The days of getting cheap guitars out of the box with no semblance of a setup... of any sort. Seem to be vanishing. Even if these guitars are not perfectly setup, they are close. Their are big name companies that have these same QC issues. So just spending that high price tag on a big name brand doesnt mean the chance of having any one of several issues occur cant somehow happen to you,
Weve seen guitars in the $200 price range that are coming out of the box setup better, overall decent parts. These are not the cheap guitars of the old days. Even the fretwire is good and the once tuning less tuners are now holding tuning pretty good for $200. Even intonation and string height (action) are better than they were just 5-10 years ago.
Theres a lot your not getting with the lower tier guitars coming out. Tops are veneer usually and fretboard material is not always rosewood or ebony as they are using many different materials now with the guitars build overseas. As mentioned above fretwork is a normal part of the lower priced guitar tier. But this has gotten better and better as well. When you begin to get more towards the $400 range of guitars, its hard to not find a guitar that you could take out of the box and get up onstage with for a gig. Makes it difficult to spend thousands upon thousands more for a bigger brand guitar. Especially when that companies QC can be very hit or miss as well. The types of woods are also different most of the time, but we will leave the tonewood discussion for another time. What I can say is from my experience the woods being used on some of these lower tier guitars is fine and serves its purpose. Some are very nice examples and bring a unique approach to the look of the guitar. Some of the guitars im blown away by the quality of the woods being used. To get a lot of this from a US model you will be spending $2000+ on depending on the guitar style your looking into.
We have been blinded by the history of big name companies and seen these guitars in countless performers hands thruout our life. You want one of these big brands so you can say you have it. But your wallet says something differently. Well dont be blind anymore. From cheaper companies like Harley Benton to Fire Fly, even Squiers new guitars are quite the feat these days at a price range anyone can afford. You have G&L, PRS and other companies with their import series and these are some killer guitars that are coming with very good QC right out of the box. Heck if you order it thru sweetwater you can go wrong.
The Import series of guitars from these bigger and smaller brands has turned the guitar world upside down and these bigger brands that dont have an import series are going to be scrambling for quite some time. The QC difference between that expensive USA made guitar than this $200 Harley Benton is is becoming minimal at most. We are talking thousands of dollars more. Sometimes you pickup one of these expensive guitars and your feel it and hear it, WOW!. But more often than not that magic is becoming less and less of a thing and the questioning of why your about to spend thousands on a guitar pops up in your mind. What has happened to the QC in US built guitars that made them the “ultimate” guitar purchase for so many players for decades.?
We have so many tools out there to research anything we are interested in buying, utilize those tools and dont let the big brand name sell you a product that you may not need and save some hard earned money for other things like amps, pedals, strings etc. Theres more to the guitar than simply owning the damn thing. :-) A tuner is a rather important idea we have discovered.
If you are interested in some of these bigger brands, look into the the used market where you can find some of the better built guitars for 40%+ off the price of a new one and the older built models imho are better built than the newer ones. But if a new guitar is what you want look into the import series of these bigger brands before you shell out a lot of cash that you may not have needed to and could have spend that extra savings on things mentioned above.
This will be an on going post and we would love to hear your comments. But please play nice and lets all get along and converse about the things we love guitars. :-)
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