Cheap guitar of the week #36 - Jackson JS32 Dinky DKA-M
This is the best cheapest rock/metal maple board guitar that exists right now. Get one before you lose your chance to own it.
One thing sells this guitar more than anything else: A bound, yes bound maple compound radius 12-to-16-inch neck.
A maple board front-and-back with a compound radius is usually only reserved for high-end model guitars with "fast" necks, yet This Jackson JS32 Dinky DKA is cheap, and that's great.
How does it sound? Doesn't matter. Seriously, it doesn't. If you want a thin, fast compound radius neck with maple everywhere, this is it. You buy this guitar for the neck. If the pickups sound awful, swap them out for something else because in the end you're still saving big.
Now while true there are other axes out there for cheap with the binding and compound radius, it is very difficult to find one with a bound maple fretboard. Jackson delivers here.
When you look at this listings for this guitar, you'll see it's available in black or white. Both look great for what they are. The white one, for whatever insane reason, is $30 less than the black one is, even though it's the exact same guitar. And bear in mind the guitar is already selling at a cheap price to begin with.
Even if you never use the vibrato system but really love a thin, fast neck with the maple look, get this guitar anyway.
When I saw this, I thought, "WHOA!" because you never see this kind of neck option on a low-priced model.
Like I said, go get yours now, because once it becomes known there's a fast and cheap maple-fretboard from Jackson, believe me, it will sell out quick.
The weirdness of Jay Turser guitars
You'd think with Jay Turser being part of U.S. Music Corporation that they'd have more of a presence in the guitar market.
Take the Jay Turser Mosman, which is a copy of a Mosrite The Ventures Model guitar.
I received an email recently asking if I could go try out one of these, because after all, I have not one but three Guitar Center stores within driving distance along with a Sam Ash store. Someone has got to have one, right?
Wrong.
Guitar Center does carry the Jay Turser brand, but none of them had the Mosman in stock. Sam Ash doesn't carry Jay Turser, so they don't have it.
This doesn't mean I can't get the guitar, but it does mean I can't try it before buying it.
Let this sink in for a moment:
I live in Tampa Bay Florida, which is an area that has thousands of guitars all over the place in every imaginable price range. There are only two places in America that get more guitars than Florida does, that being Texas and California.
Jay Turser is owned by U.S. Music Corporation, a big company with known distribution lines that's at least supposed to get product into stores in a timely fashion.
Guitar Center is the #1 guitar store in the world as we know it.
It is the holiday shopping season...
...and there are no Jay Turser Mosman models anywhere in Tampa Bay. At all.
Again, if I wanted one, I could order it, but nowhere around here is one available to try. And that's just weird.
What's even weirder is that the Mosman is one of only two Jay Turser models Guitar Center carries. The other is the JT-Res resonator acoustic.
Why is this weirder? Because Jay Turser has a whole bunch of models.
Does this mean the Jay Turser brand is doomed and will be phased out? I don't know.
What I do know is that it's not exactly easy to get your hands on any new Jay Turser guitar these days, so if you like the Mosman, I'd suggest getting one now. Not many companies make a Mosrite Ventures clone, and the Mosman is the best deal going for a Mosrite style shape right now.
Vintage guitar of the week #20 - 1987 Fender Contemporary Telecaster HH
This guitar comes from Japan, of course.
The 1987 Fender Contemporary Telecaster HH is a bargain vintage.
While this guitar seems tame today, it was considered "wild" for a Fender-branded electric. This was the '80s, a time when rock music was king and players were demanding guitars that had high-output pickups, could do crazy pitch bending and so on. The Contemporary series was Fender's attempt to capitalize on that.
The Big Question however is this: Is the guitar any good?
Yes, it's good. Very good, in fact. The only thing you have to remember about a Tele like this is that it was built to "sound modern", so don't expect 1950's Telecaster spank out of it. What you can expect is hot-output goodness along with a vibrato system that allows easy deep pitch bending.
Is the vibrato system a Floyd-Rose? No. It's a Fender-branded system. How reliable is it? I've no idea.
