BEST CHEAP ELECTRIC GUITAR for 2021 + Buying Guide

Today we’re going to show the best cheap electric guitar for 2021.  To start, here’s a quick Showcase of the Best Cheap Electric Guitar for 2021:

The first, is the Ibanez GRGM21 Gio Mikro Electric Guitar White w/ Stand, and in a wonderful white color. It is a three-quarter length guitar so it’s a little bit shorter. So it’s perfect for the younger guitar players, starting out the perfect travel guitar if you want to throw it in your suitcase when you travel to your next exotic gig.
Just because it’s a cheap electric guitar as well, it does not compromise on tone. And it certainly doesn’t compromise on looks. Paul Gilbert actually has his own signature guitar of this brand that he uses on tour to get those crazy Paul Gilbert stretches on the go.
It’s awesome, it’s perfect for practicing on as well backstage. Here are some of the specs: got a poplar body, string through bridge Ibanez infinity “R” humbuckers, nice high output modern pickups.
One volume knob, one tone knob, 3-way selector maple neck with a maple fretboard and 24 of Ibanez finest frets and of course, Ibanez tuners.
Because it’s a shorter guitar there’s less string tension so you can get some crazy bends on the go. Like previously mentioned, the infinity R humbuckers are quite high output, which makes them great for rock and metal music. But when you rock it on a clean sound it means it has amazing clarity… So there is the first of our best cheap electric guitars for 2021, the Ibanez Gio Mikro guitar. This one’s is in white, but it also comes in a variety of vivid lovely 80s-style colors as well.

The next on our list of best cheap electric guitar is the Epiphone SG Special with Chrome Hardware and KillPot, Ebony. This guitar shape needs no introduction. The SG is one of the most iconic guitar shapes in rock and roll history, used by the likes of Angus Young, Robby Krieger, Dweezil Zappa, Tony Lommi, and Derek Trucks.
It’s a beautiful thing that resonates like nothing else, and it looks like nothing else. I’m an SG user myself, so I’m kind of gushing about this guitar. The first time I ever saw this guitar is live on television, when Angus Young, and at the writing of this article, Malcolm Young had already passed away, so RIP to Malcolm Young. Anyways back to the guitar the differences between this and the Gibson are minimal probably thanks to the way it’s constructed.
It’s a mahogany body and mahogany neck, it’s got a slim taper D profile, it’s a glued on neck as well. On a guitar this price it’s pretty crazy. It’s got Alnico classic pickups and a 3-way selector. It also has one volume knob, one tone knob, with coil tapping capability, so you can pop these out and split the humbuckers to the sound of a single coil if you like the sound of a Stratocaster.
It has 22 medium jumbo frets, and Epiphone deluxe tuners. It’s a rock’n’roll beast that let’s you play not just AC/DC style rock’n’roll, it also has some nice clean sounds, and you can get the coil tapping on the go.
So this guitar plays looks and sounds amazing, and it’s a perfect guitar to get if you want to look like your idols, stand in front of the mirror, and rock out. If the younger guitar player in your house wants to play as well, it’s not an expensive guitar, but it looks and sounds like a Gibson guitar – it’s great!

Number three on the list of best cheap electric guitar for 2021, is the Fender Squier Affinity Telecaster – Butterscotch Blonde Bundle with Gig Bag, Tuner, Strap, Picks, and Austin Bazaar Instructional DVD.  If you were to put a gun to my head, I probably could not tell you how Fender managed to make a guitar like this for the price of Fender or even a Squier, it’s all the same really.
The Affinity series come in a plethora of colors, and the choice of maple and rosewood necks obvious Telecaster used by the likes of Keith Richards, Jeff Buckley, Joe Strummer, Prince, and Brad Paisley. It’s a very, very well-known guitar.
The first mass-produced solid-body guitar was Fender Esquire and Fender Broadcaster (later to become the Fender Telecaster), first made in 1948. So this guitar has a long history, and it’s a crazy good guitar. This guitar is obviously the cheapest Squier that they make. It’s just a Telecaster through and through.
The Squier has that lovely twang because of the body shape, and the neck it’s an alder body – single coil pickups, 3-way selector, one volume knob, one tone knob. Straight up, it is a lovely satin and maple neck. This model has a rosewood fretboard, so this is the perfect axe if you want a cheap electric guitar like the iconic Telecaster sound.
Either playing in your bedroom if you’re starting off, or if you want to add another Sonic layer to your live sound or recordings, yeah it’s crazy good. It’s not just for country and twangy stuff as well – remember the song ‘Killing in the Name of’ by Rage Against the Machine was recorded on a Telecaster, and not a very expensive Telecaster I might add.
Fresh out of the box, it hasn’t been set up, and it plays absolutely amazing. The satin neck has a lovely feel, you’re going to tell that’s a telecaster straight away.

