You see a lot of folks showing their guitar collection on Youtube, their blogs and guitar forums. There are people who just like to collect as many guitars as they can afford.
But how many guitars should you own? What’s the magic number of guitars that can fully satisfy your needs?
It depends on your preferences. Usually, two to three guitars should fully satisfy your need for playing. One acoustic guitar and one electric guitar. Add one classical guitar if you want to play classical music on it. That’s it. No less, no more.
Why Two Guitars Are Usually Enough?
If you’re a guitar enthusiast, you maybe have desire to own as much guitars as you can afford. But we’re talking about needs here, not desire.
What do you need from a guitar? You need it to play it! If you own more than three guitars, there’s no way you can play all of them equally and regularly. There’s just not enough time.
One acoustic guitar and one electric guitar are just enough. Why? With these two, you have both acoustic and electric, distorted, sound whenever you want.
Why would you need two guitars of a same kind? Why would you need, for example, two acoustic guitars?
If you have two acoustic guitars, then almost certainly one of these two is better than another. If one is better than another, then why would you play that another guitar, when you have better one at your hands?
So, this will happen: You’ll play a guitar you like more. The other one won’t be played nearly as much. What’s the point of having that other guitar then? To be more precise, what’s the need of having that other guitar?
The same goes in the case where you have two electric guitars. Or two classical guitars.
Bottom line is this: You don’t need to have more than one guitar of a same kind.
When Do You Need More Than A Few Guitars?
Having more than few guitars does not have to be showing off, always. There are situations when you do really need to have more than few guitars.
What are those situations?
You can be professional guitar player, session musician who plays guitar at the studio for a living. That can be the case where you would need many guitars for yourself.
Of course, if you’re just a humble guitar player who likes just to play his guitar, then you really don’t need to have many guitars for yourself.
Are Guitars A Good Investment?
Guitars are definitely a good investment. Guitar is a beautiful instrument that can bring you a lot of joy and happiness in your life.
Nothing that brings you joy can be a bad investment. On the contrary, everything that brings you joy is, in fact, a good investment. In the long run.
Also, if you get yourself a good quality guitar, its price can only grow through the years.
If you want to know if vintage guitars are worth it, check the article from this page about it:
What Do You Need For Electric Guitar?
You need an electric guitar to play rock, pop, metal and other type of music that relies on electric guitar sound often.
If you like distorted sound that can get really loud, electric guitar is the choice. Also, it’s very hard to play fast, challenging solos on an acoustic guitar.
Electric guitar has more frets, and solos use mostly high notes on higher frets. Also, string bending is much easier on an electric guitar.
(See my article: How To Make Guitar Strings Bend Easier?)
What Do You Need For Acoustic Guitar?
You need an acoustic guitar for…well, an acoustic music. It’s widely used in pop and rock music. Also, if you like to play outside on a street, then you definitely need an acoustic guitar.
Yes, you can play an electric guitar outside, but it’s much more complicated to do so. If you don’t want to lose your time moving your guitar amp from place to place, acoustic guitar is much better choice.
But keep in mind this. Acoustic guitar is significantly harder to play than an electric guitar (at beginner level). See the article from this page, here:
What Do You Need For Classical Guitar?
You need a classical guitar if you want to play fingerstyle, classical or folk music. Fingerstyle is a beautiful guitar technique you definitely need to learn if you want to call yourself an intermediate guitar player. See this article:
Also, if you want to know more about fingerstyle guitar technique, check this article:
My Guitars
I have three guitars. One electric, one acoustic and one classical.
Here are my acoustic and electric guitar together. 🙂
I have my electric guitar (Yamaha ERG 121C) for more than 10 years now. It’s a cheap guitar, but I don’t care. If it plays without any issues, I’m satisfied!
Acoustic guitar (Vintage brand) is also a cheap one. But again, I don’t care that much. I’m not that kind of a guitar player that likes to brag about cool expensive guitars. For me, playing is everything!
And lastly, here’s my classical guitar.
I honestly don’t know much about this one. I know only that I like to play it often!
Final Words
Let’s recap this article.
You don’t need more than two or three guitars. One electric guitar, one acoustic and one classical guitar are just enough to fully satisfy your needs.
However, what you DESIRE is another thing. You can desire one hundred guitars, but the reality is such that you’ll play not more than three regularly. There’s just not enough time to play more.
Of course, if you’re professional session guitar player, many guitar can be of use.
I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. If that’s the case, I’m more than happy about it.
Don’t forget to check other interesting articles from this page. Here are categories in which you can find plenty of valuable information and insights about guitar playing, care, and so on.
Cheers, and rock on!