I believe everyone should play a guitar suited for them. I mean, you may not like what other people who also play like. I like my guitars medium heavy and pretty customizable because that's how I play. Other people like hollow bodies and semi hollow bodies over a full bodied guitar.
But how do you know what you want to play until you tried out everything? What if you don't have time to try out all the different kinds of guitars? Well, good thing for you that I'm here to help.
It all comes down to what kind of music that you want to play.
Know Your Role:
Metal Shredder: you want a thinner neck (or jazzneck) on your axe and a full access neck so that you can solo on on the frets. And you definetly want to go electric, it's cool to jam on acoustics but they are only for practice. Then you'll probably want some hot rodded pickups, I like the DimeTime's from Dean because of their high output. Also get some Overdrive, Chorus and Distortion.
Country Style: you'll probably want to go acoustic and get yourself some acoustic pickups just so you can plug in, if you need to. For these, I recommend Martin guitars, hands down. Also, pick your self up some ultra-light strings for the most brillance, which is important in country music.
Classic Players: you really have a variety of options. My advice is get a Tele-Strat and some lipstick pickups or a hollowbody to get those great vintage tones. Get yourself a wah and a tube amp. You might want to get a guitar with a Floyd Rose bridge for all your bendy solo's.
All Around Player: Go with a full body guitar, a wah and some distortion. Try to get a guitar with 2 humbuckers and a single coil to cover your bases on tone.
Got Wood?
Guitars are made from a variety of different woods. This include, Maple, Ash, Alder, Rosewood, Spruce, Mahogany, Lacewood, Koa, Walnut and Basswood. Here's how it breaks down essentially.
Maple: Good for high attack and high-mid tones, on the fretboard it's very bright but produce diminished low end tones.
Basswood: Is very soft wood and produces good low end sound.
Walnut: Great overall tones, very hard wood which makes it very heavy wood as well.
Alder: Good midrange wood.
Ash: Ash is a really tricky wood when it comes to guitars, for ash guitars, I would really recommend playing them first before purchasing them, just because there are so many factors that affect the quality of this wood. Ash sounds similar to Alder with good rich mid tones.
Koa: Good tonal qualities, very well rounded and sweet high end sound.
Lacewood: Good wood for low end tones.
Spruce: Has good ranges in tone but is often hard to work with and often requires heavy finishes to keep the tonal qualities of the wood sounding right.
It's All in the Pickups!
Now, I'm not about to try to explain all the different kind of pick ups that are out there because that would be impossible to try to cover, But I will go over the basic's for you to help simplify the process.
Single Coil: Famous on the Telecaster (the slant) Single's are good for playing high end tones with a lot of sustain. Hook these baby up to a Cry Baby and you'll be singing the blues in no time.
Humbucker: Great for metal and anything that needs a "full" sound to it. Not as much high end as the single coil, but it makes up for it in other ways. This types of pickups sound good with distortion and overdrive.
Other: there are other types like the double coil and triple coil pickups but these are essentially single coils just stacked next to each other, they offer up a bit more range than a single coil but that is about the only difference.
Oh Baby!! The Body!!!
Full: All wood (or other material), great for modern guitar and classic electric guitar.
Semi-Hollow: Good vintage sound, good for country. Semi-hollow guitars don't have to have sound holes or cut outs in them. A good example of this is the 1957 Sears Silvertone.
Jazz-body: Acoustic guitar that's half the width of a dreadnought. I own one of these, mines an Ibanez ATL. This guitars are good on the form factor and feel like an electric when your holding it. My ATL has a jazz neck too, so it's easy to play fast on. I haven't seen very many of these styles of guitars, but since I own one, I know they are out there.
Bridges: Location, Location, Location.
There are also a ton of different style of bridges. I'll try to put them in layman's terms for you.
Fixed: lots of Gibsons and Epiphones are like this. These bridges are a dream to work on and easy to replace by yourself. No special adjustments to make. On some models ou can adjust the height of the bridge (action) by turning some thumb screws.
Floating: A floating bridge, like a Floyd Rose system, are usually inset into the body of the guitar, this means, you usually have to take off the back plate to put on new strings. Floyd Rose Bridges are pretty nice though and offer more customization than a fixed bridge and you can usually do it all on the fly. These are great for hot-rodding your guitar.
Suspension: Strats have these, they are kind of like a floating bridge but not as customizable, they usually have springs under the bridge that elevate the strings. The bridge rocks back and forth with the use of a tremelo arm (whammy bar). These are more customizable than a fixed bridge because you can adjust the action of the string indivdually.
