This page contains pricing for the most popular electric guitars, updated live, giving you the most current look at the market and what you can expect to pay for an electric guitar. If you're looking for an electric guitar price that we haven't highlighted here, you can hit us up in the comments section below.
Current Pricing for Most Popular Electric Guitars
We've found that Sweetwater sets the trends when it comes to retail value for musical instruments and music gear. They're often par particularly when it comes to electric guitar pricing. Tables below have been added (in the toggle menu) if you want to look at pricing for these guitars from other vendors.
Prices accurate as of Tue, September 26th, 2023.
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On the spot electric guitar pricing updates, focusing on the most popular brands and models.
Pricing Trends for Electric Guitars from Multiple Vendors
We've included prices for some of the above electric guitars from multiple vendor databases. There are five, in addition to Sweetwater, that we have access to. This gives you a fairly accurate picture of the price of the electric guitar in question. As mentioned, we've highlighted the most popular models from the top brands.
Electric guitar pricing from Amazon, ZZounds, eBay, SamAsh, and Walmart.
Compare Top Electric Guitar Prices
We use compare tables like this one for looking at pricing and features. This one includes five of the guitars from the above list. Though if you want to add another guitar, use the plus sign button in the bottom right-hand corner of the compare bar, which will show up when you click any of the compare buttons.
Guitar | Name | Rate | Shop |
|---|---|---|---|
 | PRS SE Custom 24 | 89.8 | |
 | Fender Player Stratocaster | n/a | |
 | Gibson Les Paul Studio | n/a | |
 | Squier Classic Vibe '50s Stratocaster | n/a | |
 | Epiphone Les Paul Standard '60s | 86.6 |
A Quick Beginner's Guide to Electric Guitars
What is an electric guitar?
An electric guitar has a body made up of a solid piece of wood, in contrast to the hollow body design of acoustic guitars. Per the name, electric solid body guitars are powered by magnets and electrical circuits, which produce sound that runs into an electric amplifier.
Electric guitars are known for being more versatile and aggressive than acoustics, and can be extremely loud, depending on the amplifier.
Played unplugged like an acoustic guitar, electric guitar have very little projection.
How electric guitars work
An electric guitar uses magnetized pickups to pull sound waves from string vibrations, which are then converted into an electrical signal.
That signal travels through an instrument cable to an amplifier, made up of a preamp, power amp, and speaker cab. Through this three-part system (often called a combo amp) the sound waves are amplified in open air.
Electric guitars use magnets to produce an electrical signal of soundwaves that are amplified in open air.
Read more: Best electric guitars overall
Things to consider before buying:
There are a few basic considerations you should have in mind before buying an electric guitar, which will help dictate the price range you settle on.
- Your budget (obviously)
- Your skill level
- How much you plan to play
- Whether you have an amp/how much money you want to spend on one
Important features to pay attention to:
Features have a tremendous impact on price, so pay attention to the following on the spec list:
- Body tonewood
- Body carving
- Body design - is there a top piece?
- Pickup/humbucker brand
- Hardware - stock or third-party?
- Gloss or finish
- Quality of internal electronics
Pickups and body design are going to have the biggest impact on price. Particularly whether or not the guitar has a top piece, the tonewood involved, and how much carving was done on the body.
How do you compare electric guitars and their prices?
You can use the feature list above to compare electric guitars and their pricing. For example, if you're comparing two electric guitars that are similar, yet one is more expensive, what features do you notice that are different?
Look for differences in the body and the pickups first. Those are going to be the biggest factors when determining cost.
If one has pickups from a reputable third-party brand like Seymour Duncan, that will account for some of the price difference.
Read more: Best Seymour Duncan pickups
Electric guitar price FAQs
Electric guitar prices will go down in some cases, though it's not common, at least not for new models that are currently in production. You can check our guitar gear price drop page for a live-updated look at discounts from multiple vendors. Guitars show up on there pretty frequently, often with a 10-15 percent discount.
For a decent beginner electric guitar, expect to pay somewhere between $300 and $550. While electric guitars under $300 do exist, we don't typically recommend them, even for beginners.
The top four electric guitar brands that we recommend are PRS, Gibson, Fender, and Epiphone. Read more: Best electric guitar brands
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