Inexpensive guitars

I don’t know , I’ve screwed around with cheap guitars for many years ,leveling fret boards, new frets ,new trems, pickups ,different paints and what I have learned is no matter how nice you polish a turd ,it’s still a turd .😜
 
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The trouble with cheap guitars is you can't say that because someone played a great XYZ that the one you get will be the same. It is a total lottery at the low end . TBH it stays a lottery until the price gets pretty high and even then the difference between good and great is still instrument specific . This is why you should never buy and instrument blind that you can't easily return.
 
Dave Merrill said:
Necro-ing this thread...

Anyone have any experience with either of these companies whose guitars Darrel Braun liked recently?
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If the 10S GF sounds good like this through a Zoom G11, it should be great with the Axe-FX.

I am considering getting one of these to install a set of P90 Harmonic Design orphan pups that I have inside a drawer.



Andy Eagle said:
The trouble with cheap guitars is you can't say that because someone played a great XYZ that the one you get will be the same. It is a total lottery at the low end . TBH it stays a lottery until the price gets pretty high and even then the difference between good and great is still instrument specific . This is why you should never buy and instrument blind that you can't easily return.
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The reviews on 10S seem to be consistently poitive. It looks like they have a good QC


EdgE said:
I don’t know , I’ve screwed around with cheap guitars for many years ,leveling fret boards, new frets ,new trems, pickups ,different paints and what I have learned is no matter how nice you polish a turd ,it’s still a turd .😜
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I had a $3,000 Ibanez J-Custom RG8550MZ with a turd dead note. The guitar resonance was absorbing the vibrational energy of one specific frequency, unnaturally killing the sustain. She was beautiful, but I had to get rid of her
 
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EdgE said:
I don’t know , I’ve screwed around with cheap guitars for many years ,leveling fret boards, new frets ,new trems, pickups ,different paints and what I have learned is no matter how nice you polish a turd ,it’s still a turd .😜
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You actually can polish a turd....you just have to freeze it in liquid nitrogen first 😜
 
Justincase said:
You actually can polish a turd....you just have to freeze it in liquid nitrogen first 😜
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I think I remember the Mythbusters polishing a turd. I miss those guys. I always wanted them to do a Guitar myth themed show. Like heavy guitars sound better,unfinished bodies sound better, boiling strings will increase their lifetime, etc. There's a ton of stuff they could have done.
 
What do you think of the Chapmans? Cheaper than the 10S!

l like the Red Sea ML1. I am going to grab one.

BTW:
$490 (฿15,300) here in Thailand (in stock)
$662 (£469) at Andertons UK (pre-order):D

432434-f0ANr9Tk.jpeg



..
This is insane:
 
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Piing said:
If the 10S GF sounds good like this through a Zoom G11, it should be great with the Axe-FX.

I am considering getting one of these to install a set of P90 Harmonic Design orphan pups that I have inside a drawer.




The reviews on 10S seem to be consistently poitive. It looks like they have a good QC



I had a $3,000 Ibanez J-Custom RG8550MZ with a turd dead note. The guitar resonance was absorbing the vibrational energy of one specific frequency, unnaturally killing the sustain. She was beautiful, but I had to get rid of her
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Under £1k quality control is almost non existent . It's only is this a functioning guitar not is it good. Remember that a £1k guitar leaves the factory at sub £200 total cost, materials, labour and profit for the factory. Guitars even super cheap require quite a bit of hand work and this costs disproportionally as the price of the guitar goes down. The golden rule is never buy a cheap guitar you haven't played or can easily return. those reviews are beyond useless.
 
