Going into a large guitar store as a relative neophyte will be a confusing experience overwhelmed by bewildering choice. It's as difficult not to be seduced as it is to make a logically sound decision.

So my first adivce would be, do your research first, and have in mind some initial direction or influence as a starting point datum prior to walking in.

If you do buy on that or a subsequent visit, buy what the immediate task of learning for the first few years needs, not what so many other largely irrelevant event factors will 'seduce' you to want. I.e. head (logic) should be the 75% determining factor, heart (emotion) the other 25%.

With electric, other than any guitar being comfortable and playable, the amp is more important than the guitar in your spec budget to 'tone'. Depending upon your level of committment and budget ensure you spend sufficient there even if it means less on a headstock brand name 'value'. If budget isn't a restricting factor, buy both.

We're all inspired to some temperamentally varying degree by the look (aesthetics and image association in our mind's eye) of any guitar. Left brained orientated as I am, I'm far from immune. But learning guitar is about putting in the time and long term committment. All excitement and motivation provided by novelty of a new adventure and exciting initial experience will wear off as it will in any relationship, even with a bona fide soulmate if not putting the work even when the weather turns rough when keeping things on an even keel isn't plain sailing, so don't let image association be the overiding factor in your purchase.

For anyone who sticks with it, your first guitar won't be your only or last in all likelihood if my experience and observation of others in contemporary society is any indication. Bear that in mind.

The sceptic in me knows that ultimately every guitar store is a business, so, remember the store is there to sell you a guitar, any guitar, which any sales person of rudimentary capability not a disinterested shop floor droid, will quickly qualify you and use every wile in the sales book to close you and have you walk out the door with a guitar. Like war, the first casualty in the store is truth, although the spin will always be the hackneyed noble nonsense 'dressed up in tinsel and tinfoil (noble rhetoric, "dulce et decorm est, pro patria mori", medals & parades) to hide its uglier reality' to paraphrase the late W.E. Johns. OK so no-one's gonna' die if you buy the 'wrong' guitar, but I think the deliberate hyperbole in that analogy makes its point.

Armed with that, GL. Confronted by that array of info overload which will present, after applying a base eliminative triage, follow through by deciding quickly, acting decisively and just dive in the water. Hands on will quickly reveal more than limitless hypothesising ever will. In the final analysis considering those criteria, the one which must pervade is the fun and enjoyment in the doing. If that's there, a broom with strings attached would do at a pinch.

Cheers,

manXcat