Guitar World deals of the week: save $600 on a badass ESP LTD, bag one of my favorite budget guitars with $150 off, plus two massive guitar sales to dive into

This week we've got two brand new sales for you to dive into. (Image credit: ESP)

Jump To:

My top deals
Guitar sales
Upcoming sales
Top products
Why trust me?
How I choose
Shopping tips
Over to you

This week's best sales

Guitar Center:
Up to 30% off acoustic
Musician's Friend:
Up to 40% off electrics
Universal Audio:
Up to 80% off plugins

It's that time of the week when we get stuck into the best guitar gear deals. The big news in the deals world is that Amazon has announced its dates for the Prime Day guitar deals, running between June 23rd and 26th. It means that there will be loads of deals at the end of the month, at Amazon and beyond.

For now, you can sink your teeth into two big guitar sales, with an excellent acoustic guitar sale at Guitar Center offering up to 30% off a range of acoustic instruments. If an electric guitar is more your thing, head over to Musician's Friend, where you can save up to 40% on Gibson, Fender, PRS, Sterling by Music Man, and plenty more.

As usual, I've picked out a selection of the very best deals on guitar gear that the wider Guitar World team and I have seen this week, so keep scrolling for mega discounts on guitars and money off one of my all-time favorite pedals. I also send out a weekly email with the biggest and best savings on guitar gear, so be sure to sign up for The Pick: Deals to make sure you don't miss out on any discounts.

My top deals

Why I ❤️ this deal: With dual Seymour Duncan pickups, a Floyd Rose 1000, and $600, this ESP was an easy pick for my deal of the week.

If you like to play heavy music, then this ESP LTD Horizon 87 is an amazing deal. It's a neck-through design that matches a 3-piece maple neck with two alder 'wings', resulting in excellent stability and sustain. A Seymour Duncan Hot Rail in the neck and a Custom humbucker in the bridge make for some fiery tones, and a double locking tremolo ensures you can perform all the guitar acrobatics the heavier genres require. At this price, this guitar is an absolute steal.

If you want an entry-level guitar that will go the distance, the Sterling by Music Man Cutlass HSS would be my pick. We gave it four and a half stars out of five in our Cutlass HSS review, and found the build quality of this guitar to be exceptional for the price. The HSS pickup configuration is also great for beginners as it offers supreme versatility, capable of covering everything from rock and metal to blues and jazz. With a pair of locking tuners for additional stability and quick string changes, it's a no-brainer if you want a great value guitar for a beginner player.

I've had a Digitech Whammy Ricochet on my pedalboard for over four years now, and I love it simply because it takes so much less room than a full-size whammy, while still offering most of the usability. I can set whether the switch is momentary or latching, allowing me to quickly add some octaves to my playing whenever I need. The speed at which it reaches the note it selects can also be tweaked, allowing you to slowly bring the pitch up or down to better simulate the lack of an expression pedal. The octave and dry mode is probably my favorite, doubling my guitar tone at will.

Guitar sales to shop

Each week I search all the major retailers and manufacturers for the very best sales for guitar players. Here's a list of what's available and where this week.

Amazon: Save on accessories
B&H Photo: Money off pro audio
Gear4Music: Clearance deals
Guitar Center: Save up to 30% on acoustics
Guitar Tricks: 1 month for $1
IK Multimedia: 50% off software
Musician's Friend: Up to 40% off electrics
Native Instruments: Big software savings
Plugin Boutique: 100s of plugin discounts
Positive Grid: 20% off Spark Neo
Reverb: Up to 46% off guitars & pedals
Sweetwater: Up to 35% off pedal sale
Thomann: Hot deals
Universal Audio: Money off plugins
Waves: 5 plugins for just $99.99

Upcoming sales

If you're not ready to shop just yet but are looking to save some cash for an upcoming sale, I've got the insider knowledge on which sales are coming up soon. Here's what you should be saving your money for:

Prime Day guitar deals - Amazon announced that it would be launching Prime Day earlier this year, with the sales expected to start in June. It's not the place to pick up instrument deals, but you can bag some big savings on accessories and essentials. Most retailers run competing sales too, which are much better for gear like guitars, pedals, and amps.

Top products

Part of my job is looking after all the buying guides here at Guitar World, which gives me a unique oversight as to which products are hot right now. Every week I look at what's getting the most clicks from our buying guides and list the top five products for you here.

