Quality gear... who knew?

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Re: Quality gear... who knew?

DreX said:
Here's an old trick that I just made up: if you find that playing a guitar with improved play-ability and craftsmanship inspires you to practice more and lights your creative fire, start out with a $100 First Act guitar, get good and used to it, then buy a MIM Fender or Epiphone and brace yourself for the surge of muse that awaits. Not only is the method cheaper than spending outrageous amounts on a domestic made solid body guitar, but the step up between the First Act and the MIM or EPi is likely to be more dramatic than switching from either to it's domestic counterpart. When the high starts to wear off, rinse and repeat. Bring the First Act back out to remind your ungrateful fingers how good they have it with their finely crafted Mexican or Korean product.
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This is the worst idea I have ever heard but we've come to expect those from you.
 
Re: Quality gear... who knew?

I used to buy guitars because they had nice colors

I prefer the way they feel in my hands, the balance

if i want a particular sound out of them then I can change pickups and twist knobs on an amp or pedal

I tend to gravitate to the more comfortable guitars

since I got the MIM, I really don't spend as much time with the Squires
but I still pull em down and play them

don't get me wrong, I still oh and ah over pretty guitars
I just don't buy them

kinda like women I suppose, there is something that draws you to them
if they are too pretty you don't wanna rough em up to much
you favorite is always the one that's game for whatever

if you have several, you can always find the one that's most appropriate
if you have a few that are fun to play, then the fun is what's appropriate
 
Re: Quality gear... who knew?

ehdwuld said:
kinda like women I suppose, there is something that draws you to them
if they are too pretty you don't wanna rough em up to much
you favorite is always the one that's game for whatever
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What? The prettier they are the more they wanna be roughed up.
At any rate, I make sure to play only 100% top notch crap- you know..the kind thats expensive enough not to be too cheap, but still too cheap to be too expensive.
 
Re: Quality gear... who knew?

Red_Label said:
Based on your post I'm going to ASSume that you haven't spent a lot of time with higher-end gear. The pay-off is not linear generally.
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Well... you know what happens when you assume. I've owned three MIMs for fifteen years, a Tele, a Standard Strat and a Deluxe Strat, I've owned a Parker Fly for eight. I don't play them any more or less than my imports. The differences between them simply aren't great enough to justify any such favoritism (save for the Parker, which is a very different sort of guitar).

Red_Label said:
But there's a reason that players (not forum members just looking for forum cred) choose their high end gear when they can afford it. INSPIRATION to achieve that next level is priceless to many. Bonamassa isn't collecting '59 'bursts just for forum cred or investment purposes.
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There's not "a" reason, there are "many" reasons, some good, some not so good, to be sure. Probably the best and worst reason is endorsement deals with those companies, who rely heavily on rock stars playing premium guitars to convince guitarists that they too must have premium guitars, to make them think "there's a reason that players choose their high end gear", well there is, but that reason might well be $$$.

Other reasons can include their not needing such a variety of instruments and having a much larger, occupation related gear budget that counts towards business expenses. I mod my imports, and it's fun to do, but if you're in it for the money, paying a guitar tech so much per hour and have a lot of other concerns, the convenience of having a guitar already equipped with AlNiCo boasting pickups that's less liable to have any sort of quality control issue is appealing from a business standpoint. Most guitarists however do no staff guitar techs and they deal with guitars strictly on their leisure time.

Besides, there are occasional counter examples

gary-clark-blaknblue.jpg


epiphone-shereaton-xxxx-natural-aboy_video.jpg


N_1829.jpg
 
Re: Quality gear... who knew?

DreX said:
"we've"? I didn't know you were a spokesperson.
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DreX: the guy who plays his Squier and MIM/MIJ guitars through a Marshall TSL. Perhaps "we" should talk about "ungrateful" ears instead of "ungrateful fingers" in this thread a bit.

Anyway, everyone give a big round of applause for DreX and his unquestioned loyalty to cheap guitars!

https://forum.seymourduncan.com/showthread.php?285548-NGD-Fender-Classic-Player-Triple-Tele&highlight=DreX
 
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Re: Quality gear... who knew?