Piing said:
I had a $3,000 Ibanez J-Custom RG8550MZ with a turd dead note. The guitar resonance was absorbing the vibrational energy of one specific frequency, unnaturally killing the sustain. She was beautiful, but I had to get rid of her
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I had a PRS CE-24 and a brand new EBMM Majesty that had a dead note at the 12th fret, G-string. Less than one second of sustain there. I think after you pay a certain price, there shouldn’t be a dead spot. QC should make that a qualification. One doesn’t buy a piano and just accept that a note might not ring. The Majesty bothered me a lot because it was over $3K and EBMM said that sometimes it happens. I loved everything else about the guitar but that dead note killed it for me.
I’ve also got lucky with cheap guitars that were flawless. So I‘m very hesitant to buy a guitar that I can’t play first but I know that price doesn’t always guarantee anything.
 
acwild said:
I had a PRS CE-24 and a brand new EBMM Majesty that had a dead note at the 12th fret, G-string. Less than one second of sustain there. I think after you pay a certain price, there shouldn’t be a dead spot. QC should make that a qualification. One doesn’t buy a piano and just accept that a note might not ring. The Majesty bothered me a lot because it was over $3K and EBMM said that sometimes it happens. I loved everything else about the guitar but that dead note killed it for me.
I’ve also got lucky with cheap guitars that were flawless. So I‘m very hesitant to buy a guitar that I can’t play first but I know that price doesn’t always guarantee anything.
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High end builders usually want the neck and body frequency to be as far apart as possible so that when the instrument is assembled there is still no dissonance (cause of the dead spots.) All musical instruments have a range of success in this and nothing is perfectly even throughout the entire range.
 
Andy Eagle said:
High end builders usually want the neck and body frequency to be as far apart as possible so that when the instrument is assembled there is still no dissonance (cause of the dead spots.) All musical instruments have a range of success in this and nothing is perfectly even throughout the entire range.
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It is not always related to the interaction between neck and body. I did swap the neck of my $3,000 J-Custom with a RG550LTD that played flawlessly, but the problem persisted. It was just the body absorbing one damned frequency. Longer story here

And that was not my first horror story with a expensive guitar. I will never buy expensive guitars anymore

RG8550-Neck1.jpg
 
It is always a variation on this problem and some bodies are particularly hard to accommodate as they are an unfortunate resonance for a maple neck . Maple is very stable and consistent so if the body is an outlier that is close to a problem frequency for the average maple neck that fits it you will have a real problem finding a neck that will work on it.

Remember the Suhr a guy on here had with the same issue? He ended up with a new neck and it was still only partly better .This is because the neck wasn't different enough, same for you. I bet the J Custom neck worked on the RG 550 perfectly.
 
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Given all the above, how does a person shop for necks and bodies?

It's probably not possible to ask guitar part makers about the resonant frequency of parts you might buy anyway, right?
 
Dave Merrill said:
Given all the above, how does a person shop for necks and bodies?

It's probably not possible to ask guitar part makers about the resonant frequency of parts you might buy anyway, right?
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Bodies vary a lot and necks mostly don't (two pieces of maple the same size weigh very similar). The way a lot of small builders that do it at all is usually by wood type and weight . I could name wood types and fender bodies that I would want between particular weights . If you do this a these are almost alway OK . Nobody can be 100% on what a guitar is going to sound like before it is finished. I can get 95% and know how to deal with the outlier. I know how hardware I like sounds and try everything available.
An example is Alder Strat; Roswood fingerboard, 3lb 7oz to 4lb raw body is going to work . lighter gets thin and heavier can but great but it can bring the density close to problematic. That is a fairly safe weight for any raw strat body. The safe Tele is about 4lb to 5lb 7oz remember that a Tele has no contouring or trem cavity so that weight is about the same wood density as the Strat weight I gave. Hollow is risky and light porous hard wood can also be unpredictable.
 
All my guitars are have a list price at or below $1000 US, but they’re all really good quality. Paying more than that, you should be getting into higher class instruments, but a lot of people are still paying for off the shelf stuff like Gibson’s and Fenders that aren’t worth that price tag. A high end PRS 10 top, Tom Anderson, Kiesel, Suhr, you can see where the money went.
 
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