Next on our list of best cheap electric guitar for 2021, this is the Slash”AFD” Signature Les Paul Special-II. This isn’t just any Slash Epiphone, this is the “AFD” guitar outfit.  AFD obviously meaning Appetite for Destruction, it’s got the same color and the top as the Les Paul that he famously used to record and play live in 1989-ish
This guitar is a beautiful looking thing, like previously mentioned, flame maple amber top. It’s got Slash’s lovely skull and crossbones and the top hat signature on the headstock. It also has 2 ceramic Epiphone pickups, 1 volume knob, 1 tone knob, a 3-way selector and stop tail piece. I forgot to mention what the outfit thing was… when you buy this guitar you get it with a Slash- branded gig bag, free Slash picks, a strap, a cable and free online lessons from the lovely people at Epiphone. So this is a great bundle package for beginners and pros alike, or for people that just really dig Slash.
And it’s not an expensive guitar (currently on sale at the time of this article!)

It’s got a Mahogany body and an Mahogany neck. It’s a lovely like C profile – very, very Slash because the 58 necks were quite chunky. That’s where all the Les Paul tone comes from.
One of the cool little perks, is there’s a tuner built into the pickup surround. Which is great! Obviously cream pickup surrounds, zebra pickups this thing absolutely screams Slash! It’s just so cool, makes you want to play some more Guns n Roses on it.
It’s a lot of fun to play it’s got that lovely Gibson, Les Paul…sound. It’s such a thick sound that every single note in the chord is ringing out. It’s an amazing guitar, the Epiphone Slash outfit comes with a bag as mentioned, and it’s a stunning guitar to play, it resonates like a like a proper Les Paul. It’s astounding!

 

Our next guitar on the best cheap electric guitar for 2021 list is this Fender Squier Bullet Stratocaster Hard Tail – Brown Sunburst Bundle with Gig Bag, Tuner, Strap, Picks, and Austin Bazaar Instructional DVD.  The Bullet Stratocasters are the cheapest Stratocaster that Fender.. well / Squire makes, but that does not mean the compromise on playability or tone.
The guitar plays amazing, and it sounds like a Stratocaster, a bloody Strat for just over a couple hundred dollars, with that name on the headstock, it’s remarkable.
This guitar has basswood body, three single coil pickups – usual for a Stratocaster – a vintage style six screw tremolo bar, one volume knob, and two tone knobs. A 5-way selector to go through and between the pickups.
It’s got a lovely satin maple neck, lovely and smooth, and nine and a half inch radius rosewood fretboard with 21 lovely Fender frets on it. Good tuners! Because that’s one of the things that kind of suck with cheap of guitars… their tuning capabilities, but this guitar, they’re great.
Obviously, Squire is made by Fender, so you know it’s going to be good even when you hammer the tremolo a wee bit. Obviously the Stratocaster is one of the most iconic shapes in rock and roll used by obviously Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, John Mayer…. and who else, Eric Clapton. Everybody has got a Strat in their arsenal somewhere, and this is one you can get either if you’re starting out and you want the kind of lovely chimey “stratty” sound. Or if you want to have one in the studio or just to noodle around on.
They play amazing, and like I said; for just under a couple hundred bucks, it’s a lot of guitar!
Ooops, forgot to mention one of the best Strat players to ever walk the earth: Stevie Rays Vaughan! If you don’t know who he is, Google him! So that was the marvellous Squire Bullet Stratocaster, a fantastic cheap guitar well into 2021.  Check out the guitar by itself, or in a bundle with a classic Fender amplifier pictured below.

