How much can you squeeze out of a cheap guitar?

I thought if you played a Squier like that, it would run away and hide in fear of breaking.

Aren't they made out of plastic and bamboo?

But then I haven't played one in many years.

Sounds great to me!

Ron

Sounds pretty good to me. With all the amps and processors around today...it's easy to use almost any guitar and get a reasonably good tone....or at least cover up the lack of tone.

Squire, Epiphone, and some of the other "cheap" guitars are not all that bad. I've played a few in the stores and they feel good, and sound good too...so why not use them!

Cool - have the same guitar and used it on all my recent tracks. Also put a b-bender on it... if you're interested in seeing how that was done, click the link ...

Manny and the B-Bender

I thik the big difference between cheap and expensive guitars is electronics and quality of the neck. Cheaper guitars tend to have noisier pups with less shielding and usually the neck is not as smooth BUT when I bought my Les Paul a few years ago I went through 4 of them before I found one that was playable. And these are Made in USA Gibsons. One of them had a issues with the fingerboard, the other one had the neck glued in crooked and the last one had a crappy nut and finish issue.
On the other hand I once played a Squire Strat that played like a dream. I think it's a matter of 7 out of 10 expensice guitar will be good vs 4 out of 10. But I do think if you have a large enough inventory to go through you will find great guitars even in among inexpensive ones. You can always replace the electronics.

Anymore everything is CNC'd anyway (fender, gibson, etc)

That is the $169 model right? Cool post. I've been eyeing this guitar for awhile. I want a Tele bad and have considered this one. I haven't found a shop locally that has it so I could play it. I've played the $400 model a few times and like it, I would suspect the overall feel is not that much different. I bought a Squier Jazz Bass and am happy with that. This baby is really calling my name now! I can always change the pickups down the road if needed.

Manny,
Just checked out that mod and Ride That Train. Nice work on both! That B bender sounds cool. I am definitely going to get me one of these Tele-lites. Where did you guys buy yours from? I will likely order one from Musicians Friend.

Tony,

Got the Tele from Musician’s Friend (also got my fake Hofner from them – had no problems at all). The Tele’s frets were a little sharp around the ends so I filed them a bit. It’s also a little noisy (especially sitting in front of the PC as I do when recording), but I don’t care – it’s a great guitar for the money – I may go for new electronics on it.

After enjoying this $170 Tele so much I went out to get a more expensive Tele but when I got to Guitar Center, the Gretsch caught my eye (as seen in my sig). So, now I think I’ll just upgrade the Tele (I’m broke!).

I used the Tele on my last 5 recordings – it’s a nice basic guitar and a lot of fun to play.

B-Bender is fun but I really can’t get much out of it yet – I really need to practice.

ORIGINAL: darylcrowley

The playing seems well enough but the distortion unit was pretty bad in my opinion. I couldn't really hear the guitar. Play the guitar straight up with some nice articulated passages and then we can really tell how good the guitar sounds...

That's a really interesting observation because there actually was no distortion unit in the entire signal chain. The actual patch used was from Amplitube Jimi Hendrix, called Lever Tunnel Fx.
Stomp = Octa-V, Rack = Stereo Reverb followed by Rotary Speaker.
Maybe all that swirling around is imparting a bit of phase distorted tone? Or it could be the extra high lead(Pb) content in the Chinese solder giving that bridge pickup a bit more bite than the enviromentally-friendlier American stock.
btw- I'm working on the nice articulated passages those will prolly take me a while.

I had a Rock 'n Roll shop in the '80's (blimey that was last century) we had a delivery including one like that pictured and I kid you not some of the bark was left on the neck...it looked kinda nice in a way like some sort of strange inlay all smoothed down and polished in with the rest of the neck but I thought even I'd have trouble selling it with a 7" X 3" 'birth mark' on the back, even if it was an interesting feature. So it got returned.

I think quality assurance must have been away that week...

Most of the time though they a great performers when you are starting out. We had a great guitar man that used to come in and set them all up nicely so at least they played OK.