Playing guitar is hard enough under the right conditions. Playing in a dorm room without annoying your roommate is impossible. It doesn’t have to be. The guitar gifts on this list are perfect for the college student. These gifts have to be small and usable in a college dorm room to make the list. Here are 10 of the best guitar gifts for the college student in your life.
Stocking Stuffers for Guitarists (under $20)
To make this part of the list the gift has to be less than $20 and offer some value. I don’t want some $5 guitar shaped key ring in my stocking, and neither does the guitar player in your life.
Guitar Cleaning Tool
The Music Nomad MN205 The Nomad String, Body, and Hardware Cleaning Tool is a handy tool made with premium washable microfiber pad cleans and cleans not only the top of the strings, but underneath as well. Useful for cleaning the dust and grime from the fretboard, bridge, pickups, saddles and all the parts of the guitar. Great for acoustic or electric guitars.
Guitar Humidifier
Acoustic guitars (and hollow body electrics) like to be humid because wood cracks when it dries. Guitars that are left to dry out can cause serious headaches and even costly repairs down the road. It starts with losing intonation and can end with a cracked body, warped neck or more. 
The D’Addario One-Way Acoustic Guitar Humidifier is an inexpensive safeguard.
Clip-on Tuner
The Snark SN5X Clip-On Tuner is cheap and one of the most accurate tuners. It’s a no brainer and an invaluable tool for any musician.
Picks
Novelty guitar picks are a great and cheap way to express your individual style. Besides, they get lost all on their own so it’s always good to have a few spares.
Guitar Strap
A guitar strap is another cheap way to show your style. Here are a few novelty guitar straps that are less than $20 and small enough for a stocking.
Capo
The Shubb Deluxe Series GC-30 (S1) capo is a beautifully designed capo that’s accurate and strong and gentle as a finger on the fretboard. It does exactly what a capo is supposed to do without sending the guitar out of tune. It’s stainless steel design makes it more resistant to wear and tear and it should last a good many years.
New strings
Whether your guitarist plays electric or acoustic guitar, he will need strings. We recommend the Ernie Ball slinky for electric and the Elixir 80/20 bronze for acoustics. They’re a nice bump up in quality, so it really is a nice gift.
Guitarist Gifts over $20
The next gifts on this part of the list are more than the stocking stuffers, but they are not necessarily larger.
Headphones
A good pair of headphones are essential for keeping your skills on the electric guitar fresh without disturbing the peace. The AKG K 240 Semi-Open Studio Headphones are our choice for best headphone. They are studio headphones, which means you hear what the guitar and amp produce – no bass boost or EQ. This is extremely helpful for recording as it gives a more pure representation of the signal. EQ can then be be tweaked after recording.
Headphone amp
Amplifiers just don’t get any more quiet or intimate than with headphones. The VOX AmPlug Headphone amp plugs straight into the input of an electric guitar and then the headphones plug into the AmPlug. That’s it. It’s also silent to everyone without the headphones, so you don’t irk your roommate. Brilliant!
Multi effects pedal
Finally, a good multi-effects pedal is like a headphone amp on steroids. The Digitech Element XP is our choice for multi-effects pedal on this list. The Element XP is pricey, but worth the cost.
- 58 effects (12 amps, 9 cabinets, 37 stomp boxes)
- 100 factory presets
- 20 tone/fx bank combinations
- Built-in chromatic tuner
- Built-in expression pedal – for Wah effect, volume swell, overdrive boost, etc..
- 45 High quality drum patterns
That’s just a few of the features.