Import Guitars - Getting your money's worth

I recently watched a video on YouTube where someone was commenting that we are in the greatest time in history for buying guitars.  He specifically mentioned the quality and value of import guitars (from Indonesia, China, etc.) is so good now, they are professional-grade instruments at beginner-level prices.  A lot of the comments seemed to agree with this opinion.

I’m not so sure about that.

Over the past 10-15 years, there’s been a big push for more products at less cost, which has led to OEM factories being built in Indonesia, China, Vietnam, India, and probably a few other places I missed.  I won’t get into the discussion about wages and working conditions, but let’s say that these moves resulted in more production and more profit for the OEMs.

It's true, we’ve seen some really nice instruments coming from Epiphone (China), Squier (China), and PRS SE (Indonesia).  But are they professional grade?  They seem to be using pretty good body/neck materials, and the hardware and electronics are decent.  In fact, I’d say that the quality of the materials/components used in import guitars is slightly better now than it ever has been.  So why can’t I agree with the opinions in the YouTube video?

It comes down to fit-and-finish and quality control.

The push for “more, faster, cheaper” has compromised the quality and consistency of the finished product.  I get it, if an OEM is shipping out 1,000 guitars a day, it would be impossible to inspect each one and correct any defects before they go out the door.  So, it’s fair to say that import guitars are built to the standard of “good enough” for the average consumer.  I don’t know many professional musicians that think this is good enough for them.

I recently acquired a PRS SE Silver Sky that was less than a year old.  It had fret sprout and sharp fret ends, which is a common issue with import guitars these days and I wasn’t surprised to see that.  What surprised me was that the tremolo was inoperable.  The tremolo route in the body was poorly cut, leaving a lot of rough wood that was then painted over with really thick paint.  This prevented the tremolo from tilting forward (diving).  This was bad, especially for PRS standards.  It required grinding/sanding the tremolo cavity to remove the rough wood, then repainting to match the original finish.  The tremolo was then fully functional as it should have been when it was first sold to a customer.  This is just one example of many issues I’ve come across in modern import guitars.  That’s not to say that all are bad – many are, in fact, really good – but the average is still not professional grade.

I remember the import guitars from the 1990’s and 2000's.  Many were made by Samick or Cort in Korea and they were really well-made (both companies were the go-to OEM for many different US brands).  Where I see a difference in today’s guitars versus those of 20-30 years ago is in the fit-and-finish and quality control.

From my memory, those early import guitars weren’t perfect either, but the build quality was generally better.  Maybe because there were fewer OEMs and they made quality control a bigger priority?  Maybe there was less demand on them to produce more guitars thus compromising quality?  I don’t know, but at the end of the day, profit is the driving force behind the decisions these companies make.

I have some ideas on what I think professional grade is and why every player deserves to have a guitar that plays at a professional level…. I’ll save that for the next blog entry.