cheap guitars are better?

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hmm sometimes..my custom strats got a duncan JB SH4 in the bridge and some mightymight single coil in the neck, and the thing was reaaaal cheap from my brothers friend, like 100 bucks...but i've put more $ into it than its worth lol...but my main guitar is a $900 '89 USA strat so, idk i guess i don't play cheaper ones more often..lol
 
My £50 Squire Strat did me about 6 or 7 years solid service (that's a lot when you've only been playing for 8), and I've only just replaced it in favour of a Telecaster.

Cheap guitars +1
 
You gys go ahead and stick with the cheap sht. Me, I'm in love with my American Fender Strat $650 about 17 years ago, and my Gibson Les Paul Standard $1,900 about 5 years ago.

I'll also stick with my Fender and Marshal amps. Although I was taking a crap this morning and reading about the Mesa Boogie Rectifier Dual Roadster. That sounds like a good amp!
 
I've got myself a few cheapies, one being a 1981 Peavey Milestone that I got at a yard sale for $20. The tuners on it are the best tuners I have EVER used in my life. Once the strings are broken in, I don't need to retune them. Ever. I'll check every once and a while, but they don't fall out of tune; it's insane. The clean is a little lacking, but it is perfect for that old 80's punk Descendents distortion. On the other hand, I do have a Gibson Sg that cost me around $800, but it plays like a dream.
 
Natural Gass said:
You gys go ahead and stick with the cheap sht. Me, I'm in love with my American Fender Strat $650 about 17 years ago, and my Gibson Les Paul Standard $1,900 about 5 years ago.

I'll also stick with my Fender and Marshal amps. Although I was taking a crap this morning and reading about the Mesa Boogie Rectifier Dual Roadster. That sounds like a good amp!
Click to expand...

So I have 35 guitars or so. I have a $20k Gibson custom to a $75 Clasical. I can tell you 2 things:

1:) They all play great because they are good guitars.
2:) Given the choice, everyone that comes over, picks out the $1500 to $3000 guitars to play.

That tells me, that given a choice, people want to play a really nice axe. But they will play whatever they can afford and like, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Most musicians play cheap guitars because they don't make that much money because they are musicians.

You can set up most any guitar to play great.
 
cephus said:
The real beauty of cheapie guitars, especially fender copies, is that they encourage you to tear them apart and customize them.
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Exactly. I have a Johnson DeSoto that I think I paid $150 or $160 for... something like that. With all my tweaking, it went from decent to really quite comfortable. I love the sound now, and it's very playable.

It's hard to say which change provided the biggest improvement. The tuning of the instrument (and guitars in general) used to drive me nuts since I'm a pianist primarily and am used to... correct scales. Redoing the intonation (adjusting the bridge distance for each string) helped a lot, but even after doing that, it just didn't sound right to my ears.

That's when I replaced the stock nut with the Earvana compensating nut and tweaked the intonation again. That change made all the difference in the world. It was the best $30 I ever spent. The heavier strings also help because they don't bend so much---a feature which also used to drive me nuts....

As for pickups, the stock "Johnson by EMG" pickups sounded great in the bridge position, reasonable in the middle, but really puny at the neck. The vintage rails made a world of difference in tone, and now, I think my favorite sound might be a mix of middle/neck instead of the middle/bridge that I preferred originally. While I had it torn down, I shielded the heck out of the body, which also improved the sound quite a bit at high gain settings.

I think I also raised all of the pickups closer to the strings, but not by a lot; they were pretty reasonable before, but I measured them with a calipers and I think I ended up raising the middle one by 1/8" or so, the others by maybe 1/32" or a little over. Not much, anyway....

With those changes, it acts and sounds like a completely different guitar. Doing some quick math, I think I just crossed the $300 threshold, and it's like night and day compared with what it sounded like originally. Not that it was awful before or anything, but the hacking really brought it to life.
 
I was impressed with Yamaha RGX520FZ and Ibanez SAS36FM.
They are in middle class with $400 price tag but are worth every rupee.
I remember the times when you could get only horrible Sakuras or Westers in that price category. They sounded, played and even looked so bad that I would lose all enthuisasm for playing just by looking at them.

