Welcome, acoustic guitar fan! You are looking for a new electro acoustic guitar that ticks lots of boxes and doesn’t cost the earth. In fact, you want it to come in at under £500. Five hundred quid should be able to secure you something nice, shouldn’t it?
Indeed it should, and indeed it can! I can help here. I’ve written lots of acoustic guitar guides for guitarguitar as well as sold hundreds of them, and travelled around the world playing them, so I’ve had a lot of experience in this field! I think you can absolutely get a great guitar for under £500, and it’ll be one that performs well, lasts a long time and sounds great. Additionally, I feel like you should be able to expect a pickup system to be fitted at this price range, so all of my choices will be ‘electro’ models, ready to go on stage with.
Grab a pew and let’s get into it, shall we?
Things to Know: Terminology
Before we embark on our journey together, there are a few bits of terminology that I’d do well to clarify with you first, just so that we’re on the same page. Here they are, in bullet-point form…
- Electro acoustic: also written as electro-acoustic, this simply refers to a fully acoustic guitar which has been fitted with a pickup system. Plugged in, it still sounds like an acoustic guitar, not an electric guitar.
- Solid top: the most important factor in a guitar’s tone is its top. Solid timber tops sound best, so a guitar with a ‘solid top’ is going to sound really pleasant. The rest of the guitar will be made from layered wood, which is a more than acceptable compromise for price and performance.
- All-solid: The top, back and sides are all made from solid wood as opposed to laminates or plies. This is the best option possible, but is often only available with expensive guitars.
- Piezo: this relates to the pickup systems that you find on many electro-acoustic guitars. It uses a type of crystal called a piezo as a conductor under the saddle of a guitar bridge. The piezo emits an electric signal when squeezed, which is what happens when a guitar string is plucked or strummed.
- Bracing: shaped pieces of wood glued in specific patterns to the underside of a guitar’s top. The job of bracing is to ‘sculpt’ the sound waves that occur when a guitar is played and create a specific tonal effect with them. Bracing comes in various shapes & designs, with ‘X bracing’ being the most famous.
- Cutaway: a corner of the guitar body is shaped to allow your fretting hand access to the upper frets. The wood is ‘cut away’ to make space, hence the name.
The Best Electro-Acoustic Guitars under £500
Yamaha FSX800C
It’ll come as no surprise to most of you that Yamaha are on today’s list. For decades, they’ve been a name brand who continue to put the quality into all of their price points, meaning that any Yamaha guitar you pick up is going to sound good and feel comfortable.
The brand’s ‘F’ series guitars run the range of prices from a few hundred pounds to many thousands, and they are generally split into FG for dreadnought shapes and FS for folkier styles. I’ve chosen The Yamaha FSX800C today, because it’s a good combination of attractive looks, a nice feel and a good quality sound. It has gorgeous body shape, and is actually quite capable of tackling all acoustic tasks, not just the folk styles that its name might suggest!
The narrow waist and slightly smaller body mean that this is a comfortable thing to play, with a sound that’s rich without being overwhelming in terms of volume or projection. As this is an electro model, there is a piezo pickup and shoulder-mounted EQ box, and also the customary shoulder cutaway.
This is a good rule of thumb, actually: when looking for an electro acoustic guitar in a shop, keep your eyes peeled for models with cutaways, because they will almost always be electro models. Why? I am really not sure, except that guitar brands follow trends, and it’s been like this for about 50 years!
Cort CJ Retro
Now this one has some very cool retro vibes! The Cort CJ Retro is an excellent mix of styles: it’s a big stylish jumbo with some tasty decorative work, and it also has a magnetic pickup and a bunch of control knobs on it! I’m instantly reminded of ‘MTV Unplugged in New York’ vibes, and this Cort definitely has an iconoclastic coolness about it.
I don’t think this Cort is necessarily one for the fingerpickers: it’s all layered wood for one thing, plus the large jumbo body is just yelling for some triumphant strumming! If you are primarily gigging as a singer, and want a bit of a counterculture vibe in your performances, then the Cort CJ Retro is cool, loud and very well priced.
