• The move to the new server is done. There are some software and database maintenance updates in process. This has us passing the hat around to help out. We appreciate any donations. Seriously, even a dollar helps. The payment page may be found here - https://www.audiokarma.org/support.html

Chinese guitars

Mister Tawny

Mister Tawny

Crazed afficianado
Well I know that this will prolly get me pilloried, but I have to say it.

I have bought more than a few Chinese knock offs now. I have read the horror stories of build quality and problems, but I took my time and found a few good manufacturers and all I can say is that I will prolly be buying Chinese from now on.

First was a 1957 Strat "custom shop" that was actually better than the USA made Fender, for about $200 with HSC. Then I decided to try a Gibson Les Paul Supreme and a TV Special. Both were identical to the US product, and in all cases were indistinguishable (other than the lack of logos which I specified) from the American product. In the case of the TV special it actually played better and the finish was superior to the Gibson.

This worries me that the Chinese are improving so fast, or maybe it's worse the US product is declining. The quality to detail is getting crazy. I don't know about you, but $3500 for a Les Paul Supreme vs. $275 for an identical Chinese piece makes my decision for me. I wonder if Gibson and Fender will get the message too?
 
Register to hide this ad
Fa ra ra ra ra, ra ra, ra, ra!

Where are you getting these things from?

Fender and Gibson are in no danger. There's always that group of people (I call them 'idiots') who absolutely have to have the original deal and that name on the headstock, and will insist that everything else is 'junk'. They usually are found playing tired covers in some crappy B-list band that gigs in smoky rural taverns for $400 a night and think they know everything.

It's not rocket science...it's just hardware. If you can build a good neck and a good body, the rest is just hardware.

Acoustics are a whole different animal. But $3000 for a new electric guitar? That's completely insane. We're lucky there's a lot of idiots around. :D
 
Mostly Shanghai and a few from Ghangzhou province. Pretty good stuff, but you have to be willing to wade through more than a few companies for good stuff.
 
Mister Tawny said:
This worries me that the Chinese are improving so fast, or maybe it's worse the US product is declining. The quality to detail is getting crazy.
Click to expand...

Executions behind the plant every Friday at Noon makes for some strong incentive. ;)

Apologies if that's too political for this area.
 
I will prolly put together a bunch of manufacturers and perhaps set up a buying group to get lower prices. Buying less than 75 at a time isn't really cost effective. I find some of the freight companies are cheap with LTL container space. My last batch was only about $25 each for shipping.

As far as executions behind the plant goes... I would have agreed with you up to a while back. The simple fact is that China isn't the monster we picture. it is by no means a first world country, but it also isn't what it was during the cultural revolution. Coming from the SF bay area many of my friends are 1st or 2nd gen Chinese, so what I get from them supersedes data I get from less reliable sources. The fact is they work long hours and make good products now to increase the overall welfare of the family and country. I am getting other products from Pakistan (bag pipes) that are the same way. The quality is better than much of the Scot product for less than 1/4 the price. And they work to my specs.

I get some US gear made the same, but I do pay for it. My luthier charges me more to set up these guitars than I spend buying them. He is only spending 1 or 2 hours too. Maybe we need to rethink how we do business.
 
The current crop of Chinese knock off guitars are certainly getting better and are reasonable instruments in their own right. The problems which are being seen now stem from the fact that these Chinese companies have no issues with copyright infringement and will make guitars with the Fender, Gibson, Rickenbacker logos on them. These instruments are brought into the North American market and are being sold as the real deal for big $$$ by unscrupulous sellers preying on the uninformed buyers (mostly kids) out there.

If you know your instruments it is easy enough to spot the fakes but not everyone can. My own guitars are the real Gibson, Fender etc. and I have owned them for a long time, long before the Chinese fakes were being produced so at least for myself if you put real and fake side by side I could write a shopping list of differences to tell which was which. I even worked for Gibson here in Canada back in the 70s which gave me invaluable experience with the "real thing" and how they were made. Louie, you said "$3000 for a new electric guitar, that's insane"...it isn't that much really...try looking at violins if you want a real scare!

J.R.
 
chinese knock offs are good and cheap, lead paint and all. myself i can't trust them after the baby food contamination.
 
It is when you consider that it's a couple of pieces of wood machined by robotic CNC mills and painted on an assembly line. Like I said, it's just solid wood and hardware.

Now if I had a luthier handcraft one for me, that would be different. But I've owned dozens of guitars, from original Fenders and Gibsons to Korean, Japanese and even Chinese (SX brand) ones. Anyone with an ounce of guitar setup knowledge and a StewMac catalog can make a $1000+ guitar out of a $130.00 SX. Set up the neck, polish and file the fret ends, put some quality tuning machines on, check the nut and replace if necessary, wax pot or replace the pickups, work the bridge over and bingo, you're there. And I've seen four-figure guitars that needed this as much as a $130 one did.

No offense, SOTA, but if you worked at Gibson now, I would lay money hands down that they're not doing it like they did in the 70's. I bet the only difference in how things are made between here and China is geography and language.

But hey, if you want to justify your plunking down lots of hard earned cash for a mass-produced thing with a genuine decal on the headstock by poo-pooing the competition, that's your right I guess. There's no debating this with that crowd. They're the same type who get into fistfights in bars over which is better, Ford or Chevy.
 
