Do Cheap Guitars Sound Bad?

If you have ever bought a cheap guitar, chances are that you could easily distinguish its sound from a more expensive guitar. It’s not uncommon for a beginner to purchase a cheap guitar, in fact, I did the same thing when I first began playing guitar, and to be frank, I bought the wrong one and it sounded poorly. The temptation of buying something because it’s cheaply priced, just to realize later that you need to replace parts to improve the sound defines the saying – “cheap is expensive,’ but do cheap guitars actually sound bad?

Most cheap guitars sound bad due to manufacturing flaws, cheap guitar parts, and high actions. Cheap guitars use lower-quality parts such as cheap plastic saddles, low-quality tuners, bridge pins, nuts, and soundboards that are too thick. That being said, some cheap guitars stand out in terms of their quality control and sound, these guitars will offer better quality at a lower price.

So does this mean that you need to give up on spending only a few hundred bucks on your guitar? No, absolutely not! Just because there are a lot of cheap guitars that sound poorly does not mean that you need to spend a few thousand dollars on a starter guitar. The fact that some inexpensive guitar manufacturers worry more about maximizing production than quality does not mean you have to throw out every cheap guitar option. There are also a few ways to remedy the cheap components in a guitar, electric guitars in particular have a lot of leeway for adjustment.

If you have just bought a cheaper guitar that sounds bad I will help point out some of the likely issues with your guitar. I will also give you some tips to make your guitar sound better and lastly, I will identify some of the best guitars that you can find at lower price points.

What Makes Cheap Guitars Sound Bad

A guitar is made up of several components or parts. Each part plays a specific function and all of the components of a guitar work together to produce a nice sound. If one part of the guitar is not functioning properly, then it will impact the guitar’s sound.

Of course, not all cheap guitars produce bad sound quality. Cheap is a relative term and as I mentioned before, you can sometimes make a lower quality guitar sound significantly better by making a few adjustments that we shall later discuss. Some of the reasons why cheap guitars will typically sound worse include:

Quality Control/Manufacturing Flaws

Cheaply produced guitars are produced in large batches. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but quality control can be a significant problem with cheap guitars. Brands like Gibson, Yamaha, Taylor did not become household names from making guitars with serious manufacturing defects and quality control issues. These brands tend to be in the mid-range to high-end when it comes to cost, and a large part of the reason for that is their reputation for quality.

Cheaper guitar manufacturers need to cut costs in order to produce cheaply priced instruments. This can result in a number of common quirks found in cheap guitars, which we will flesh out further below.

High Action

Cheap guitars are well known to have guitar strings positioned too high off the fretboard. Beginners often find this problematic, as a high action makes the guitar a little more difficult to play. This is because the strings will require you to apply more pressure whenever you want to sound a note. Having to constantly apply more pressure to each string will also tire your fingers out faster.

The typical action on an acoustic guitar will be around 5/64 of an inch on the top E string and 7/64 of an inch on the low string. An electric guitar will typically have a slightly lower action, at around 4/64 of an inch on the top E string and 6/64 of an inch on the low E string. Cheap guitars, whether it be electric or acoustic, can have significantly higher actions.

If you love slide playing your guitar, this might not be an issue since you have extra room when you are pressing and sliding the strings on your guitar. However, most guitarists will find high-action guitars more difficult to play.

Cheap Guitar Parts

Guitars have a number of parts that work together to produce a good sound. As already mentioned, if one part of the guitar is cheaply made, it will affect the overall output of the guitar. These parts include:

Bridge Pins

Cheaply made bridge pins can be a problem on acoustic guitars. Bridge pins work by attaching the string ends to the bridge plate. The function of the bridge pins is to filter certain sound frequencies and this will affect the tone and the overall sound of the guitar. Bridge pins also affect the tone volume and sustain.

You will find that cheaply made bridge pins tend to pop out easily and will negatively impact sound. Bridge pins are made of a variety of materials, the best being bone, brass, or ivory. The most common material nowadays is wooden bridge pins, but cheaper bridge pins will be made out of plastic.

Saddle

A saddle, just like other guitar parts and components, plays a huge part in determining the quality of the sound. This is because the saddle comes into direct contact with the strings and that dictates the intonation and the tone of the guitar sound. Some cheaply made saddles, especially the ones made from cheap plastic materials often produce a bad sound.

Acoustic guitar saddles are typically made out of either bone, plastic, or fossilized ivory. Electric guitar saddles will usually be made out of metal. Plastic saddles are common on acoustic guitars priced below $300. These cheaply-made saddles will often result in a significant loss of sound clarity.

Nuts

The nut is another one of the few components that comes into direct contact with the strings on the way to the tuners and the headstock. The nut is typically located where the neck ends and the headstock begins.

Poor quality or worn-out nuts can make the guitar produce a buzzing or rattling sound. The size and shape of the nut are surprisingly very important and easily manufactured incorrectly.

Nuts may be made out of bone, fossil ivory, metal, ivory, graphite, ebony, or plastic. You will typically only find bone or fossil ivory in high-end guitars. Plastic is once again the budget-guitar option, they are known to be brittle and offer poor sound quality.

