Chinese Crap

Chinese crap, cheap guitars. quite a few mentions of these lately.
Dont know if anyone's tried the Squier Classic vibe Strat's 50's, 60's models. Fantastic guitars for the price £250, there abouts. Can pick them up on ebay around the £160 mark in very good nick. Havn't played a tele as yet.
Really decent pickups, especially the alnico III's on the 50's model. Well finished to.
Well worth a look. It's not all Chinese crap.

They're definitely getting much better but they still have the stigma they earned when they first came out when they were diabolical in both terms of player comfort and build quality.

I've seen guitars on pawn shop walls bearing big names made in Vietnam, Indonesia, China and India so you've got to be a bit picky, eh!!

I'm old enough to remember the term "Jap crap" and only Gibson and Fenders where real guitars. This was during the early 70's. Strange how times move on. But they got better, didn't they, but the image remained somewhat. Now any guitar with MIJ on the neckplate has a mojo about it.

There is an awful lot of ignorant snopbbery around, even within the Westone 'community'. I've seen plenty of people (Who, of course, haven't tried them) slag off the modern electro-acoustics just because they're made in China. I've got two (Acoustic and classical) - I have no complaints at all.

Quite right Westbone and Thorn.
I have a Chinese made Epi LP Studio and it's a beautiful player and well made. Funny you should mention the Squier Classic Vibe series. I was playing a Tele version not long ago and I gotta tell ya it was terrific! Even nicer than my Vintage Tele which I like a lot. Nice weight, fantastic neck and balls to spare! The tech at my local store whom I've mentioned here before, is a very talented player, and he was playing one when I wandered into the shop one day. He of course was playing the hell out of it through a Marshall stack and he pronounced it as, "amazing for the price!" He was right. I think the local price was in the CAD$350 range...unbelievable performance for the money!

Now a caution may be in order here...we're talking about Gibson/Fender supervised quality control construction which is producing some first rate instruments. The other stuff on the Chinese sites such as www.dhgate.com? Well, I'd be very, very cautious!

I tried the Classic Vibe Telecaster about two months ago and it was the only Tele I ever "liked" It was about $390 and I will tell you that is fair price for the feel and playability. I did not plug it in to an amp but I was very impressed.

Mike V

Just harking back to Thorn mentioning guitar snobbery; I've experienced that first hand many many times when gigging... you'd come off for a break and some spotty herbert would be eyeing up the gear onstage and spot my VA900 whereupon the he'd splutter something like, " Ewww, it's a Japanese thing!!" I lost count of the number of times that happened and I finally just ignored it rather than try to educate the ignoramus.

There are some shockers out there, boys - it ain't all sweetness and light in the Chinese guitar making community. I shopped long and hard a few years back for an electro/acoustic and tried many many guitars before buying a Greg Bennett Samick made in Indonesia which was pretty ordinary unplugged, but amplified it is a monster and even it needed some work on it - it was a premium price - fret ends tidied up etc., small details to be sure, but then, the devil is in the details isn't it?!

Just like back in the day. Westone = cheap guitar= cheap jap labour='cause it's cheap must be crappy.
We all live and learn

True enough.
China is todays Japan and is the worlds workshop.
Watch out though cause they´re learning,and they´re learning dead fast.

On the other hand....
Look at the going rates for a "standard" anything Gibson. It´s become a laughin matter IMO,especialy over here,and i have a REALLY hard time understanding how they set their pricing.
I mean...after all...we´re not exactly talking NASA projects here are we. What´s more,the "lesser" Gibbys out there IMO have a quality control that is SO sub par that Gibson should be ashamed of themselves-and i don´t CARE how "made in the USA" it happens to be.

Like the stickers for the cars a few yrs back. "Made in Detroit. By idiots".

Nah...but seriously. Take my current -09 SG standard. WHAT a joke...i mean we´re after all talking a premium guitar here. I spent the better part of 4hrs making it into a guitar that Gibby obviously did not and as such i say that Gibsons these days are NOT value for money down to the point where it´s more a ripoff than anything else.