Next up, another guitar being mentioned on a lot of best cheap electric guitar for 2021 lists is the Yamaha Pacifica, but the Model 012 is no longer available for 2021.  It is now replaced with the Yamaha Pacifica PAC120H BL Solid-Body Electric Guitar, Black,medium.
What this guitar can do compared to the rest of the other guitars, keeping the same amp sounds, is amazing. The Pacifica name has been around for a very long time, and the reason they still going, is because they’re amazing quality, amazing value for money, and they sound absolutely kick-ass!
This version here is in black, but you’ll have to check availability as they do a metallic red version, a sonic blue, and a white one. It’s got a lovely smooth satin maple neck, rosewood fingerboard, one humbucker, and two single coils.
The variations in this guitar are pretty crazy. You can do everything from rock and roll stuff. Go up to the single coils and get a bit spangly, and nice, get some Hendrix on the go. It has one volume knob, one tone knob. I haven’t got the [tremolo] arm (pictured) at the minute… it’s got a six screw vintage style tremolo.
As mentioned, it has three pickups in this guitar, controlled by the five-way selector, obviously bridge humbucker, next position, these two coils = “spanky” Strat kind of sound. You got lovely thick sound with the humbucker pickups, and the guitar plays and sounds amazing.
A year ago, the main perk about the Yamaha was a bundle with a line six spider five amp. That’s got everything from old Marshall plexi sounds going through to full-on Mesa Boogie, dual rectifier, crazy metal sounds. It also has loads of effects built-in as well, built-in tuners, you can plug your headphones in there and just jam in the living room with yourself, or plug in an iPod or some variant of tablet into it and jam along with your favorite records.  However, at the time of writing this article, the bundle was not available, but the Fender model above still comes with a starter bundle.

It’s a very, very nice guitar, and I’ve noticed that this guitar resonates quite a lot as well. It feels like that I’m like the Slash Les Paul guitar that we talked about before. It’s obviously polar opposite guitar than the Les Paul, but it’s got a nice resonance to it. Feels like you’re playing something special, very, very nice for our list of best cheap electric guitars for 2021.

We could not talk about the best cheap electric guitars for 2021 without mentioning the Washburn PXL20B Parallaxe Single Cut Solid-Body Electric Guitar, which updates from the PXL 100 for 2021. Quite an expensive guitar, but it’s here for comparison.

Some specs on this bad lad guitar, it’s got a basswood body, it’s obviously a single cut so a very familiar comfortable shape. It’s got a lovely, carved top on it, so the top is nice and raised like that. It’s stunning.
One volume knob for each of the Duncan designed pickups, which are Seymour Duncan pickups. String through bridge design, one tone knob, lovely shiny as hell rosewood fingerboard, with 24 frets, a lovely parallax logo on the 12th fret. Obviously, this is from the parallax series of guitars— Washburn guitars.
One of the crazy things is, the bloody access you can get. Look at that cutaway there, like you can reach the pickup, with how much access there is up there. Normally on a single cutaway guitar like a standard Les Paul, you’ve got a stretch. However, with this guitar, you can just play the pickup. It’s remarkable! Washburn has an amazing ability to make stuff like that on their guitars.
This guitar is fantastic it feels absolutely rock-solid, but like I said, it’s a more expensive guitar. It’s got Korova machine head, so it stays in tune remarkably well. The whole thing resonates like an absolute bad lad!
The sustain is remarkable. Also what’s weird, it’s 24 frets on a single cutaway a guitar. Usually these kind of guitars are… Gibson or Epiphone, so you get 22 frets with this guitar has two octaves, like the only metal I know, not all fun and games heavy metal though.
This thing plays clean sounds astoundingly well, which rounds out our review of the extremely sleek beautiful thick sounding Washburn Parallax PXL 20B.

Of course, if you’re not sure if you are ready for an electric guitar and all the guitar amps (amplifiers) that go with them, make sure you check out our article on the Best Cheap Acoustic Guitars for 2021 and Buying Guide.

HOW TO CHOOSE AN ELECTRIC GUITAR BUYING GUIDE

Like other musical instruments, there are electric guitars that are better suited for different styles of music.  Knowing what type of music you want to play will help you choose the type of electric guitar to buy.  Combine the type with what your budget is, and you have a starting place.  It’s a personal choice as to what sounds good and feels good to you.

So what are the different kinds of electric guitars?  There are three broad categories of electric guitars:  a solid body guitar; a hollow body guitar, and a semi-hollow guitar.

During the popularity of the “Swing” era of music in the 1930s, the big bands with large horn sections often drowned out the acoustic guitar player, so the need for an “amplified guitar” grew.  During that time, the guitar companies such as Epiphone, Rickenbacker, and Gibson started manufacturing guitars that had amplification devices in an ordinary acoustic guitar, and this was the birth of the hollow body category of electric guitars.  It wasn’t until the 1950s that the Fender Guitar company created the first solid body guitar.  Then in the late fifties, Gibson guitar came out with the first semi-hollow electric guitar.

Hollowbody Electric Guitars are frequently used by country, folk, and jazz guitar players.  The holllowbody is more like an acoustic guitar.

 

 

 

Solid body Electric Guitars produce the most sustain, and you will not get as much feedback between your electric guitar’s pickups and your guitar amplifier.  The solid body guitar is probably this king of guitars for rock, blues, and some country music.

