Cheap guitar vs. Expensive guitar

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Robertt8

Robertt8

Well-known member
Okay, I've always wondered about the real sound/playing difference between (for example) a $200 Fender electric and a $1200 Fender electric. It seems like there really can't be much difference. Am I crazy? Or, why do people pay that much for a guitar when they make much cheaper models that don't appear that different?
 
more expensive usually means
better wood
better hardware
better craftsmanship
better electronics
all adding up to a longer lasting better guitar
There is also the brand name factor and antiquity and collectablity factor.
 
Yeah... but aren't these pretty?

Uhhu http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2507213928&category=2384

Oh yeah http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2506587739&category=2384

There is another place that I won't reveal... set neck, mahogany body, Korean LP Goldtop... $169.99. Until I get one to thrash on!!!
They are all probably from the same factory in Korea, I've been told Samick. But who knows.

Next time I get a little cash, gonna get one of those goldtops or double cutaway LP copy's. Even if it is for tinkering.

Wish I could find another active pickup with maple neck axe!#45

[:D]
 
dragonworks said:
more expensive usually means
better wood
better hardware
better craftsmanship
better electronics
all adding up to a longer lasting better guitar
There is also the brand name factor and antiquity and collectablity factor.
Click to expand...


True, true.
 
It's the Wages!

A good portion of the amount you pay for a guitar (or anything for that matter) is the cost of labor required to assemble, finish, detail, test and package the item. Chinese labor is amazing in quality, and dirt cheap.... The exact guitar would cost about 5 times as much if made in the US. A little less if made in Japan, less in Mexico...Korea....etc.

Yes American made guitars usually have better electronics and sometimes use better wood, but this is done IMHO to partially conceal the fact that labor is the biggest cost factor.

;) Dom
 
Re: It's the Wages!

Dom Franco said:
A good portion of the amount you pay for a guitar (or anything for that matter) is the cost of labor required to assemble, finish, detail, test and package the item. Chinese labor is amazing in quality, and dirt cheap.... The exact guitar would cost about 5 times as much if made in the US. A little less if made in Japan, less in Mexico...Korea....etc.

Yes American made guitars usually have better electronics and sometimes use better wood, but this is done IMHO to partially conceal the fact that labor is the biggest cost factor.

;) Dom
Click to expand...

100% correct.

Good post! :)
 
Dom, I can tell you've never owned a chinese made guitar.
 
My impression is that the difference between a cheap and expensive electric is smaller than the difference between a cheap and expensive acoustic. Most Squier guitars made now seem pretty playable and some of them feel really good. You could get a $150 Affinity Special with an alder body and neck, and swap out the pups with some high quality ones and have an excellent sounding guitar. This is what I did with my Squier Fat Tele and Squier Affinity P-Bass - after changing the pickups they both sound and play very well.

With acoustics I think you have to spend at least $1000 on a Taylor, Larrivee or another good name to get a good sound. JMO
 
I can speak from some experiance. Like most poeple my First guitar was a JCPenny Strat copy (you know, just a really cheap first guitar). Then I went up to a Mexi Strat (played tons better, sounded some what better). Then went to a LP copy (I liked how it played, and sounded different then the strat). Then got a G&L Asat Custom, loved that guitar, sounded good but man it could play itself. Since my first kind of expensive guitar, it has always been about the feel, and all the higher priced guitars to ME all feel better, easier to play, sound better, etc.... Even the cheap guitars that I had, luckly in my small town we had a World class Luther (spelling) that built some AWESOME acoustics. And he would setup all my electrics. So please dont tell me that you can get a $200.00 guitar "feel" like a $1000.00 guitar. Now I have a PRS CU22, and that is MY guitar, I hold it and it just feels like apart of me, yes it costed a pretty penny, but it is worth it to me. Just the feeling, it is like butter. I pick it up and I am holding somthing that to me is a piece of art, and it plays that way. I have owned way more guitars then what I have listed, and I am only 21. Just saying that it took me along time to bite the bullet and buy to me what is a real guitar, and I am so damn happy I did.

