What would be a good acoustic musicians first electric guitar?

[waveform]

Fairly vague I know but whats a good starting point for some one who only plays acoustic?

Just for sound playability with out a pick. Looks dont matter.

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by waveform

Fairly vague I know but whats a good starting point for some one who only plays acoustic?

Just for sound playability with out a pick. Looks dont matter.

If you’re comfortable with a full size acoustic guitar, a Gibson ES-175 would/could be a showpiece instrument & steeped in history. I myself couldn’t really recommend a Telecaster because although popular, very different from any acoustic guitar I know of. There will be experts with better answers following, but nut width and string spacing will be a consideration worth looking at for your preferences.

[JKW-HTX]

I made the switch recently. I realized weight matters a lot for me so I try to avoid heavy guitars like les pauls. I actually liked telecasters (w/ humbuckers).

[Davis Webb]

What kind of music would you like to play?

Many choose telecasters or strats.

Stratocasters gives the biggest pallette of sound on any electric.
Telecasters have a wonderful clean tone and honest, acoustic-player friendly strums and fantastic jazz voicings.

Epiphones and hollow bodies are more acoustic-like.
Gibsons are classic rock guitars, think Santana

Then there are rock guitars that are designed just to get a great rock sound, Ibanez, Jackson.

So where do you see yourself in all this?

[Dadzmad]

After decades of playing fingerstyle on D size flat tops, this was my route:

Godin Kingpin (no cutaway and neck P-90). This one is a good transition to get down the touch and muting needed with an electromagnetic pickup. Work to lighten your attack and let the amp do the work. After a year or so get a MIM standard telecaster. You won't get sent to heck for using pure nickel 12's on it.

Amps are another subject. There is good advice to be found here.

Go for it.

[Alder Statesman]

You can play anything on a Tele. There is one to fit any budget.

[Dru Edwards]

Originally Posted by Davis Webb

What kind of music would you like to play?

Many choose telecasters or strats.

Stratocasters gives the biggest pallette of sound on any electric.
Telecasters have a wonderful clean tone and honest, acoustic-player friendly strums and fantastic jazz voicings.

Epiphones and hollow bodies are more acoustic-like.
Gibsons are classic rock guitars, think Santana

Then there are rock guitars that are designed just to get a great rock sound, Ibanez, Jackson.

So where do you see yourself in all this?

+1. I would start with what kind of music you're looking to play. Lots of Strat, Tele, Les Paul and SG fans here.

An amp will give you about 50% of your tone so make sure you include that in your price.

[roylor4]

As Davis points out, it depends on the tone you want. The amp is a huge part of the equation as well.

Humbuckers offer thickness and warmth, but bad ones can sound muddy.

Single coils can offer great note separation but bad ones can sound thin and overly "jangly".

Weight is another consideration. Les Paul's are Iconic but can be VERY heavy.

Tele's can be pretty heavy too.

Hollow bodies can have wider nuts and react a bit more like an acoustic.

ES 335 style guitars can be versatile and cover pop, rock, blues.

I think of LP's and SG's as R&R machines for the most part.

I would stay away from sub $200 guitars. They can be ok to learn on, but the cheap hardware and pickups on them almost insure a lack of long-term satisfaction with them. IMO, in the under $500 realm I would look at G&L Tribute and PRS.

Ibanez and the Squier Classic Vibe series are also worth a look.

At/around the $750 mark I would look at used American Strat or Tele, Reverend or used/B-stock American G&L.

The world of electrics can be more confusing than acoustics, especially when you consider how they interact with different amps.

Good luck and take your time. There is an electric out there w/your name on it.

[Steve DeRosa]

Originally Posted by Dadzmad

...Godin Kingpin (no cutaway and neck P-90). This one is a good transition to get down the touch and muting needed with an electromagnetic pickup. Work to lighten your attack and let the amp do the work...You won't get sent to heck for using pure nickel 12's on it...
Amps are another subject. There is good advice to be found here.

Originally Posted by Dru Edwards

...An amp will give you about 50% of your tone so make sure you include that in your price.

Originally Posted by roylor4

...Hollow bodies can have wider nuts and react a bit more like an acoustic.

ES 335 style guitars can be versatile and cover pop, rock, blues...

I would stay away from sub $200 guitars. They can be ok to learn on, but the cheap hardware and pickups on them almost insure a lack of long-term satisfaction with them...

The world of electrics can be more confusing than acoustics, especially when you consider how they interact with different amps...

