Don't be too quick to judge - Starcaster.

Learned that lesson this week.

A student of mine brought in a guitar that he just bought for $50 from a family friend, and he wanted me to see it. He opens up the battered old case, and inside is a nice-looking sunburst Strat with rosewood fretboard. I check out the headstock, and it's a big, triangle shaped thing with "Starcaster by Fender" on it. I think, "Great, $50 may have been too much for this piece of junk."

Still, he's excited about it, so we take it out, clean it up (it's in near perfect condition), put on a new set of strings, adjust the bridge, tweak the truss rod, adjust the action, set the pickup heights and intonation, and get it tuned up. We plug it into the amp I keep at work (Fender Vibro Champ XD), and start playing.

Verdict: This thing sounds and plays terrific. Better than my Squier Deluxe Strat, which I like a lot. The controls work perfectly, and feel tight. The finish is beautiful. Nice, substantial, comfortable neck. Fretwork decent. Tuners a little iffy, maybe. If it weren't for the headstock, I'd have thought it was a perfectly nice MIM Strat.

Never be too quick to judge a guitar based on its brand or country of origin.

Wait, you're upsetting the fabric of space/time continuum. Poly paint, cheap tuners, stock pickups, cheap electronics? You sir are pushing the boundaries of comprehension.
Actually, I would have to agree with you. Judge each guitar on it's own.

Isn't this some sort of blasphemy?

I've got a student with a red Starcaster. I was suprised too...the thing wasn't too shabby!

I don't know much about it, but I do know the name stinks. Starcaster???

It's all in the setup. I've worked on enough inexpensive guitars, including Starcasters, to know that barring major structural problems, if you fix the usually awful factory setup file down the sharp fret ends and the occasional high fret, a cheap guitar can be a great launching platform for a budding player.

So then why don't they ship it as a box of parts and only charge $59?

DW

theres only one course of action for you to take now...

BURN IT!!!!!!! it has obviously been touched by El Diablo himself or some other equivalent form of dark magic.

ive "played" several of those "guitars" before just spite myself and it always ended in bleeding ears and fingers so the specimen you have found is obviously evil.

but hey good on you for finding the one good one!:lol:

I don't know much about it, but I do know the name stinks. Starcaster???

Actually they're resurrecting the starcaster name from the old, semi-hollow Fender guitars with humbuckers they made years ago to compete with Gibson's 335s. This was the guitar which inspired the paul languedoc custom guitars Trey/Phish made famous.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fender_Starcaster

So then why don't they ship it as a box of parts and only charge $59?

DW

Hmmm. Maybe they could just ship the raw materials, and charge only $39? For that you'd receive a couple pieces of wood, some glue and paint, a couple feet of fret wire, a sheet of plastic, a bagful of magnets, a spool of copper wire, some pot metal and molds, and two capacitors. Oh, and a set of directions composed entirely of pictograms.

Ikeacaster!

All the guitars I have tried ,played and bought ,cheap (SX) or expensive (Fender japan ) have been perfectly playable and usable .Of course the top end guitars are almost perfect but the SX was no slouch and sounded good and played well ..We are spoilt and cheap really depends more on the wages the person making gets per hour than the actual quality .

Isn't this some sort of blasphemy?

:twisted:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41wXp4URqmL.jpg

Seems to me that today's cheap guitars are leaps and bounds ahead of the crapola cheap axes of my youth. Everyone needs to start somewhere.

to me its the CNC factor. heck even good pots that use to be made here are made out of country now. the world has changed. for the better, or the worse. i wish i could of lived in the 50s. man i would of loved to been one of them evil hot rodders the movies made them out to be. id be getting me a deuce coup, hopped up flathead.

My opinion is that the Chinese have gotten very good at copying 1950s American guitars.

Those with the arrow headstock were the best ones, IMO.

I've got one of the arrow headstock guitars, not bad at all, very surprising. I got it used for $65, so it's my beater I leave down at my old house for when I'm there. I put new strings on it and played it back in November and didn't touch it until 2 weeks into March, and when I'm not there the temperature in the house changes with the weather, sucker was still in tune nearly 4 months later. The single coils on it are surprisingly good pickups. For $65 I'm extremely happy with it. I will say the trem springs suck, but blocking off the trem fixes that pretty well.

:twisted:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41wXp4URqmL.jpg

There are Starcaster Teles? :shock:

i'll play on stage with a $100-200 guitar any day of the week ... i have before, and been complimented for my guitar and my tone ... cheap doesn't mean bad and expensive doesn't mean good !!!!

i'll play on stage with a $100-200 guitar any day of the week ... i have before, and been complimented for my guitar and my tone ... cheap doesn't mean bad and expensive doesn't mean good !!!!

That's fairly obvious for those of us who play live and record. Playing well is the first thing to do, and sometimes an expensive guitar adds a little bit of quality to the sound, but sometimes not.

A strong player worth their salt should be able to make almost any guitar sound good. Sure there are exceptions like SRVs 12s on a strat challenging those who simply can't bend them, especially with high action or the jazzer who is used to 14s and can blaze through them as if they were 9s thinking everybody else should be able to do the same. For most guitars, a good player should be able to sound fairly competent, even if they have never touched that particular instrument.

There are Starcaster Teles? :shock:

Yep! A buck nine on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Fender-Starcaster-Telecaster-Electric-PW-SAMPLER/dp/B00688N5NW/ref=pd_sim_sbs_MI_1

Hmm. I wish they came in colors other than black, but for $109 bones, I think they might be good for beginners or make a decent modding platform.