The best electric guitars for kids

The number that decides this, and where to find it

Scale length is the distance from the nut to the bridge saddle — the vibrating length of the string. It sets two things that matter enormously to a child and barely at all to an adult: how far apart the frets are, so whether small fingers can reach a chord shape at all, and how tight the strings feel under tension, so whether pressing one down hurts.

A standard electric guitar is 25.5 inches. A Les Paul-family guitar is 24.75. A short-scale student electric is around 22.75. Those three figures are the whole decision, and the good news is that reputable manufacturers publish them, which makes this one of the few beginner purchases that can be settled from a spec sheet rather than from a showroom visit.

What scale length does not tell you is quality. A short-scale guitar from a real brand has real pickups, real tuners and a real neck. The thing to avoid is not a small guitar, it is a toy pretending to be a small guitar — and those are identifiable because they publish nothing at all.

The cost nobody budgets for

An electric guitar makes almost no sound on its own. That sentence is obvious written down and is still the single most common surprise in this purchase: the guitar arrives, the child plugs in nothing, and the excitement of the first afternoon goes into a cable that does not exist. You need an amplifier, a cable, and ideally a strap and a tuner.

There are two honest routes. Buy a pack, which puts the guitar, a 10-watt amp, a cable, a strap and a bag in one box — this is why the Squier Sonic pack is on this page even though it is full scale, because for a child close to adult size it removes the whole problem in one order. Or buy a short-scale guitar and choose the amp separately, which is the better route for a smaller child because no pack we could find bundles a genuinely short-scale guitar with a decent amp.

Single-coils or humbuckers: the one tonal choice worth making

Ask the child what music they want to play, then read this. Three single-coil pickups — the Stratocaster layout — are bright and clean, and cover pop, blues, country and most of what a beginner learns first. Two humbuckers — the Les Paul layout — are thicker and louder and are what a child imagining rock or metal is usually hearing in their head. Neither is better. Buying the wrong one means a guitar that never quite makes the sound the child was picturing, which is a motivation problem rather than a technical one.

One mechanical point in favour of the Les Paul layout for a beginner: a fixed bridge. A vibrato bridge invites a new player to pull the arm, which throws the guitar out of tune, which leads to a guitar that is never in tune, which leads to a guitar nobody picks up. A fixed bridge removes the temptation entirely. If the guitar does have a vibrato, our tuning guide covers the clip-on tuner that makes this a five-second job.

Under about seven, the answer is not an electric

A four-year-old cannot hold a guitar, reach a chord shape or press a string hard enough to make it sound. That is anatomy, not attitude, and the usual result of buying a small electric for a preschooler is a guitar that is briefly exciting and then never touched. The honest options are a three-string instrument built for that age, which is why the Loog Mini is on this page, or waiting a year or two — and our first instrument for a five-year-old page makes the case for a ukulele instead rather more strongly than it makes the case for any guitar.

For the sizing question in general, including acoustic guitars and the 3/4 and 1/2 body sizes that have no electric equivalent, our guitar size guide has the full chart. If the child is around ten and the acoustic-versus-electric question is still open, the best guitar for a ten-year-old compares both on the same page.