Good advice all - my tuppence worth, in order:

• I own the Godin CW II single-cut/twin P-90 version of the Kingpin, and if this is your first excursion into the world of electric guitar it would be one of my top two choices. First off, as Roy states it's extremely "acoustic" in its overall design and response - if you're familiar with the (justly) well-regarded Seagull mini-jumbos this one's a dead-ringer in a blindfold test when it comes to weight (just a tick over five pounds on the strap), playing feel (same neck as the Seagull MJ's), and setup (some of the best in the business, and even more so at its very reasonable price); tonally it's a mix of some of the best features of Gibson and Gretsch to my ears - the characteristic clarity and midrange response of P-90's, tempered with an "airy" feel imparted by the lightweight (but strong) woods used in its construction (even the best laminated jazzboxes can get "thuddy/muddy" unless teamed with the right amp - in addition to their near-solidbody weight in some cases). Finally, the control layout is as simple as it gets: volume/tone/pickup switch - everything you need and absolutely nothing you don't...
• Until very recently I never used anything lighter than 12's (mostly flatwounds) on any of my electrics - including my (current) Strat and (since-sold) USA '52 Tele RI and '61 SG RI - and stepped down to 11's on some (but not all) only as a concession to age. Bottom line here is that these guitars were designed around the relatively heavy (by today's standards) string gauges of their day, and IME they still sound/play their best with a typical vintage setup (little-known electric-guitar secret #1: those rockabilly cats and bebop jazzers of the '50s relied on flatwounds and ultra-low action to crank out those "how-did-they-do-that" licks - and if you've had a first-class professional fret job and neck/bridge adjustment you might be surprised at how shred-friendly an old-school guitar can be); I had the occasion to set up a (since-passed) local WW II vet's original PAF '58 darkback/goldtop LP several years ago (forget it - his grandkids got it and it's not going anywhere) as it would have come from Kalamazoo six decades ago - and trust me when I say that even most long-time aficionados have a seriously limited concept of the tonal palette of a vintage Lester...
• The value of a good amp to your overall tone cannot be overstated, and many new (and a good number of older) players fail to realize the potential of their expensive guitars by teaming them with a mediocre amp - your $5000 Collings isn't going to sound any better than a $149 Squier (and possibly worse) if you're cranking it through a $59 big-box-store coupon-day special - and if push came to shove I'd sooner spend a little more on a well-made amp than a top-shelf guitar. As a fingerstyle player you'll want as much clean headroom and dynamic range as possible (little-known electric-guitar secret #2: "big power" in an amp does not automatically equate with ear-splitting volume and massive amounts of distortion - Les Paul used a silverface Twin Reverb for his weekly NYC club gigs), and as a newbie you'll want things as simple as possible (translation: think analog - you don't need a modeling rig with 500 presets, and if you focus on developing your tone through touch and technique you never will given your preferred style); while tubes are still considered the Holy Grail of tone for many guitarists, a good analog solid-state amp can give you more clean wattage at lower cost and lighter weight - something in the 40-50 watt range (it's about clean headroom, remember) with a 12" speaker can be had for about one-third the cost of a typical tube amp with comparable features, and it'll take you from the bedroom to the gig with no problem...
• As a rule hollowbody and semi-hollow guitars are more expensive than similar-quality solids - it's just the nature of the beast - and IME if you're inclined to take advantage of their best-of-both-worlds tonal properties you don't want to count nickels and dimes; by the same token inexpensive (relatively speaking) doesn't have to mean cheap, and if you're a fingerpicker looking at the Pac-Rim offerings from Ibanez and Washburn you'd be remiss if you didn't take a Gretsch Electromatic 5400/5600-Series for a test drive. I've been a Gretsch owner since early 1964, played a good few hundred Brooklyn originals over the last 55+ years, and IME the Korean-made E-matics (forget the Chinese/Indonesian entry-level 2000-Series) are among the finest instruments ever to bear the Gretsch marque, comparable to (and often exceeding) the quality of the vintage stuff when new; I bought a (since-discontinued) G5622T-CB in May '16, and suffice it to say that it's one of only three guitars I've owned since the '60s that needed absolutely no setup whatsoever (the other two being the aforementioned Godin and a '62 White Falcon RI). The fact that they cam be had for under $1K (well under in some cases) is just icing on the cake - and if you're a fan of those old Chet Atkins tones, nothing else sounds like a Gretsch but a Gretsch...

[JeffreyAK]

Originally Posted by waveform

Fairly vague I know but whats a good starting point for some one who only plays acoustic?

Just for sound playability with out a pick. Looks dont matter.