Guitar Neck

Some cheap guitars come with warped guitar necks. This can be the result of a manufacturing flaw and when it happens, it leaves the guitar with a very bad sound problem. Guitar necks can sometimes be fixed through heat treatment, but this does not always work. If heat treatment does not work on your guitar neck, you will have to either replace the neck or the entire guitar. Unfortunately, guitar neck replacement will typically cost at least $250, so if you have a cheap guitar with an unfixable guitar neck you are likely better off replacing the guitar.

Soundboard

Inexpensive acoustic guitars will often have problematic soundboards. This is not an issue on electric guitars, as they are solid-bodied guitars and therefore have no vibrating soundboard. The “soundboard” is just the top of the guitar body, and although it may appear unassuming, it actually plays an important role in the tone of an acoustic guitar.

The recommended thickness for guitar soundboards is 2.8mm for softwoods and 2.5mm for other woods such as spruce. The thinner the soundboard, the brighter the tone. However, you will find some cheaply made guitars having soundboards that are too thick. Why would cheap guitars have thicker soundboards? Because higher-end guitar manufacturers will build soundboards extremely thin and it takes an incredible amount of precision to do this without the soundboard collapsing.

When the guitar has a thick soundboard, that compromises the quality of the sound. The sound will become dull and damp. Guitars that are produced in masses usually come with this problem since their aim is not on the quality of sound but the number of guitars produced. That means finishing may not be done to the required thinness.

Tuners/Machine Heads

A tuner is something that is typically purchased apart from the guitar itself, but it is another important component that can either enhance or degrade the quality of your guitar’s sound. Cheap guitar tuners or machine heads can result in bad guitar sound. You need high-quality guitar tuners especially if you are playing chords as opposed to if you just love playing riffs. Chords need accurate tuning and to achieve that, good quality tuners are necessary.

Without good quality tuners, you will not just struggle to tune your guitar but you will have to do it often since they often don’t do the best job of tuning the guitar in the first place.

Strings

Another important component to a guitar’s sound quality is the strings. All guitars will come with a set of strings, but cheaper guitars will often come with a low-quality set. Some of these strings will stretch too much, quickly become inconsistent, and feel rough to the touch.

Strings are everything when it comes to a guitar’s sound. That is why it is recommended to change the strings often, especially if you play frequently. The good news is, that if your guitar came with low-quality strings you can just swap them out with some D’addario’s, you are likely going to have to replace them prematurely anyways.

You can check out a detailed guide on when to change your guitar strings here.

Learning on a Cheap Guitar

I have seen many people ask, “can you learn on a cheap guitar?” Cheap is a relative term as I mentioned but yes, you can learn on a cheap guitar so long as all the parts and features are operable. Oftentimes a cheap guitar only needs a few adjustments to work and sound “good enough”. As a beginner, “good enough” is perfect because later on down the road, once you have learned to play, you can invest in a higher-end guitar.

I also mentioned that, during my early years in learning to play the guitar, I bought a cheap one that had some flaws and low sound quality. At that time, I wasn’t an expert on tuning and sound, though it was obvious to me there was a big problem.

With a few adjustments and replacements of some parts, my guitar became one of the best for me at that time. That does not mean that it sounded like a Gibson, but it was good enough for the job I needed it to do. Cheap does not always mean a poor-quality guitar. You can find a relatively cheap guitar that is fine and you can use it for learning.

Another reason why it may be a good idea for a beginner to get a cheap guitar is that learning is full of mistakes and blunders. It is far better to mess up a cheap guitar while you are still learning than to mess up a $2,000 guitar. With a cheap guitar, you can experiment with things that will later help you manage and maintain an expensive guitar.

You can check out an article on how to learn to play an electric guitar here.

How to Make a Cheap Guitar Sound Better

“How can I make a cheap guitar sound expensive?” This is a common question that I most frequently see from beginner guitar players. You want to enhance the sound without spending too much money, but you already know from my explanation above that no matter what adjustment you make, it won’t sound like a high-end guitar.

Your guitar may sound bad because of the problems that we have mentioned regarding the parts and the manufacturing flaws. It can be due to the strings that are old and worn out, tuners that are not stable, or how the guitar has been set up.

Luckily, a lot of the components that cause poor sound quality can be fixed, replaced, or adjusted. We can’t fix everything on a poorly sounding cheap guitar, but we can certainly substantially improve the sound quality. To make your cheap guitar sound better you should consider doing the following:

Replace The Strings

Check the strings of your guitar if they are still in good condition or not. Perhaps the poor sound quality is due to worn-out or damaged guitar strings. Keep in mind that old strings can and will produce a dull or bad sound even if the guitar has not been played consistently.

If you just purchased your guitar, chances are that if it is under $300 it did not come with D’Addario’s or another high-end guitar string. Replacing the guitar strings is a very low-hanging fruit because even the high-end ones can be purchased for around $10 a set. I personally favor D’Addario strings, they are some of the best sounding strings on the market and they are extremely durable.

Adjust the High Action

I mentioned before that cheap guitars often have high actions. This can be especially problematic for beginners, but the good news is that the action can be adjusted. You can lower the action by adjusting the truss rod. The truss rod is a metal bar that is typically located inside the guitar neck.