Is there a new version of this old guitar?
Yes and no.
There's the Fender Modern Player Telecaster Plus, a China-built (and very well built, I might add) Tele that I would actually prefer over the '87 Contemporary HH. True, there's no vibrato system on it, but it's a guitar I could personally get along with much easier.
And there's the Squier John 5 Telecaster. There is also the Fender version of this, but unless you want to spend thousands, the Squier version is a lot more approachable.
This Tele is a fast-necked, 12-inch radius fretboard, hot-output screamer. This is absolutely the "most rock/metal" Tele that Squier makes right now. Not my style of guitar, but when you want a Tele that brings the metal thunder, this is it.
Does Fender make a Telecaster with a Floyd-style vibrato on it currently?
No, and that alone could be a reason to just buy the vintage '87 instead if that's what you want and you want it Fender-branded.
In the end, don't buy the '87 Tele Contemporary HH because it's a collectible. Buy it because it's a genuinely good Tele with a Floyd-style vibrato on it for a really nice price.
If you can do without the Floyd-style system, I'd say get the new Modern Player Tele Plus shown above instead. Or if you want a total "barn burner" Tele, the John 5 model certainly fits the bill there.
Does planned obsolescence exist with guitars?
Are certain guitars designed to fail early?
Before I answer that, know that planned obsolescence refers to anything manufactured that is designed to fail so you keep buying it again and again.
As far as I'm aware, there are only two things with an electric guitar that will make it fail early.
The first thing is fret wire type. If the frets are made of nickel/silver, yes, they will wear out quickly no matter how big the wire is. If you want frets that last longer, specifically use stainless steel fret wire.
The second thing are strings. Certain strings made by certain manufacturers are fret wreckers. There are specific brands of strings I absolutely will not use because I know they wear down frets fast simply from how abrasive the string is to the fret.
If you know how to set up a guitar, know how to perform basic maintenance and use strings that are not fret wreckers, you will get many years of use out of the instrument. This is true even for the cheapest of guitars.
Basically put, no, planned obsolescence does not exist when it comes to electric guitars, simply for the reason there's really no way to engineer it in there.
And even if there were a way to engineer planned obsolescence into an electric guitar, the guitar modder community would find ways around it quick (as they have been doing for decades).
How can you tell if a certain brand of string is a fret wrecker?
Chances are you have a guitar with nickel/silver frets, so the only thing you can really do to prevent early fret wear aside from playing lighter is to use strings that don't wreck frets.
The easiest way to tell if a certain string brand is a fret wrecker or not is to examine the unwound G string from a brand new pack of strings before installing it. Why the G? Because it's the thickest unwound string of the set and the easiest to spot imperfections, should there be any. The string should be smooth all the way through, have no discoloration and no weird bumps nor coarseness anywhere along the wire.
If you do see discoloration, coarseness and/or weird bumps anywhere along the wire, consider switching to another brand of guitar string.
Does it matter how much the string costs? No. Spending more on a different brand of string doesn't guarantee it will be any better. What does matter is that every unwound string is straight, not discolored and smooth from beginning to end. As for the wound strings, you really can't visually determine anything from those concerning how they will affect frets over time. But you can visually determine how an unwound string would affect frets over time.
In other words, if brand new never-used unwound strings out of a fresh pack look bad, they are bad and will wreck frets.
Cheap guitar of the week #35 - HardLuck Kings Chop Shop Spider
Possibly the cheapest way to get a Gibson Firebird shape guitar.
The HardLuck Kings Chop Shop Spider is one of the very few axes for cheap that has the Gibson Firebird shape to it.
The Firebird has mini-humbuckers, bound neck, reverse headstock (the tuner gears are actually behind the headstock and not to the side), and has block inlays on the fingerboard.
The HardLuck Kings guitar has full-size humbuckers, no neck binding, standard headstock with standard tuners and spider-shape inlays. The knobs are also placed slightly differently.
What makes the Spider the attractive guitar? It's at least $700 less than a Firebird is...
...and like I said above, it's one of the very few axes where you can actually get the Firebird shape for cheap.