It sounds like you're looking for something that plays like an acoustic and would seem familiar to you playing with your fingers, and I'm not sure such a beast exists but look to nut and saddle widths and scale as your guides. In that case, you might not like a 1 5/8" classic Strat neck no matter how many people (including me!) think it's great. Really depends what you want, you can learn to adapt to nearly anything but at the end of the day, the electric will feel different, and you'll probably want to play it differently too.

[moon]

You asked about "sound playability" - I'll assume you mean sound & playability.

Some might disagree but IMO the plank of wood is the least important in determining the final sound of an electric guitar. First is the speaker, then the amp, the pickups, then the guitar itself.

So, when you choose a guitar, first figure what pickups you want. As mentioned, humbuckers are richer, darker and more compressed. Single coils are brighter, thinner and more dynamic. There's a lot of variation within each type. Pickups with more turns of wire will be darker and more powerful (hence push a tube amp into overdrive quicker). Lower winds will be brighter and more responsive.

You can either choose single coils and spend all your time trying to make them sound fatter, or choose humbuckers and spend all your time trying to make them sound brighter

I'm a fan of low-wound "vintage" humbuckers - but everything has its place. Pickups, pedals, amp & speaker choices all combine to create the final sound. The art of electric guitar tone is blending them all together.

Many of the same playability rules apply to an electric. A good setup: nut slot height, neck relief, bridge height, nicely levelled frets can make a huge difference. There's a very good chance you can improve an off-the-shelf guitar by tweaking the neck relief & bridge height. A proper, professional setup would look at the nut & frets too.

You'll find virtually all electric guitars have a narrower nut. Some have flatter fretboards, some more curved.

An electric may have six strings and a fretboard but it's a different instrument. Notes sustain more and then there's the snarl and roar of tubes driven hard. It's a whole new world of sound to explore and new ways to play.

[swarfrat]

I spent 30 years avoiding Teles like the plague. Give in now and save yourself a lot of fighting.

[Steve DeRosa]

Originally Posted by moon

...Some might disagree but IMO the plank of wood is the least important in determining the final sound of an electric guitar. First is the speaker, then the amp, the pickups, then the guitar itself...

You can either choose single coils and spend all your time trying to make them sound fatter, or choose humbuckers and spend all your time trying to make them sound brighter...

You'll find virtually all electric guitars have a narrower nut. Some have flatter fretboards, some more curved...

In order:

• Only when it's a "plank of wood" (AKA solidbody) - and as you state, many players (myself included) might disagree; hollowbodies and semi-hollows in general have a distinctive response and tonality, immediately recognizable to an experienced player (and things get even more convoluted when you introduce the different possible combinations of variables: body width/depth, open vs. closed f-holes, wood thickness, solid vs. laminated construction, scale length, etc.), that keeps them selling steadily despite their nine-decade-old technology...
• As I stated above, IME "classic" electric guitars (of whatever type) still sound/play their best when set up within their original design parameters - and while the string options in the '40s-50s were extremely limited (12's - almost inevitably flatwounds to boot - were as light as it got in an over-the-counter electric set); both my (since-sold) '52 Tele RI and (still in-the-house) Strat (among others) were set up with 12's from day one, and while there was absolutely no mistake that you were listening to a Fender there was nothing edgy, steely, or "thin" about the tone - so unless you need to bend up a major third or more on every song you play or you're dealing with physical limitations (as I am), I'd strongly recommend heavier strings, a good setup, and some old-fashioned practice...
• Perhaps it's a result of the "crossover" phenomenon such we see here on the AGF, but mainstream manufacturers of both electric and acoustic guitars are increasingly producing models with wider/thicker necks - even Fender has moved away from their once-standard 1-5/8" to 1-11/16" on many of their offerings (shame, since I always preferred the early-60's style neck). If this is a major issue the aforementioned Godin hollowbodies are identical to the well-known Seagull MJ in this regard, and Eastman's highly-regarded hollows and semis boast a 1-3/4" neck that owes much to their successful acoustic lineup; in addition, many Pac-Rim derivatives of the LP/335 are equipped with period-accurate late-50's necks which, while not strictly "acoustic" in feel, have sufficient girth to satisfy many former acoustic-only players...

For me, it's just Strats these days...

[MC5C]

You can't go wrong with a Squier/Fender Tele as a first electric after playing an acoustic. There is a reason so many country players use them. If you've never worked the electric side of the fence you have no clue about tone, sound, pickups, amps, pedals, so just start basic with the idea that you may want to change once you learn a bit. One outlier electric is the Gibson SG style. It has a waist location and neck installation that makes it play like a really long, big instrument. You may find you like it, it puts your left hand farther away from your body.