Louie, as I intimated in my other post, I have no problem with the quality of the current Asian instruments. Truth be known I have heard so much good about some of the stuff from Rondo that I'd love to get my hands on one of the higher end Agile LP copies but it isn't so easy being in Canada:no: They end up being expensive by the time they make it here. My gripe was with the scammers trying to pass off the fakes as real. I also agree to a point that the American made guitars are too pricey these days...I bought the 76 LPC in my avatar back in 80 for $400Cdn. Now that model comes from the custom shop for about 10x that much and I'd rather have the old one thanks very much. It's good to be an aging packrat!

J.R.
 
My own collection boasts a 1952 Les Paul, 1956 Strat, 1938 Martin D-28, A 1940 DeAngelico, 1940 Epiphone Emperor and more. I am saddened by the decline of the music industry.

As far as the Gibson of the 1970's they were horrendous. When Norlin owned them it was a mockery of Gibson. I love the stuff from about 1955 to 1972, then from about 1990 to now. Fender, for all the foo foo-far-ah was pre and post CBS decent, but not any better than a lot of guitars out there. The only real exception in my mind was Jaguar and Tele deluxe.

Anyway after plowing through a lot of manufacturers , the stuff I am getting is stupendous. I can put the Chinese 1974 Strat next to a Fender custom, I couldn't tell the difference. The Les Paul Supreme is dead on and superior in most respects to the Gibson product literally 10 times more. I have pulled off the plate and looked, and they caught the differences and fixed them. it is disconcerting. But I don't feel bad selling this for $300 with no name on the plate to someone who wants to play it.
 
Mister Tawny said:
Well I know that this will prolly get me pilloried, but I have to say it.

I have bought more than a few Chinese knock offs now. I have read the horror stories of build quality and problems, but I took my time and found a few good manufacturers and all I can say is that I will prolly be buying Chinese from now on.

First was a 1957 Strat "custom shop" that was actually better than the USA made Fender, for about $200 with HSC. Then I decided to try a Gibson Les Paul Supreme and a TV Special. Both were identical to the US product, and in all cases were indistinguishable (other than the lack of logos which I specified) from the American product. In the case of the TV special it actually played better and the finish was superior to the Gibson.

This worries me that the Chinese are improving so fast, or maybe it's worse the US product is declining. The quality to detail is getting crazy. I don't know about you, but $3500 for a Les Paul Supreme vs. $275 for an identical Chinese piece makes my decision for me. I wonder if Gibson and Fender will get the message too?
Click to expand...

Aside from the fact that making exact copies without permission is called forgery and China doesn't respect intelligent property rights, American manufacturers are screwing themselves by setting up the factories in China, teaching them to make things at a high level and then selling them to us.
 
Mister Tawny said:
My own collection boasts a 1952 Les Paul, 1956 Strat, 1938 Martin D-28, A 1940 DeAngelico, 1940 Epiphone Emperor and more. I am saddened by the decline of the music industry.

As far as the Gibson of the 1970's they were horrendous. When Norlin owned them it was a mockery of Gibson. I love the stuff from about 1955 to 1972, then from about 1990 to now. Fender, for all the foo foo-far-ah was pre and post CBS decent, but not any better than a lot of guitars out there. The only real exception in my mind was Jaguar and Tele deluxe.

Anyway after plowing through a lot of manufacturers , the stuff I am getting is stupendous. I can put the Chinese 1974 Strat next to a Fender custom, I couldn't tell the difference. The Les Paul Supreme is dead on and superior in most respects to the Gibson product literally 10 times more. I have pulled off the plate and looked, and they caught the differences and fixed them. it is disconcerting. But I don't feel bad selling this for $300 with no name on the plate to someone who wants to play it.
Click to expand...

I get your point overall, but you're attempting to shoot down others when they make sweeping generalizations based on experience (as in, 'current import guitars suck') and then you make your own (as in, 'Gibsons of the 70s were horrendous'). People really need to wade through good & bad to find the one they want, no matter where they're looking. I've had good and bad '50s Les Pauls. Good & bad 70s Gibsons. Fender, PRS, whatever. Haven't yet had a good Chinese guitar, but have seen many awful ones as well as a number of good-playing ones that went bad with a little time. I don't doubt that good ones are out there. I'm also quite confident that the 70s Gibsons here in my house are non-horrendous.

je
 
^^ You are right for many reasons. I get a little heated about 1970's Norlin era Gibson after some of the seconds they foisted on the public. THere were a lot of good guitars in that era, but not what Gibson had stood for before. Fender had a similar issue with CBS because the company didn't really care about the products. But in that period some of the best silver faced stuff was made because the employees still gave a damn.

On another note, I do agree about forgery. Hence why I ordered mine with no logos. Gibson got testy in the 70's when the Japanese stuff became better than the US counterpart for less money. Which is why the "lawsuit" guitars are so highly sought after. C'mon though, a headstock is a silly point to belabor. Especially since Gibson had done so much in the past like the Trini Lopez.

The companies who have off shored like PRS have created their own monsters. PRS trained and set up shops and these guys went off and made guitars that were every bit as good, only they didn't have the US middleman to make the money. To many firms are just becoming value added leeches like the record companies, and we know where they are going.

Anyway I would cheerfully pay $1500 for a hand made bass in the wood I choose, that will sound the way I want. But now I can't do that here. So I am buying there.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom