1. A guitar that doesn't get played is worthless at any price.
2. There are no such thing as bad tone; There are only tones that you may not like.
   

What to look for (and what to look out for)

• Guitars meant for regular playing (non-resonator guitars, not meant for slide playing) that have extremely high action (meaning, the strings are uncomfortable to press down). This may be a sign that the neck is warped, and, while this can be fixed, it can be costly and most players would want to avoid buying a new guitar with too high a fretboard action.
• A guitar's intonation. Intonation is a guitar's relative harmonics depending on the straightness of the neck, nut, bridge, and scale of the frets. A player should usually try playing natural harmonics (played by barely resting the finger over the string, not fretting it) on the guitar (12th fret high e string) along with the lowest E string to check, the 5th fret lowest E along with the open high e string, and finally, with natural harmonics, 5th of low e to the 7th of a, 5th of a to 7th of d, 5th of d to 7th of g. The guitar should be played from its first to last fret as well, to check for fret buzzing, which is undesirable. (the guitar may have to be tuned first, a guitar that is out of tune does not necessarily mean it has bad intonation, perhaps it has just been sitting for a while and the strings have went slack, also be aware of tone temperament)
• Stamp of Inspection. Even a guitar made in Indonesia can be a good quality if it's inspected well.
• Read reviews on places like www.amazon.com, to foreshadow problems down the road. Stick to the more well-known brands.

What makes someone NOT love a guitar

• The player may not be comfortable with getting their hand around the neck of the guitar. Almost against reason, a player with smaller hands will likely prefer wider necks, because the wider space between the strings allows more lenience when arching your fingers.
• A guitar that is difficult for the player to play is often a poor choice for that person, and is almost always a poor choice for a beginner.
• High action on fret: makes for a steeper learning curve, but if you don't mind that, they also allow you to play harder without buzzing out.
• Low action on fret: makes the string buzz a lot.
• Cracks/splits, bad joints: Need I say more?
  

Buying situations to avoid

Here are some "don't's". These may seem to provide a guitar at a very low price which may seem like a good deal, but they will possibly provide you with a difficult, damaged, or poor sounding guitar which is a bad deal at any price.

• Don't buy from a pawn shop (possible undetectable damage)
• Don't buy from any department store (difficult to play, damage easily, don't last, poor sound)
• Don't buy from eBay (too many ways to get scammed out of a lot of money)
• Preferably, don't buy from online shops, unless you can return it in 45 days. Even some very good makes may have some deviations, and even good quality guitars from well established manufacturers may not suit the player no matter how good they sound on paper—some people prefer wider necks, while some prefer narrows necks. The only way to know whether it is actually good is to play test them in the shop.

Acoustic guitar

There are basically two kinds of acoustic: classical guitar and steel-string guitar.
Classical guitar typically employ nylon strings, and have a wider fretboard. The peg box is also slightly different from a steel string guitar, which resembles quite a bit of the peg box of a violin; the body is also smaller. The tone is more mellower than the steel string guitar, and thus is much better for classical music. Disadvantage is that classical guitar is slightly more difficult in string maintenance, with the string needing to be settled in for a while.

Steel string-guitar, also known as folk guitar and dreadnought guitar, typically have a much larger sound box, and thus make it louder. Disadvantage is that the steel string also makes it hard to press, even in comparison to the classical guitar; picking is also harder on these, as it was better suited to use a guitar pick to play. This is the typical guitar employed in blues, jazz, country, and early rock.