A chinese made guitar at 3 or 400 dollars...i can appreciate the occasional flaw that i as the end user need to adress.

A guitar for thousands of dollars tho...fugedabout being forgiving...for thousands of dollars i expect results.

i'm off buying ANYTHING chinese these days..........."i think they're plotting a takeover"

This Squier Telecaster Custom II was a guitar that I recently bought and sold. It was outstanding for the money. It's only issues were that I had to set it up properly and cut the nut slots to the optimum depth. But it played exceptionally well and the Duncan Design P90 pickups were brilliant. It was either Chinese or Indonesian made.

Just looked at another photo, it was made in Indonesia...

Got to remember that ten years before the Japanese were producing good guitars like Westones and Aria etc, they were producing stuff like this



And this


Same now with the Chinese.

There are still some Chinese guitar factories producing some pretty awful guitars.

But then they are making some really nice ones for Squier and Epiphone among others.

I have a Classic Vibe tele which is really nice. Sure theres somethings I dont really like about it, like the neck being too thin and the neck pickup went south, but then theres some Fenders whos necks I dont get on with either.



I got this CV Tele used for a good price, as I did with a US made Gibson Melody Maker. In fact theres only a year difference in gae between the two guitars.

Guess which one was playable straight out of the box???

that term "crap" wasn't born in a vaccumm.............there WAS alot of it then.....and now.......

for the most part, there is some really good production quality..... .....which i kinda wish there weren't.....cuz i iz a pay-tree-utt.....the "crap" now, mostly comes from the inferior materials..............although there are still plenty of poor production examples...........but, mostly corner cutting on materials and finishing are what i see.

still.......... a USA fender holds/ gains value better than almost anything ....even those crappy old 70's fenders with the HUGE neck pockets

Yeah, I think we all agree on that; there was some pretty dire Jap stuff mixed in with the X350s and VA900s back in the day, just as it is with the Chinese stuff today - you've got to know what you're looking for/at in order to separate wheat from the chaff.

I've never understood the Fender/Gibson vibe, where the name on the headstock is an indicator of value and quality; and that wasn't Leo's ethos in building them either!! Don't get me wrong; I have a strat, love the tele shape - I have 2 Clippers - and for some odd, unexplainable reason would like a Coronado but I can't get that excited by viewing a pre-CBS Fender; it's just a guitar, man....

I'm not much of a guitarist, but my bandmates seem to really really like the made in China Yamaha I got off craigslist for $80, and it certainly sounds good for being so cheap!

corsair wrote:I've never understood the Fender/Gibson vibe, where the name on the headstock is an indicator of value and quality; and that wasn't Leo's ethos in building them either!! .

oo! oo!.....i know that one! pick me! pick me!


it's becauuuusssse..............they were there "first"...........and set the standard...(yes, i know there WERE others................but "notably".........orville and leo REALLY were the first..)


just think............if transistor amps had come before tubes...........we might feel differently about the whole "SS vs TUBES" question.............. :?:

caucajun wrote:we might feel differently about the whole "SS vs TUBES" question

Not me, bro - solid state all the way!! Convenient, light - a major consideration these days! - and with the modern modelling amps, loads of versatility!! The quest for that elusive "tone" and the anoraks who will claim all types of facts and figures for their favoured tube amps obviously never had to carry the rotten things up 2 flights of stairs to the gig, only to have the bias go astray becasue you bumped it in the vehicle, and enduring the ugly, ugly sound of the reverb spring tank going "BOINK" whenever someone stomps on the stage firmly....

That said, I shall never sell my old, made in NZ Holden reverb 100, with 2 x 6550s up front, and 4x ECC34s in back.... and the spring tank!!

And wasn't Adolph Rickenbacker 'there' first?? As for setting the standard, well, I reckon the bar's been lifted quite a bit since the Broadcaster, eh!!

sure, ricky prolly beat alot of folks to it.....and mebbee sumbuddy beat him...........the standard be wuttitt be, and is whut it am..........leo made da noise......orville too..............that's whi we nowitt az iddizz.

"toobs wurr furst, and all comparisons are made to the standard".

wrrrrrd!