I really do think, "You get what you pay for"
 
imho i have found that most of the new guitars that claim to be high quality are lacking. i know im gonna get slammed for this lol. take for instance the new gibsons, they are mainly living off there old name, im sorry but they dont build a new gibson that i would pay 1000 bucks for,you can damn near by a vintage les paul for what you pay for a new one if you shop around. i play a 1986 san dimas made jackson and a ivebeenhad rg570, ive also gott an original 1958 strat not a reissue that was handed down from my uncle. i to agree that the wages it cost to build guitars here in the good ole us of a is outrageous. us americans like to get paid for our work. and very few of the overseas models have the quality and feel of a good usa made guitar. i think alot of this is due to the fact that the wood is poor quality and they are so mass produced. heck most if not all of these over seas models are made wright in the same factory no matter what name i stamped on the headstock. when you buy a new guitar you may pick up 5 rg 570s and they may all look the same but everyone of them plays different. very few are set up properly from the factory.and if you buy a new guitar the first thing that has to go is the strings i dont know what our where they get the shitty strings from but they feel like they are recycled 10 times over lol.i went into guitar center and played alot of guitars just to do a little test, i couldnt find not a one that played good, most of them had rust on the strings and played terrible. 3 out of 10 ibanezes needed truss rod adjustments. my friend ordered a new chetatkins nylon string electric ack when gibson was making them and this thing played like crap wright outta the box, in fact the neck was so far off the truss rod couldnt compensate for it. now i dont know about you but it dont instill a good feeling on a buyer when big companys like gibson and fender are shipping this kinda garbage. the only thing they gott going for them is there name a nd a few models that they claim are made in the good ole usa. i know what you guys are gonna say before you even say it, i have a new les paul and it is great, i have to admit some of them look great like the new one eyes like fire gott, and im sure it plays great to. but i just dont think the quality is there that was once there when they were made in kalamazoo michigan. anyways thianks for listening to me rant and please dont take this personnel because it is only my opinion take it our leave it.in case you are wondering ive been playing for 20 years and i used to own my own music store here in this small town of cadillac michigan. anyway i wish you all the best and god bless you all. tim pate.
 
I have a Michael Kelly custom f-style mando. Very nice mando. I would put their instruments in the upper range of imports in their price.
 
It's not about how much you paid for it. It's about what you can do with it.
 
So true about the PRS Custom 22. My guitar before the PRS was a $200 Squire, and the difference is Nigel Tufnel and Steve Vai. I thought I was the only one who felt like the PRS was a part of my body...it's really just an extension of my arms. What's weird is that when I was playing it before I bought it, the PRS just seemed like a good guitar. Once I got it home, however, it played completely differently--it was playing me, not the other way around.

Maybe there needs to be a forum for PRS owners to gush :)
 
64Firebird said:
It's not about how much you paid for it. It's about what you can do with it.
Click to expand...

Another good post! :)

Eric Clapton could make a $200 Squire sound better than any of you guys on a $2,000 PRS.
 
i agree that most low budget guitars (wherever they're made) play decently, and can be definitely improved with some hot-rodding, but you have to play a well-crafted guitar before you say that expensive guitars are really not that different from low budget.
i started on a strat copy, then i upgraded to another piece of crap, and then i got a japanese strat, which was miles above the others i had. then i got an american strat, and i thought it wasn't that much of a different, but that is because fender and gibson are making a living off their brand names and their past. when i got my first rickenbacker, i realized what crafstmanship really means, and what a guitar should play like and sound (to me).
you shouldn't really worry about brands though, you're much better off getting a prs than a gibson, a g & l than a fender and so on.
 
ya, I don't think that if someone "plays" an expensive guitar in a store counts toward how it compares to their cheap guitar. Guitars are never setup right and almost any expensive guitar minus 1 out of a hundred, will play perfect as soon as it is set up properly.
 
But factors like local competition, brand recognition, transports and so on come into play also. Some brands have ridicolous price differences in different parts of the world. So it's not only a case of "you get what you pay for" as far as quality goes.

And even with this taken into account, as with many other things you don't get "twice as good" for "twice the price", more like 10%.

But with all this said. If you have a cheap guitar and buy something better - you'll start to notice small things that start to matter. Better acoustic sound, nicer tone, longer sustain, easier playability up the neck - in short - a feeling of quality. Perhaps nothing spectacular in any one area. And nothing you'd notice in the store. But don't fool yourself. These small improvements make it more enjoyable to pick the guitar up. And so you play more so you get better faster.
 
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