Best Intermediate Electric Guitars – 6 Bang for the Buck Options!

Yamaha guitars are seriously underrated, especially in the US. They’re quality Japanese-built instruments that tend to emulate key features of well-known American guitar icons.

Their multi-purpose Les Paul imitator, the Revstar, is a great instrument, as is their SA hollowbody series.

This particular Pacifica is a great guitar.

First things first: the cream-and-gold color scheme of this guitar is pure, classy cool. I’ve played these guitars dozens of times, and seen dozens of them at gigs big and small. They look great on every stage.

The neck is a classic comfortable Fender C profile. I’m pretty accustomed to this neck profile, and it feels almost as if it plays itself. The maple is nicely lightweight and feels great in my hand. The satin finish on the neck feels nice and smooth, and contributes to the lower price point on this guitar.

I’m inclined to think the satin finish on the neck will harden into something closer to gloss over the course of a few years of heavy playing, as it has on all my satin necks. That’s a good thing: playing in a neck is great fun!

The laurel fingerboard is a little dry out of the box, but it’s nothing some lemon oil won’t fix. The jumbo frets encourage a much lighter touch, and therefore facilitate some very comfortable shredding moments. I got to run through some rapid country licks with serious ease while playing this guitar.

The single-coil pickups look like Gibson P90s, but they’re closer in spirit to a warm Telecaster sound. The Jazzmaster, when plugged in, offers a fatter, warmer version of classic Tele tone. It reminds me a lot of the tone from the intro riff of Chris Stapleton’s version of “Tennessee Whiskey.”

The control layout, for someone like me accustomed to simple Les Paul controls, does take some getting used to.

The switch on the upper horn selects between a warmer “rhythm” tone and a brighter, more distortion-friendly “lead” tone. The rhythm circuit’s tone and volume knobs are, in fact, the thumbwheels situated above the pickups. The normal tone and volume knobs are actually master tone and volume.

The rhythm/lead selector effectively turns off the bridge pickup, regardless of pickup selector position.

While this is more fiddly than I’d like for live use, I can’t argue with the range of tones it produces. It sounds great clean, at breakup, or in full-bore Dinosaur Jr distortion.

This is a guitar that could comfortably handle the most varied of cover gigs: if you have to play “Chattahoochee” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” at the same gig, this is the guitar for you.

First things first: it looks great. The laminate burled top is a cheaper wood than, say, a solid maple cap. It isn’t nearly as pretty as flame maple. It can’t be used for acoustic guitars. Schecter’s answer to this problem is to put an eye-catching blue finish and use it for their electric guitar! This, and a lack of upper-tier Les Paul embellishments like body and fingerboard binding keep the price of this guitar at a very affordable level.

The maple neck is pleasantly light, and shred-ready skinny. It really encourages those stretches and lightning-fast runs. The passive pickups offer reasonably good cleans: nothing I’d use for a country gig, but fine for clean passages in a hard rock context. They sound noticeably better with some 80s style chorus and compression applied.

With distortion, these pickups roar to life. I couldn’t resist playing some Avenged Sevenfold legato licks! This guitar is built to rock, and it really delivers rock tone in spades. It sounded particularly good in Drop D, with plenty of chunk and chug for powerful, uncompromising riffage.

However, I like to clean up my driven tones by rolling down the volume knob. The master volume knob bleeds out some treble, making the rolled-down sound of this guitar a little muddier than I’d otherwise like.

I would be inclined to upgrade the pickups and possibly the factory tuners. They work just fine out of the box, but if I was to use this as a workhorse guitar, I would want to be assured of the tuning heads’ reliability.

Overall, however, this is a great guitar for heavier styles of music.

The guitar simply looks great. I’ve owned and played a few Epi Les Paul Customs over the years, and they certainly fit the bill: the original black Custom was designed to pair with a tuxedo. I feel like I could comfortably pull this guitar out in a black-tie pit gig and it wouldn’t look out of place. It’s all class.

