Guitar cases and gig bags: what a first guitar actually needs

The case is not an accessory. It is the reason the guitar gets played.

There is a pattern every guitar teacher recognizes. A student arrives for three weeks carrying the guitar in the cardboard box it was delivered in, or in a bag so thin the tuners press through the fabric. Then they stop carrying it, and then they stop coming. Not because they lost interest — because getting the guitar out of the house became a small ordeal, repeated weekly, and small ordeals win.

That is the honest argument for spending money on a case: it is the cheapest thing you can buy that changes how often the instrument is picked up and carried. It is also the accessory most likely to be left out of a first-guitar budget, because the guitar itself is the exciting purchase and a bag is a bag. If you are still choosing the instrument, start with our beginner acoustic roundup and come back to this page with a body shape in hand — it is the one thing you need to know before you buy a bag.

Three types, and what each one actually protects against

Almost all the confusion in this purchase comes from one word doing three jobs. “Case” is used for a fabric sleeve, for a rigid shell and for everything between, and the three are not alternatives to one another — they protect against different things.

The practical reading: the overwhelming majority of first guitars need a padded gig bag, a minority need a polyfoam shell, and almost none need a wooden hard case. The guitars that do need the hard case are the ones that fly, the ones that get handed to other people, and the ones that cost more than the case does.

How we chose these

We have not carried every one of these bags for a year, and we say so on every page — see how we research these picks. The criteria below are ones a published specification can actually answer, applied in this order.

Match the bag to the body, not to the brand of guitar

This is where most returns come from. A guitar case is cut for a body outline, and those outlines have names. A beginner acoustic is almost always a dreadnought — the big square-shouldered shape — and a beginner electric is almost always a Stratocaster or Telecaster outline. If your guitar is one of those two things, a bag cut for it will fit snugly and hold the neck where it should.

Padding depth is the only number worth reading

Bag listings are mostly about pockets. Padding depth is the figure that tells you what the thing does, and the better makers publish it in fractions of an inch. Here is the honest translation, which no listing will give you.

Which one for which situation

What a case will not do: humidity

A closed case slows humidity change down. It does not stop it, and no bag of any price does. A solid-wood acoustic in a dry winter house will still lose moisture inside a latched hard case, just more slowly — which is useful, because it means a case plus a humidifier is a genuinely effective combination where a case alone is not.

Most beginner guitars are laminate rather than solid wood, which makes them far more tolerant of dry air; this is one of the few areas where a cheap guitar has an advantage. If the guitar is solid-topped, or the house drops below about 35 percent relative humidity in winter, read our guitar humidity guide before worrying about the case. A hard case is a better home for a humidifier than a gig bag, because the seal is better.

What actually damages a guitar in transit

It is worth knowing what the case is defending, because it is not evenly distributed. Four places take nearly all the damage, and three of them are at the same end of the instrument.

Two habits save more guitars than any upgrade. Carry the bag with the headstock up rather than down, so a trip puts the body on the ground first. And never lean a bagged guitar against a wall at an angle: a soft case has no structure, so it slides, and a slide ends with the headstock hitting a skirting board. If there is nowhere to put the guitar down between the car and the lesson, that is the argument for a rigid case rather than a thicker bag.

What fails on a case, and when to replace it

Cases do not wear out in the places buyers inspect. The padding is usually fine for a decade; the hardware is not. The zip is the first failure on a gig bag, almost always at a corner where the slider is dragged around a tight radius, and a zip that has pulled away from the fabric cannot be repaired economically. Straps fail second, at the stitching rather than mid-strap. On a hard case it is the latches, and a latch that no longer holds is worse than no case at all, because the guitar will be carried as though it is secure.

A school- or rental-issued case is worth checking on this list before buying anything, because a program-owned case is often a decent one that simply needs its latch replaced. And a used case is a reasonable buy where a used guitar is not: there is nothing to go wrong inside it that cannot be seen, provided the interior is dry and the zip runs its full length without catching.

When not to buy a case at all

Two situations, and we would rather say so than sell into them.

The guitar already came with one. A large share of beginner acoustics and nearly every electric starter pack ship with a bag, and for a guitar that stays home it is often adequate. Check it before buying: press a thumb against the padding over where the tuners sit. If you can feel the tuners through it, the bag is a dust cover and worth replacing. If you cannot, keep it.

The guitar never leaves the room. A guitar on a stand in a bedroom is picked up far more often than one zipped into a bag, and that matters more in the first year than scratch protection does. A stand plus the bag it came with is a better purchase than a better bag, in that order.

The child-sized guitar problem

Most of the guitars this site recommends for children are 3/4-scale or smaller, and the case market mostly ignores them. There are far fewer bags cut for a 3/4 body, they sell out of colors and sizes unpredictably, and the obvious workaround — buying a full-size bag because it will certainly be big enough — is the one thing not to do. A small guitar inside a large bag slides the length of the bag every time it is carried, and it stops when the headstock reaches the end. That is the single worst place for a guitar to arrive at speed.

Three practical rules follow. Buy the bag the guitar’s own maker lists for that model where one exists, because fractional sizing is inconsistent between brands in exactly the way our guitar sizing guide for kids describes. Where no sized bag is available, a classical-cut bag is usually a closer fit for a 3/4 steel-string than a dreadnought bag, because the body is narrower and shorter in the same proportions. And if a small guitar must travel in an oversized bag for a while, pack the empty space at the lower end with something soft rather than leaving the instrument free to move — a folded towel is not elegant and it solves the actual problem.

The upside is that children outgrow guitars, so the case is bought knowing it will be handed on. That makes it one of the few accessories where a mid-priced bag with backpack straps is better value than either end of the range: it survives two instruments, and it is the thing that gets the guitar to the lesson in the first place.