When you’re getting started playing guitar, it’s totally normal to feel both excited and a bit overwhelmed at the same time. If you’re taking lessons at a music school or with a private instructor, there’s a chance they may have extra guitars for you to use.

But if not, or if you would rather have your very own guitar, you’re quickly realize that this is a much bigger decision deciding on guitars than it is deciding on what brand of juice you want to buy to have with your breakfast.

Not only are there countless makes and models out there, but the prices can range from less than $200 for a low end starter kit and go all the way through tens of thousands of dollars for some of the highest end professional models.

On top of that, it can make your head spin trying to compare features such as wood types, whether or not you should go with single coil pickups or humbuckers, to whatever the heck a floating bridge is.

Most people talk to a sales associate at their local guitar shop, but until you know exactly what you’re doing it can be hard to tell if the sales associate is trying to help you find the perfect guitar for your playing style, or just selling you a guitar they’re gonna make a larger commission on.

So to help you out and make sure you’re never confused and don’t have to worry about spending too much money on a guitar that’s not right for you, I’m going to discuss the differences between the most popular and timeless kinds of electric guitars out there for playing rock n roll.

Rock Mastery was designed to help you become a great rock musician. For that reason, we’re not gonna discuss guitars that are used in other styles of music such as jazz or country. Although many guitars can be used in a variety of styles, so the sake of this lesson we’re simply going to focus on playing rock n’ roll. With that in mind, we’re also going to eliminate acoustic guitars from the equation and focus on electric. After all, what rock guitarist doesn’t play electric guitar?

While there’s a nearly unlimited variety of electric guitars out there that are great for rock n’ roll, there are really five main varieties that you need to be aware of. And that is specifically what we’re going to concentrate on. These five are the Fender Stratocaster, Fender Telecaster, Gibson Les Paul, Gibson SG, and the Flying V.

Before you know it, you’ll be an expert at what makes each one unique, the styles of music they’re most commonly used in, as well as some of the most famous guitarists out there who use each one.

Every single style of guitar out there has certain major differences from one another, which will result in hearing different sounds and tones. So it’s very important you are educated on the biggest differences between each one. In other words, a guitar that may be perfect for a slow blues jam may be practically unusable for playing heavy metal.

In the next article we are going to look at one single most iconic guitar of all time. So keep an eye out for that.

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