The blue finish is lovely, but what really stands out is the dark, polished look of the ebony fretboard. That and the chrome hardware make this guitar a genuine head-turner.

The ebony fretboard feels good under my hands, although I do miss the bound ends of a Gibson Les Paul. It plays comfortably: certainly, the neck is fast enough to do the rapidfire licks at the end of the solo from “Paradise City.”

 I’d always recommend playing a guitar before picking it up: some Epiphones come from the Qingdao factory with inadequately finished frets. This wasn’t the case for me, but it’s worth considering.

The pickups are classic Gibson: warm, fat, and they handle dirt with great aplomb. I was also impressed with the clean tone, which was pleasantly warm and welcoming. I would likely swap these out for Seymour Duncans, as they lack the clarity of better pickups, but they’ll definitely do the trick for most beginner to intermediate players.

The great thing about Les Pauls is their tonal versatility. Although the Les Paul has earned its reputation as the top dog of classic rock humbucker tone, I find that their range is much broader.

I’ve played everything from country twang to heavy metal chug on this Les Paul, and it handled all of them just fine. Even some mellower jazz tones managed to jump off the fretboard when I played the neck pickup and rolled off the tone a little.

This is a great guitar for any Les Paul aficionado who wants an accessible guitar that embraces Gibson tradition.

Similarly, the low-gain range of tones to which this guitar is suited are very much reminiscent of the classic hollowbody sounds of the 1970s.

The ebony fretboard plays nicely, offering a slick, hard feel under my fingers. The body resonates reassuringly against mine when I play big, friendly open chords.

What really stands out to me is the premium features on offer here, particularly at this guitar’s price point. It has a bone nut, very well-treated frets, and even the stock humbuckers are much nicer than I’d expect from, say, an Epiphone 335 at this price.

Although the guitar is made in a factory in Indonesia, it does not at all feel mass produced or cheap. It’s a great instrument.

I played around with a few tones, and was thrilled with all of them. The neck pickup offers some BB King-like blues sounds, and the sustain on bends and vibrato is very satisfying. With a little extra dirt, I was able to get into old-school classic rock territory.

The pickups aren’t quite hot enough to get into my other favored genre of hollowbody tones, that being those from the first two Oasis albums. I couldn’t quite get the fizzy, chunky sound of “Some Might Say” from this guitar. However, for Led Zeppelin or Fleetwood Mac-style tones, it was right in the ballpark.

I even dabbled in some Lynyrd Skynyrd/Drive By Truckers style Southern rock sounds and was really impressed with how articulate and expressive this guitar feels.

I’d highly recommend this axe to anyone who wants a 335 as a workhorse instrument or as an inexpensive backup to their main hollowbody.

Upon plugging in I noted that the jack felt a little tight. Standing up to play, the Casino is remarkably light. This is thanks to the Casino’s fully hollow construction: unlike my 335, which has a center block through the middle of its body, the Casino is hollow all the way through.

This gives it a real sense of reverberation as you play it. I really felt the chords in the body of the guitar as I was playing, almost like a great solid-top acoustic.

In fact, it’s loud enough acoustically - that is, unplugged - to facilitate couch practice.

Of course, it’s plugged into an old-school tube amp where the Casino sounds best. It boasts a bright, snappy tone. I couldn’t resist playing some jangly Beatles songs, and the Casino offers great note definition even in denser extended chords. The infamous “Hard Day’s Night” chord in particular sounded awesome!

The bridge P90 also offers enough treble and twang to facilitate some very tasty country playing. It’s a warmer tone than I’d get from a Telecaster, but it’s noticeably brighter than that of a 335.

With a little drive, I was able to get some reliable classic rock crunch, and even chunky pop-punk palm muting going. The downside of having single-coil pickups and a fully hollow guitar is that the Casino is prone to feedback at higher volume and gain levels. I wouldn’t take this guitar to a heavy metal or hard rock gig.

However, for excellent vintage-voiced tones with a different flavor to that of a typical humbucker-equipped hollowbody, it’s hard to argue against the Casino.