If adjusting the truss rod does not get your action low enough, you may need to sand the nut and the saddle down. Be careful doing this though, as sanding the nut and saddle too much can cause the fretboard to buzz. You may also need to adjust the guitar neck and bridge to achieve your desired low – medium action.

Use Thicker Strings

String gauges matter a lot when it comes to your guitar’s sound. Thicker strings produce a more pronounced and fuller sound with more volume than thin strings, but they do come with the disadvantage that they put more tension on the guitar neck and they are more difficult to bend.

Thicker strings are not a solution if you have a serious underlying problem in your guitar, but they can help if you’re guitar is not producing the tone you want or if you want to improve the sustain.

Get New Tuners

Sometimes tuners can be the problem in cheap guitars. When the tuners are cheaply made, they won’t properly tune and will cause the strings to produce a poor quality sound. Another issue with bad tuners is that as you try to reverse the tension on your tuners, they may adjust too fast, and this will lead to low tension. Some tuners are also difficult to turn and once you finally have your guitar in tune, the tuners will slip. This means that you will need to tune the guitar more frequently than you otherwise would. Be aware, however, there are several potential issues that could be causing your guitar to prematurely slip out of tune. It could also be old or poorly stretched strings, significant variations in temperature, the nut, or the saddle causing a guitar to slip out of tune.

Upgrade The Pickups

Pickups in electric guitars work like microphones. They are located right beneath the strings, and their job is to convert string vibrations into electricity. Guitar pickups rarely go bad, but issues with cheap pickups include: they can be wired poorly, wound more times than necessary, or be set too low in relation to the guitar strings.

When the pickup is faulty, it can cause a discrepancy in the volume between the pickups. This would generally lead to a bad sound. To fix this problem, you will need to examine if the pickups are the cause of the bad sound and upgrade them if necessary.

Use An Amp Simulator Plugin

Cheap electric guitars are easier to substantially improve than acoustic guitars. The main reason for this is that so much of the sound in an electric guitar comes from the pickup and the amp. One way to improve the sound of your electric guitar without using an amp all the time is to make use of an amp simulator plugin.

Amp simulator plugins are extremely popular among electric guitarists, but they do have some long-standing controversies surrounding them. Many guitarists swear by them as just as good or nearly as good as a regular amp, other guitarists won’t use them and believe that the sound quality is far inferior to a standard amp. My advice is to give one of the plugins a shot, they have come a long way in quality since they were first introduced and they are still improving.

Even if you are using a cheap electric guitar, your sound could still be much improved when using a software amp plugin like the Bias FX 2 software. This software will help you refine your guitar’s sound.

Do Expensive Guitars Sound Better?

Generally speaking, all things being equal expensive guitars will sound significantly better than cheap guitars. This is due to the high-quality craftsmanship that you would come to expect in a $2,000 guitar. That being said just because a guitar is “expensive” does not mean that it is a great guitar and just because a guitar is “cheap” does not mean that it is low quality.

Cheap Guitar vs Expensive Guitar Comparison

What Are the Best Cheap Guitars?

There is a lot of junk when you approach the $300 mark for a guitar. You can easily wind up with a guitar at that price range that simply will not do the job. There are some notable brands, however, that make really good guitars considering the price. Here is a list of a few options:

• Yamaha Pacifica. You can’t beat this electric guitar’s quality for the price. The Yamaha Pacifica typically sells for under $250, and at that price you should not be able to buy a guitar that sounds this good, but here it is!

• Squire Bullet Mustang HH. Another great and inexpensive electric guitar. The Squire brand has a reputation for being one of the best low-budget guitars that you can buy. The Mustang is one of the most popular starter electric guitars and after skimming the reviews and trying it out myself it’s clear why. The Mustang is easy to play and has a slightly shorter scale than many other electric guitars. You will likely want to do some tune-ups on it; thicker strings, and smooth out the frets. Another minor issue is that people frequently complain that the Mustang is packaged poorly and therefore, gets damaged in shipping. In my opinion though, this is not a real concern because you can simply return it if it arrives damaged.

• Ibanez AW54OPN. If you’re looking for a solid acoustic guitar at a lower pricepoint than Ibanez will not let you down. Ibanez has a long-standing reputation for making solid quality guitars, even at the budget price range. For under $300, this dreadnought style guitar packs a punch. Reviewers have complained that the action is really high, but this is par for the course with low-cost guitars.

You can check out our thorough comparison of the best guitars under $500 and under $300 here!

Final thoughts

As I have noted above, it’s only natural that low-cost guitars would come with an association that they are low quality. There are a lot of duds within the $300 and below price range, but that does not mean you have to get stuck with one. There are several high-quality options available in the lower price range, if you pick one up that is great and you might just want to make a few adjustments.

If on the other hand, you picked up a guitar with some substantial issues. My recommendation is that you consider whether it is worth it to dump money into revamping the guitar from the ground up or whether you are better off buying one of the more high-quality lower-cost guitars. Hope you enjoyed this article, you can check out more guitar tutorials here.