Best Budget Hollow-body Guitars (2024) – Most Under $500!

Although not everybody knows this, the Epiphone Casino is a hollow-body guitar. Yes, the Casino departs from Gibson and Epiphone’s long tradition of semi-hollow guitars (like the ES-335) and offers a resonant, full, vibrating body made of laminated maple.

Moreover, in my years playing guitar, I came across Epiphone Casinos on all kinds of stages, from small clubs to full arenas. This guitar is a serious player you can’t beat for the price you pay.

Let me begin by saying that it sports that beautiful C-shaped thin neck that’s just inviting to play for hours at a time. Also, the Indian laurel fingerboard has some of rosewood’s sweetness which makes single-note arpeggios and melodies just beautiful.

In the sound department, the Epiphone PRO P-90 pickups are fierce, biting, and stay clear most of the time.

Perhaps the only caveat with this guitar is that electronics are the Achilles heel of the instrument. For example, volume pots have no fade capabilities, and the tone knob is basically unusable. When you get to 7, you have a huge volume jump, but you can’t just clean up the tone without losing clarity and high-end.

Nevertheless, it’s a hard-to-beat candidate at this price point. I was sitting playing it and enjoying the experience until I ran out of Beatles songs in my head, and everything sounded close to the original.

For the next level, you should disburse an extra $3,000 for the USA version.

Gretsch is one of the main hollow-body guitar brands in the world today. Yes, from Chet Atkins to Billy Duffy to the one and only Brian Setzer, Gretsch guitars have been bringing audiences to awe for decades.

This Gretsch G2420 Streamliner belongs to the entry-level tier and is made in China with alternative woods (Nato for the neck and Indian Laurel for the fretboard, with a Maple body) instead of Japan with the real deal. Knowing this, I went to test it hoping to find an instrument that would feedback, buzz, and not stay in tune. Boy, was I surprised.

Indeed, this guitar features a 2.75” hollow-body that allows jazz and rockabilly to co-exist in a single instrument (more on that later). Moreover, the U-shaped neck is fast and comfortable but makes it easy to play cowboy chords too (they got your back, Johnny Cash).

In the sound department, the overwound Broad’Tron pickups do a great job pushing the amplifier into overdrive making it a great rockabilly guitar. The problem with the pickups is that they tend to feedback with the hollow-body and can’t be kept clean enough for jazz while maintaining snap and attack.

I tried some Brian Setzer moves and the guitar responded quite well, but when I moved to some Charlie Christian-approved tones, I found it quite difficult to tame the pickups’ power.

This Gretsch is great if you’re looking for a rocking guitar, for jazzy tones, you might be better off with another option.

The Grote MG-404 hollow-body guitar is what you would call a clone. Yes, guitars in this price range are a big hit-or-miss. On one hand, you’ll pay less than what a decent pedal is worth, but on the other, you might be buying a project guitar that needs investment to be playable.

Nevertheless, I owe myself to my audience, so I was bold enough to walk into a music store and ask for the cheapest hollow-body guitar available. Let me tell you that it’s a whole different experience from playing a Gretsch or an Epiphone hollow-body guitar.

But, at the same time, it’s also less than half the price those guitars cost.

Let me tell you that my experience wasn’t entirely dreadful. I must admit the fretwork was sloppy and that the guitar tended to go out of tune. Nevertheless, those are things that can easily be fixed by taking the guitar to a technician who can do a professional setup on the instrument.

Indeed, the body showed no signs of faulty glue or lack of accuracy in the binding or the paint job. Also, the fretboard felt smooth and I was able to play some full songs with it before giving it back. 

In the sound department, things were not super defined since both pickups sounded muddy, but if you’re not too picky about the original pickup sound or are planning on doing an upgrade, it can do a decent job with most classic jazz tunes.

If you’re an absolute beginner and dig the looks, get one of these as your first instrument and learn the basics with it. For seasoned players, on the other hand, these well-built instruments can easily become a good project guitar with some aftermarket upgrades (tuners, electronics, and pickups).

In the seventies, Fender came up with the Deluxe, Custom, and Thinline Telecasters to compete against dual-humbucker Gibsons. That was in ’72, but three years before, in 1969, the company of the big F introduced this model to the market; the less known one of the thinline Telecasters.

Opposite to what happened in ’72, this ’69 model featured the classic Telecaster pickup combination that gives the semi-hollow-body a high-end you won’t find on any humbucker-equipped guitar. Indeed, the “twang” Teles are famous for is intact but mixed with some low-end from the chambered nato body.

Believe me, I tried some country tunes with this guitar, and it performed just right while adding a welcome bass-oriented groove to the resulting sound.

Perhaps, the only cheap guitar thing I found was that the fret job was far from flawless; on the contrary, some frets (wider than the Mex-made and USA-made reissues) caught the high E string below them.

Other than that, you can play anything with this guitar as long as you don’t need distortion because it tends to feedback generously when you add gain to the equation. If you want the Fender tone with a little more headroom and low end, this guitar is a great candidate.

With a linden body (back, sides, and top) and a nyatoh set-neck with an Indian laurel fingerboard, this hollow-body Ibanez Artcore AF75 is a serious jazz machine.

Let me tell you that, since virtuoso players like Pat Metheny and John Scofield joined the Ibanez line, I have been playing and enjoying their hollow instruments a lot.

Now, this guitar is quite different from the signature models these jazz monsters play. Yes, this is a guitar built entirely with alternative woods, but that respects the traditional archtop design and features a pair of nice-sounding humbucker pickups.

Perhaps, the biggest difference between this guitar and the real deal (that sells for way more) is the definition that real mahogany and rosewood add to the mix. 

Plus, maple provides a kind of high-end snap that makes every line sing and is, not absolutely, but partially absent from this instrument. After saying that, let me also say that if you don’t have a highly trained ear, you won’t notice this difference.

This is one great jazz machine for those who are taking their first steps in this long and winding road playing jazz is. Furthermore, if you’re not strictly a jazz player and want a hollow-body guitar to extend the sound palette of your guitar collection, this guitar is a great candidate for a price that won’t break the bank.

Let me begin this review of the Epiphone ES-339 by saying that I was very skeptical before trying it out. Yes, the smaller size always seemed to me as an odd choice by Epiphone and Gibson, but once I held one and started playing it, I realized the mistaken one was always me.

Yes, the fine folks at Gibson came up with a design that challenged everything that came before (the ES-335 dates back to 1959) but they managed to preserve that glass-like tone when playing clean and the low growl of the hollow-body when you add a little dirt to the equation. 

Moreover, since it’s a semi-hollow guitar with smaller hollow “wings”, sustain is great and feedback is drastically reduced.

Perhaps, the only thing that was a turn-off for me was the high end of the pickups. Although Epiphone used Alnico PRO pickups, they still have that impossible-to-remove squeal you find in most guitars in this price range. Nevertheless, swapping pickups is a very common practice in any price range.

Let me tell you also that, in the hardware department, the upgrade to Grover tuners is very welcome (I’ve had Epiphone guitars with faulty tuners many times). Finally, the finish and setup of the model I tested was flawless and the instrument was a joy to play.