Semi-Hollow body electric guitar.  The Semi-hollow body electric guitar is a combination of hollow body warmth with some of the sustain and anti-feedback features of a solid body guitar.  Many rock, blues and rock-a-billy artists select a semi-hollow body electric guitar.

 

INTO THE WOODS

There are several types of woods used to build guitars.  Sometimes several types are used to build a single guitar.  It’s not uncommon for the body to be made from one wood, while the neck and other parts of the guitar are made from a different type of wood.  Here’s a short list of the types of wood with a brief description.

Tonewoods are varieties of wood with tonal properties—their fundamental sound—that make them good choices for use in instruments. The firmness, weight and density of each species of wood help shape its tone. Every piece of wood within a species will also have unique variations in grain and color, which contribute to the unique look and feel of an electric. Below are some common tonewoods used for the bodies, necks and fingerboards of electric guitars.

POPULAR WOODS FOR A GUITAR BODY

Alder:  Alder is a medium-weight wood with a strong, clear, full-bodied sound.

Swamp Ash: Swamp ash is light and resonant, offering pleasant highs, firm lows and a slightly scooped midrange.

Northern Ash: Northern ash is slightly denser and heavier with a more cutting sound and is most commonly paired with a carved maple top.

Mahogany: Mahogany is a fairly dense wood that offers natural compression (leveling of dynamics) with strong mid-tones and an overall warmer, more woody tonal range.

Maple:   Maple is a dense hardwood generally partnered with a second, lighter wood. An all-maple body produces a bright, focused tone with a fast note decay that cuts through a mix.

Korina:  Korina is a fairly light hardwood that yields great clarity, warmth and definition with strong resonance and sustain.

Basswood:  Basswood is a very light and fairly soft wood with a well-balanced tonality and a muscular midrange.

Poplar: Poplar is a relatively soft hardwood that is well-balanced sonically, but isn’t particularly resonant or sustaining.

POPULAR WOODS FOR A GUITAR NECK

Maple:  Maple necks can impart a lively and bright tone that can help add clarity to the top end of a large-bodied guitar.

Mahogany: Mahogany necks can help add warmth and fatness to the overall tonal range of a guitar.

Carbon fiber-reinforced necks: Carbon fiber rods have little to no effect on tone, but are used to add rigidity and stability to necks, helping protect thinner, faster-playing necks against breakage and excessive bending.

POPULAR FINGERBOARD WOODS

Ebony: Ebony is a very hard, smooth wood. As a fingerboard, it is fast playing and is very bright sounding with long sustain.

Pau Ferro:  Pau ferro is a very hard wood with tighter grain than rosewood, making it smooth and easy to play. Tonally, pau ferro has a slightly snappier tone than rosewood and a warmer tone than ebony.

Maple: Maple fingerboards and one-piece maple necks are fast playing and bright sounding with great sustain.

Rosewood:  Historically, rosewood was one of the most commonly used woods for fretboards. However, due to environmental concerns, many manufacturers are transitioning to rosewood alternatives, including ebony and pau ferro.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF GUITAR NECK CONSTRUCTION

Just as there are three types of bodies for a guitar, there is basically three types of guitar necks.

Bolt-on necks are, where the neck is literally bolted onto the body of the guitar. These are great for fixing or repairing a broken guitar neck, but you give up some of the sustain level and some resonance.

The glued guitar neck is a “set neck”, which creates additional stability in the guitar neck and gives improved resonance and sustain.

The “neck-through” guitar extends the guitar neck through the entire length of the guitar body.  This makes it the most stable, giving you the best sustain and resonance.

What makes the Guitar an Electric Guitar is the Pickups

The pickups are the devices mounted on the guitar that pickup the magnetic pulse of the vibrating strings and sends that signal to the guitar amplifier to create the electric guitar sound.

Electric guitars can come with one, two, or even three pickups.  If there are multiple pickups, there generally is a selector switch to select which pickups are being used based on the position of the selector switch.  A guitar can have a 3-way selector up to a 5-way selector switch that will rotate through the pickup combinations, giving you different sounds for your electric guitar.

There are two basic types of pickups: Single-coil pickups and Humbucker pickups.  The Humbucker has two coils and tend to be warmer tone than single pickup guitars.

There are even electric guitars with both a single coil and a humbucker pickup, and the selector switch helps chose which combination of pickups to play through.

Bridge of the Guitar

The bridge is what holds the end of the guitar strings to the body of the electric guitar.  There are two types: fixed, or stop-tail, and tremolo guitar bridge, which gives you the ability to use the famous “wammy bar” to get a vibrato-type of guitar sound.

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