Chinese Quality Luthiery

[Pontiac Jack]

A friend dropped her Epi DR 220S in for a bit of a tickle. Needs a few things like having the Genuine "Freddy Krueger" fret ends smoothed out. But,I had to post a pic of this. I know its only a $300 axe but, wouldn't you expect a little bit more precision than this. It's really not that bad a guitar,but the frets and the machine heads are truly crap!

Cheers,PJ

 

[beaubrummels]

Re: Chinese Quality Luthiery

Wow. But when the thread title is an oxymoron, I kind of expected something like this. Maybe not this bad, but something like this.

 

[ehdwuld]

Re: Chinese Quality Luthiery

Looks like he was left handed

 

[Funkfingers]

Re: Chinese Quality Luthiery

… or Puerto Rican. :fingersx:

 

[Mr. B]

Re: Chinese Quality Luthiery

Those retailed for around 225, and sold for 150 during some sales. Its about what I would expect.

 

[beaubrummels]

Re: Chinese Quality Luthiery

I learned a secret to getting a good Chinese guitar a few years back. I was ordering a particular model, but I noticed there was no photo of it, and that it would be on order - meaning it wasn't in stock, they'd have to make it. What happened was when my guitar finally arrived, it was incredible, book-matched wood, everything straight, sounded and played excellent. Then later I noticed that my guitar had been used for the pictures advertising the model.

 

[voggin]

Re: Chinese Quality Luthiery

My wife has a Blueridge OM size acoustic. It's a real cannon, very well made, too.

There's nothing wrong with Chinese manufacturing, it's the price points they're built to. If you ordered a guitar to the specs of a PRS to have the same price and margin of the real deal, I'm sure they could build it.