These new Yamaha and Ibanez are oustanding instruments for a price and sound more than decent even with stock pickups. They look gorgeous and feel very comfortable and playable. I envy younger generations when I think of all the firewood I had to deal with when I was starting.
 
i got a guild a harmoney rocket and other great guitars...my best one is my strat i built with mighty might pickups
 
On Monday, I played some kind of a Strat knock-off by Behringer...$150.00 starter package, at H.H. Gregg (electronics/appliances), and although the high E string was completely missing, I was impressed. Not enough to buy it, but it'd make a great start, for someone new to electric guitar. What got me was, the lil' bitty battery powered amp (about the size of a Walkman, with a belt clip even) puts out decently enough, without sounding like you're playing through a transistor radio. And ya get a gig bag, strap and instructional video with it...there are gonna be some kids out there having a decent Christmas, this year. Santa may very well be facilitating the next Clapton, SRV or Hendrix.

Matt
 
Natural Gass said:
You gys go ahead and stick with the cheap sht. Me, I'm in love with my American Fender Strat $650 about 17 years ago, and my Gibson Les Paul Standard $1,900 about 5 years ago.

I'll also stick with my Fender and Marshal amps. Although I was taking a crap this morning and reading about the Mesa Boogie Rectifier Dual Roadster. That sounds like a good amp!
Click to expand...


Right now I assume you are a fricking awesome guitar player.



















Just kidding.
 
chestwick91 said:
i got a guild a harmoney rocket and other great guitars...my best one is my strat i built with mighty might pickups
Click to expand...
How are those pickups? I was considering putting in a pair to a frankenstein guitar..
 
I play a Squire which i payed 350$ for a couple years ago. And i love the think. only reason i would get another guitar is because i would want a new finish. Im a finish fiend :D
 
What this really tells us is that guitars are personal to people - and when you have something that fits and delivers something you can respond to, you want to keep it no matter what you paid for it. To which I say: Hurrah!

I have a really nice older Taylor acoustic - a '94 815C that I retrofitted with a B-Band pickup/mic system. Its a beautiful guitar by nearly any standard and it is my lifetime favorite of all guitars. It's also worth about $3K. But I also have a Cort 335 knockoff that I bought used with a great HSC for $200. It is quite an instrument. Then there's the $200 used Cort dreadnaught resonator - betcha ya never seen one of those - and the new Washburn J4 - $500 with HSC and a very nice custom setup by the local shop.

Thank God these instruments are within reach! When my tugboat comes in, if it doesn't sink in the harbor, I'll have Michael Millard build me something and pay whatever it is he needs to do it. But until then, I'll keep working with instruments that, for some reason, just seem to fit - and if they're under a hundred bucks, so much the better.
 
yeah you can buy a 99cent burger or a $5 burger or a $15 burger...
and a Grey Poupon burgers on crystal relic dishes...
or you can buy 5qty 99cent burgers for 1qty $5 burger too, and some $15 burgers don't taste good to me.. :rolleyes: sorry, my parental dad-ness comes out. :D

I went to GuitarCenter with my son &his friend today, at that age they have nothing financially and not the years of experience (thank goodness)... a different perspective.

Would you buy a kid a brand new deluxe for his first car? most likely not.
Guitars are the same way, imo.

so the cheap ones are also great for that too. and they play the hell out of them, are doing some live gigs and its common for me to have their guitars laying on my floor with the plug busted out too. thrown around..well, not like Pete Townsend thrown around..but left laying all over, ...these are Rock Tools not holy collectors items to the kids.

I play every guitar that comes in here. the cheap guitars work. I actually like the Butterscotch Affinity, its solid Alder, it has pickups and it stays in tune. it has the identical shape, of one of, the Tele's...and like Cephus said you can mod these things without worrying about collectors-value degradation.


(I keep my US standard, acoustic, Squire Bass locked in the closet of course. :D )
 
[[What this really tells us is that guitars are personal to people - and when you have something that fits and delivers something you can respond to, you want to keep it no matter what you paid for it. To which I say: Hurrah!]] Well, Treeline pretty well summed it up. A good guitar player can make a cheapie sound like an expensive instrument. Which reminds me ; Did I REALLY need to buy this Ric 4003, or not? :eek: I've made cheaper basses sound ALMOST as good! I think I deserve the FEEL and that justifies the expense. :D :D
 
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