I totally wanted an MIA strat. you're just making me want one even more... :evil:
 
Re: Quality gear... who knew?

I don't see the controversy. Dude said he found it rewarding to play a nicer instrument than he was accustomed to.

Other great controversies:

"Had dinner at an expensive restaurant. Tasted really good"
"Bought some nice clothes. I looked pretty good in them."
"Drove a Ferrari today. Sum***** was fast!"
 
Re: Quality gear... who knew?

AlexR said:
I too started off with budget guitars. I bought a couple of better ones and after getting used to them, found the budget ones didn't quite cut the Dijon anymore. I still have the odd cheap part (a CV squier body and trem), but for the most part I do select wood now.
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Would it really bug you to find out the term is "cut the muster"?
 
Re: Quality gear... who knew?

DreX said:
Not being able to play a given fret on the neck sounds like a outright defect, or more likely, typical fret wear and tear. I wouldn't call that characteristic of all imports.

I have MIAs as well as a ton of imports, and the reality is that, with MIMs in particular, you can see evidence that less time was spend on average constructing the guitar, such as slight unevenness in finish thickness, or they made no special effort to select a flattering grain, or the body radius is uneven somewhere, but even this a random sort of issue, some of my MIMs show no signs of a rush job (at least not where it matters). The other thing is that the likelihood as to where a shortcoming will present itself is dependent upon the manufacturing processes of the particular factory where a guitar was made. I have examples of MIJs, MIMs, MIIs, and MIKs that will share certain shortcomings depending on who made them. For example, MIMs have radius and finish issues, MIJs show more variability in paint color from one guitar to the next, Korean Epis frequently feature unfinished fret work and unnecessarily thick coats of poly. The moral of the story is that every guitar is unique, for a fact, and you can make some generalizations based on the circumstances of manufacture, but the broad brushstroke domestic good/import bad is highly inaccurate. I can't even say my MIA's are all that precisely made either, but I will grant that they tend to have better looking grains on the translucent finish models, but I just picked up a MIJ walnut finish Strat with a killer Ash grain, so... they're out there.

What surprises me about guitarists saying they found the one true guitar that sounded good, and sold everything else in their closet, is that a guitarist would settle for a single sound in the first place. Nobody has a lot of guitars in search of one good sound, they have many guitars in search of many sounds. To me, the real value of imports is that it weights your overall guitar budget towards diversity in all respects, diverse woods, necks, pickups, tunings, mechanics, body types, and so on. The philosophy of having a few "high end" guitars is the opposite of that, and seems to weight towards the notion that if your guitar is not overly perfect in every detail, then it's not worth owning or playing, and it seems somewhat snobbish, to be honest.
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I think you have the highest words-to-content ratio on the board.
 
Re: Quality gear... who knew?

I have MIAs that do not open my eyes to "how crappy" budget guitars are, I have healthy mix of domestic and imports that prove the opposite. There are many causes of dead frets, that's certainly not a quality which is inherent to budget guitars, especially not in this decade. The assertion that it could be is misleading to anyone seeking info to make a purchase decision; you can buy a budget guitar and not have to fight with the set up, you can buy a budget guitar and not have dead frets.
 
Re: Quality gear... who knew?

I think going through cheap guitars is a right of passage. Everyone has to have that Squier or Epiphone to really appreciate a Fender or Gibson.
 
Re: Quality gear... who knew?

Cheap stuff.....good as firewood....at a second thought....maybe they should have let them trees grow, pollute less, and so on!
This place called Earth is drowning in cheap useless crap stuff....

After yet another week at work reparing and setting up stuff.......I rather save some money and buy something worth the while, rather than the endless rows of cheap not worth anyones while stuff.
They cost hours, and really are not cheap at the end of the day....
Wet wood, soft tincan metal, hopeless fret jobs, necks that warp at the slightest variation in the weather.

Yeah...so cheap!
 
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