Our clever widget sorts them by price and automatically picks up if there's a discount at a particular retailer, doing a lot of the hard work for me! If you're looking to see what other guitarists are interested in and get the cheapest possible price, then this is the place to start your search.

Why trust me?

Guitar World writer Matt McCracken holding a Telecaster guitar — (Image credit: Future/Matt McCracken)

You may be wondering, why should I trust what this random dude on the internet says? Well, allow me to introduce myself. I'm Matt McCracken and I've been playing guitar for well over twenty years. In that time I've gigged all over the UK, recorded in professional studios, bought and sold countless guitars, amps, and pedals, spent 5 years working in music retail for Dawsons Music and Northwest Guitars, and now I handle all things gear for Guitar World.

I am a guitar player first and foremost, and the reason I do this job is that I genuinely love all things gear. When I'm not working my day job, you'll find me in the rehearsal room with my band, helming the desk at my local studio working with other musicians, or writing new songs and testing gear in my home studio.

The main focus of my job is to test and research gear for our buying guides and reviews here, whether it's demoing the latest pedal release with my band, diving into the technical side of audio interfaces, or putting guitar cables head-to-head in group tests to determine which is the best. It gives me a great overview on what gear is out there right now, and unlike a lot of content you find online, I've actually had my hands on the gear I write about.

I'm also responsible for finding the best possible deals on gear for our readers, covering all the major sales events of the year like Memorial Day, Prime Day, Labor Day, and of course, the Black Friday guitar deals. I track prices of all the most popular gear throughout the year, so I know straight away whether or not a saving is the real deal or a dishonest retailer trying to pull the wool over your eyes.

How I choose deals

To determine whether or not a deal is worthy of inclusion in deals of the week it has to pass a few different hurdles. I'll ask myself the following questions about any deal before I decide whether or not to include it:

- Is the product genuinely good value for money?
- Is the discount amount real or has the RRP been inflated?
- Would guitarists benefit from having this particular piece of gear in their rig?
- If I've not had hands on experience with the gear, do I have a recommendation from a fellow staff member or musician?

I have various tools I can use to check prices if I've not been tracking it, like camelcamelcamel which can track the price of a product on Amazon. Generally because I'm looking at this stuff every week, I already have a good overview of what the product should cost.

Shopping tips

1. Consider your music goals - What do you want to achieve with your music over the next 12 months or so? Do you want to gig more? Learn a new instrument? Or finally, record your songs? Now could be the time to invest in gear that helps you fulfil your musical aspirations.

2. Create a wishlist early - The most sensible way to take advantage of any gear deals is to know in advance what you’re looking for. This will make searching much easier, rather than having to trawl through loads of deals you don’t want to find the ones you do, or pondering things you don't need. To help you create your dream shopping list, take the time to explore our expert and up-to-date buying guides and reviews.

3. Work out what you actually need - Check out your favourite brands, see what you need and will genuinely use - don’t waste your cash and fill your basket with stuff that will never truly see any action.

4. Streamline your current gear - Something else you should consider ahead of time is whether you have enough space in your collection for new gear. Could you offload some gear you don't use to make room and generate funds for some new gear?

5. Sign up to mailing lists - In addition to bookmarking this page, we'd recommend signing up to mailing lists of your favourite retailers now to get the jump on the best deals when they do come around.

Over to you

Spotted a deal that I missed? Drop me a line in the comments below and if it's still live I'll drop the best ones deal into next week's Deals of the Week.

Matt is a Junior Deals Writer here at Guitar World. He regularly tests and reviews music gear with a focus on guitars, amps, pedals, modelers, and pretty much anything else guitar-related. Matt worked in music retail for 5 years at Dawsons Music and Northwest Guitars and has written for various music sites including MusicRadar, Guitar Player, Guitar.com, Ultimate Guitar, and Thomann’s t.blog. A regularly gigging guitarist with over 20 years of experience playing live and writing and recording in bands, he's performed everything from jazz to djent, gigging all over the country in more dingy venues than you can shake a drop-tuned guitar at. When not writing articles for Guitar World, you'll find him making a racket with northern noise punks Never Better.

With contributions from

Daryl RobertsonSenior Deals Writer
Chris Barnes