Alvarez Delta DeLite E
Alvarez are quickly becoming one of the premier forces in affordable guitars. There’s a feeling that the brand is out to prove their worth in a crowded market, and they’ve been doing that by simply building a better guitar than their competitor for the same price. It’s an attitude that’s working well, as acoustics like the AF30ce are pretty much best-sellers now.
However, that isn’t the one I want to talk to you about today! In the spirit of variety, I’ve chosen a model that shows off their design nous, their value for money, and also the possibilities of what is on the market: it’s not all dreadnoughts and jumbos!
So, this is the Alvarez Delta DeLite E and it’s a small-bodied parlour guitar with a 23 ⅝” scale length. Alvarez sell this as a travel guitar, which makes sense given its size and included gig bag, but I’d rather view this through the lens of a play-anywhere blues guitar that works well for folk, too.
A solid spruce top is used here, and matched with layered African mahogany for a sound that’s a good mix of focus and liveliness. This guitar is fitted with a pickup, and has a very cool contrast burst finish on the top, next to the natural mahogany back and sides.
It’s gorgeous and is a lovely thing to play: it’s very addictive and ‘moreish’ which is a sure sign of a great guitar.
Epiphone J-200 Studio EC
This is another one for the singer-songwriters out there! The Epiphone J-200 Studio EC is a fully-ready to gig version of Gibson’s most famous ‘super jumbo’ guitar, and this one’s a beauty!
As the ‘Studio’ suffix denotes, this version has had the decorations trimmed back slightly, but it's still a great looking guitar, and retains the features that make the SJ-200 so well-regarded. Chief amongst these is the huge, strummy, percussive sound, which easily fills a room.
The solid spruce and layered maple construction adds liveliness to the characteristically boomy, impressive sound from the body. The great thing about the J-200 is that it naturally has a somewhat ‘scooped’ sound, which is perfect for a vocal to slide alongside. If you sing, and want an impressive looking guitar with a big, full sound, then I think this Epiphone J-200 Studio EC is the one for you!
Tanglewood TW4E
Tanglewood are a British-based company who’ve made their name designing beautiful guitars that are built in the Far East and sold across the world. Whilst not often seen as a pro choice, they’ve made thousands of jobbing guitarists happy over the decades, based on the premise that good design and build quality will result in an instrument that people want to play.
This is particularly true of the TW4E, a lovely folk-style electro acoustic. Tanglewood call this shape ‘Super Folk’, and it is a larger bodied take on a sort of grand auditorium shape (if you know your Taylors…), so it’s modern looking with clean lines and a good, comfortable feel.
The TWE4 model that I chose today is made entirely from mahogany: a solid mahogany top and layered mahogany sides. Mahogany guitars have a particular sound - rich, warm and strong, and this Tanglewood certainly follows that! It’s a good looker in a subtle way, and has a good quality piezo pickup and 4-band EQ, making this a very good contender.
Fender Redondo CE
Looking for something a little different, but with historical touches? Look no further than the Fender Redondo Player Walnut. This is a modern redraw of an older 60s style that Fender put out with their trademark Stratocaster headstocks. It’s an immediately recognisable look, and one that will certainly stand out!
The Redondo has a number of cool visual features - check out the pickguard and bridge shapes! - on an otherwise fairly normal shaped cutaway dreadnought. It’s wonderful value for money, given that there’s a solid spruce top on here, and a Fishman pickup system! This is quite some way below the £500 price cap, and you’d never know it from strumming it! Also, it’s pretty cool to have ‘Fender’ written on the headstock, let’s not pretend!
Top Contenders
Those 6 choices today all represent quality guitars that are stage-ready, studio-ready and life-ready. You can spend under £500 and get a name-brand acoustic guitar that looks nice, feels right and sounds great. Isn’t that something to celebrate?
And it’s not as if these 6 are the only contenders, either. I cherry -picked them to reflect the wealth of choice that’s available, from travel parlours to classic super jumbos. You can have what you and AND what you want, and it will not cost you the earth to do so. Yes, we all want the dream boutique custom one-off wonders - and I wish for that to happen to us all, sincerely - but in the meantime, there’s a lot of playing to be done and a lot of fun to be had down at this humble but excellent end of the market.
Enjoy!
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