How to buy a guitar.

1. Find a store (music instruments store duhh)
2. Ask for a guitar
3. Buy recommended guitar

 DON'T DO THAT!

5 Things you must know.

 1#

 What music do you want to play?. Rock?, blues?, metal?, jazz?, funk?.

 Once you know it, find a specific brand/model. Usually:

 Fender: Clean stuff, rock.

 Gibson: Clean , rock, hardrock.

 Ibanez: Clean, rock, some metal.

 Jackson , Dean & ESP: Anything with metal.

2#

 Single coil or humbucker?

 Single coil is awesome with clean tones but add some distortion and you'll get a lot of noise, on the other hand humbucker works great with distortion but the clean sound is not that great.

3#

 Floyd rose or standard bridge?

 Floyd rose allows you to use the tremolo bar as you wish and you don't need to tune it often but you can't easily change between tunings (Drop D, half-step down, etc) and changing strings is annoying.

4#

 If the guitar is plugged, move the volume knob. You should hear nothing otherwise the electronics is failing.

5#

 Play the 12 fret on the E string and compare it with the natural harmonic (same fret, same string), they should sound the same if not the guitar is not calibrated... or worse.