this have been used very effectively for dirtier blues too.

Schecter Omen Extreme-6

The Omen is another great rock guitar from Schecter. Like the Damien, it is quite attractive, featuring impressive inlays and a quilted top. Also like the Damien, it is a very modern guitar suited well to metal.

The Omen features a maple neck, a rosewood fretboard, two humbuckers, and a fixe bridge, all very much like the Damien. It differs, however, in this important way: its body is made of basswood and not mahogany. Basswood has a much flatter EQ profile, and is to many people ears clearer, although less “beefy.”

This guitar is, in general, designed for metal and modern rock. It is a high-output distortion machine that really wasn’t designed with clean playing in mind. Though it was made for heavy, overdriven screams, however, it has a not-unpleasant tone whatever the circumstances, and it is more versatile than some modern rock guitars. It is a great buy if you’re looking to scream but also want to be able to back it off and sound pretty sometimes.

Yamaha Pacifica PAC012

The Pacifica PAC012 is a very affordable Stratocaster-style guitar from Yamaha. Yamaha is known for producing great instruments that are also great deals, and this guitar is not an exception.

This guitar features an agathis body, a maple neck, and a rosewood fretboard. It comes with two single coil pickups (in the neck and middle positions) and a humbucker (in the bridge position). It has one volume knob, one tone knob, and a five-way pickup selector. It also comes with a vintage-style tremolo.

This guitar is, like most Strat-style guitars, very versatile. Its agathis construction makes its EQ-profile relatively flat, and though its maple neck adds a little bit of a snap to its tone, its rosewood fretboard quickly mellows it out. The humbucker in the bridge makes the Pacifica capable of producing heavier, more gain-y sounds than a Strat-style guitar without a humbucker, although it removes the ability to get a certain bridge-single-coil sound that some people very much like. In general, it is a good guitar for rock, blues, jazz, country, and almost anything else.

Best Electric Guitars Under 500 Comparison Chart

What to Look for in a Best Electric Guitar Under 500 Dollars?

You don’t need to break the bank to get a great guitar. Some inexpensive guitars – it is true – are rather low quality. But the guitars on this list are not; they are solid guitars at great prices, made for buyers who want good instruments without big price tags.

You may not know what you’re getting when you buy one of these guitars, however. You may be wondering: “What are the important things, the things I should be looking out for? What are the things that these guitars offer that other inexpensive guitars don’t?” There are a few things that good guitars share, regardless of price. Here are the two most important of those things, and you should look for them in any guitar under $500 that you’re thinking of buying.

• Tone: A guitar’s tone is probably its most important feature. After all, what really matters is how it sounds. The tone of a solid-body electric guitar is primarily a matter of two things: the wood that it is made of and the pickups that are mounted to that wood. You should look for good tone woods, like mahogany, ash, and maple. The fretboard should, in general, be made of either maple or rosewood. The pickups should be quality (and they should be whatever kind of pickups will best suit your needs).
• Feel: The way a guitar feels is almost as important as the way it sounds. The weight of the guitar and the quality of its neck will affect how it feels greatly. So too will the quality of its neck and fretboard – better construction usually means that it is possible to get lower action, which drastically changes the way a guitar feels (for most people, lower action is easier to play).

Are the Above Guitars Good for Beginners or Professionals?

For some potential buyers of an electric guitar, there is a difficult situation that is easy to get caught in. You may not have the money to buy an expensive guitar, or you may not want to commit that much to a guitar, but you may also wonder whether it is worth buying a “cheap” guitar for fear that it will be an inferior instrument. The worry is that inexpensive guitars are really only suitable for beginning players, and that a professional wouldn’t be caught dead playing something that only cost a few hundred dollars.

The truth couldn’t be further from that anxiety. First of all, many professional players play inexpensive guitars. Not everyone who plays well plays a $2,000 Gibson. There are even guitarists who seek out less expensive guitars, believing them to have some kind of quality that expensive guitars simply don’t have.

Second of all, a good guitarist is – within reason – a good guitarist on any guitar. If you took a guitarist who plays a $15,000 hollow body guitar, and you put in their hands one of the guitars on our list, they would still be able to play well, and they would still, by and large, sound like them.

What I mean to say is this: The instrument matters. It affects how you play and it affects how you sound. And better quality instruments (notice that I didn’t say more expensive instruments) are, in general, going to help you play and sound better. But what matters at the end of the day is what you play and how you play it. You need a guitar that will help you be expressive in whatever way you need to be expressive. In part, that means getting an instrument that won’t get in your way (that won’t go out of tune, that has good intonation, that is made of quality materials, etc.). In part, however, that means not worrying so much about whether the guitar that you have is the same one as your hero.

It is clear to most advanced guitarists that any good, solid guitar is a professional-quality guitar. The guitars on this list are good, solid guitars at great prices. They are far more than just beginner guitars.

Bottom Line

The bottom line is this: If you’re looking for a good solid body electric guitar, you don’t necessarily have to look at four-figure price tags. If your budget is limited, you can still get a great-playing, great-sounding guitar that will serve you well and be with you for years. All that is left is for you to play it. The guitars that we have talked about are the best electric guitars under $500. Any of them would make a great first guitar, a great second guitar, or a great addition to a larger collection. If you are a beginner, the compilation of best products in this article can be of help to you. If you have a higher budget and would like to have a higher value electric guitar, check the comparison of the top options on this page.

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