I've been looking at some reviews of new, budget guitars and noticed that it is hard to find a poor rating. It seems that nowadays cheap guitars are made very well in the far east. Not perfect but it doesn't strike me as terrible.
I inherited a Hohner Rockwood LX250G which seems to have
good reviews. Although I am not sure how old it it (10-15 years?), the hardware was all flaking when I got it and it needed a new nut. I changed the tuners and am in the process of looking at the pickups. There's a weird thing about the arched top in that it must be only a millimetre thick and has an air gap between it and the actual body wood but that inadvertently makes it acoustically loud for an electric. The neck is a clear issue though with at least 3 different woods being used for the fret board (the high frets alternate in colour) and the "binding" bleeding into the fretboard itself. But I know the guitar is recent.
So has anyone out there ended up buying a guitar recently that turned out to be a stinker? And why?
Comments
I'm currently trying to make a pink Encore that I picked up second hand playable for my daughters.
I know a young lad whose parents bought him a "Gear 4 Music" for Christams last year one that is absolutely abominable. The intonation is way off. It hurst my ears. I don't know whether it can be adjusted properly or not.
Overall budget guitars are better today than ever before, but there is a steep cliff at the bottom of the price tag were credible turns into ultra poor
I've seen some since that were fine though, but those <shudder>
They're worth a bit more than £50 too, if you get one that's properly playable you can easily sell them for over £100. I think I got £129 for the last one I fixed up. (Or it might have been a Jim Deacon, but effectively the same thing.)
I also do quite well fixing up 60s and 70s cheesegraters . Likewise, with some work and a few appropriate parts - usually the trem tailpiece if it has one (replace with fixed), often the nut and sometimes the machineheads - they can be made surprisingly playable and often sound quite good in a 'trashy' kind of way.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Tuners are usually a big problem, because it's a bit of a faff to change them out to better ones if the guitar isn't worth anything in the first place. They need to at least be average quality, but some are downright junk and move when you look at them funny.
Acoustics on the other hand - have played many that I just want to throw straight into a wood chipper when you know that no amount of anything can solve the action you could fly a jet underneath, bowed necks, horrific nuts, terrible tuners, etc.
Yes, that's certainly true. If you get one where it would need a neck reset to get it even close to playable, it's game over.
Surprisingly this applies to some of the 'desirable' semi-vintage ones too - like a lot of old cheap Yamahas, which seem rated now for reasons I have never been able to understand. I'm working on one just now - even with the bridge shaved as low as feasible it will always have an overly high action, not helped by the S-bend in the neck, and it sounds like a plywood packing crate. But someone will pay for it because it's a Yamaha...
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
That said, I personally think that all guitars respective of price should be judged by their own merits. I have a squire tele that is amazingly great to play, and I've played expensive coffee table guitars which felt atrocious. There are a couple of brands that I don't like at all and wouldn't even consider trying them out.
I agree with @ICBM - if you can do the work yourself and learn from it then it will keep costs down - How do you think the hot rod car market started post war, when no parts around and 'kids' learnt the skill of customisation' to turn an old chassis into their own unique car - I learnt my initial bit of guitar skill on an old 'Grant' Les Paul from ICBM's neck of the woods - similar to a Columbus , Avon and Eros of the day - it is all I could afford but the skill was to improve it
Try telling that to @HarrySeven
I've just sold off this one - http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/93071/fs-cheap-sh-t-you-dont-want for the grand sum of forty one squid. I did think the body was probably ply, in which case your air gap might be some delaminating going on.
It actually plays pretty well, I did fret-level it but the neck has an inoffensive mostly-harmless profile. The machine heads are a comedy of errors. Thought the pickups were fairly OK, quite bright vs the usual mudbuckers of the cheap seat end of things. Didn't have it's own gravitational pull, sustained pretty well. Think this one was 80s-90s going by binding ageing.
TL:DR - not entirely terrible for a few tenners but I wouldn't pay more than 40-50, but can be made perfectly usable.
On the cheapie front my lad has a Crafter Strat copy, seen them go as little as £15 . When he was 14 he stripped it, painted it, we fret-levelled it together, he put a better trem on and rewired it with lipstick pickups and stratoblaster boost, he's gigged with it. It sounds great and plays fine, feels at least as decent as CV Strats and suchlike. Decent guitar after a bit of a fettle.
http://alleykat.co.uk/images/stuff/misc/N_strat_1.jpg
I rest my case m' lord.
I don't just mean 'excellent for a Marlin Sidewinder', either - it was a really good guitar. I admit it had needed some work...
If it was an archtop the bridge would probably be movable.
Although I have come across a custom shop Gibson flat-top with that issue... caused by the neck joint being misaligned. For the thick end of four grand.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein