Hello friends,
I would like to share my experiences with guitars. The majority of cheap guitars do not play as good as the expensive guitars. There are many reasons for this. Most of these differences are in the dimensions. I believe that these differences are created on purpose by the manufacturers. Why would the manufacturer give you a cheap guitar that plays as well as their expensive guitar? If the manufacturer made both a guitar from cheap materials and a guitar expensive materials with the exact same dimensions, I think you would be hard pressed to tell them apart in a blind test, playability wise. That will never happen.
If the manufacturer did this, you could easily upgrade your cheap guitar with better electronics and have a guitar that plays as well and sounds close to the expensive guitar. The manufacturer wants you to buy a whole new guitar when you decide to upgrade.
Cheap guitars tend to have a narrower neck. 1/8" makes a big difference. The standard width at the nut for an expensive guitar is 1 11/16" +. Most cheap guitars fall short here. The narrow neck on cheap guitars creates a problem when trying to play open chords cleanly because the fingers have no room.
The neck profile is another problem with the cheap guitars. We are talking about the shape of the back of the neck where your fretting hand's thumb will rest. Expensive guitars have a comfortable neck profile. Some cheap guitars do too but it's not as common as with the expensive guitars.
Cheap guitars sometimes have a thick finish on the neck which can cause friction between your skin and the neck. This can slow you down.
Cheap guitars usually have ok to poor fret jobs. The width, height, profile (shape), and polish of the frets has a great effect on the playing comfort of a guitar. The level of frets in respect to each other also determines if the action (string height from fingerboard) can be set low for players who like it that way. If one fret is higher than another, the strings will rattle or buzz on the high fret.
The fingerboard radius affects the playability of a guitar too. If the radius is too curved, the guitar might not play well when bending strings. Maybe the strings will touch higher frets while bending. If it's too flat, the guitar might not play well when fretting barre chords. Your fingers naturally curve when barring chords.
The setup is another difference in the cheap and expensive guitar. Cheap guitars almost always have plastic nuts and saddles. These parts usually aren't given much detail during the cheap guitar setup, if any at all. The spacing of the strings slots, the depth of the slots, the angle of the slots, the height of the part, the width of the part, and the fit of these parts to the wood parts will affect how the guitar plays and how accurate the intonation is. Cheap guitars normally do not have a good setup from the manufacturer.
The neck angle will determine if the string action can be set properly. If the neck is angled back too much, toward the player, the strings can buzz when trying to achieve desired string action. If the neck is angled too far away from the player, the bridge might not be capable of being adjusted low enough for desired string action.
These are the most obvious differences in playability between cheap and expensive guitars. There are also differences in sound, stability, and cosmetics. I won't go too deeply into these differences in this post but i would like to touch on them. The construction tolerances of the guitar and it's hardware will determine how stable the guitar is. If the neck pocket and neck heel don't fit really well, the neck could shift enough to foul up a setup. This can also determine the clarity and sustain of the guitar. If the frets aren't properly seated, the strings could begin buzzing, seemingly out of nowhere. The quality of the pickups will determine how good your guitar sounds, assuming that the guitar is well constructed, and the setup is in order. If the hardware is constructed of cheap metals, these parts could be unreliable in the long run. Also, lighter woods won't sustain as much abuse as harder woods.
Deeply,
The Big Red Hot Dog
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