$2500 Suhr or a $125 SX?

[goodcheaptele]

The title may seem all-telling at first glance but read on...I have been playing for just about 47 years now (first bass and shortly thereafter guitar). My first guitar was a brand new 1968 Tele (blonde/rosewood) and I got it in 1968. By 1970 I bought a 1952 Esquire from a collector in Hawthorne NJ for $250. Upon making the purchase the seller (Al) turns to me and says....that he just got it at a garage sale in S.C. for $60.00...we both laughed and I went on my merry way.....that began a long series of guitar purchases all of which were consecutive and not concurrent...I could not afford to own more than one guitar at a time....and now as a college adjunct instructor...I still can't....
be that as it may I state this only to show that I have played or owned (over 9 mid-Sixties rosewood strats/a 1970 Les Paul Custom/a 1965 Gibson ES-335/several mid-Sixties and early Seventies Teles/a 1967 Pelham Blue Epi Casino (rarer than rare...)...well you get the picture...now on to my point...

I was reading here on the forum about how some guys insist that boutique teles such as Suhr or Tom Anderson...'BLOW AWAY FENDER MADE TELES'...well, first off this is a very subjective thing to say....I CERTAINLY HAVE PLAYED SOME BOUTIQUE TELES OVER THE YEARS BUT NEVER SAW FIT TO BUY ONE....of course I still lament the loss of that 1952 Esquire.....which I traded off for a 1959 TV Yellow Les Paul Special.....sigh....oh, well......it is a mental disorder...some call it GAS...i call it a mental condition...LOL,

but you never know where you will find a gem.....just a few months ago...I ordered one of those SX teles....(maple neck, Daphne Blue-like, with three pu's like a TelStrat)...when i got it...I liked the heft of the alder body...and the pickups (all ceramic) surprised the hell out of me for tonality....(I was playing thru a Bugera V5)...but what really shocked me was the feel and playability of the neck...which I fine-sanded a tad to get rid of the gloss feel...this guitar now (to me) feels as good and sounds as good as any of the older ones I had...it reminds me of a 1967 blonde maple tele (with the separate neck and fingerboard, both maple) that belonged to a friend back in the early 70's but was at my disposal for years.....NOW I KNOW YOU WILL SAY THAT SX "TELE" WAS A FLUKE...but I have heard much praise about the SX line...and have played a few nice ones...point is...if you look and ignore the labels (hell, sand it off if it demeans you)...you will find a tele or tele like guitar out there that will surprise you....besides didn't Leo design the Tele to be a case where FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION? A cheap alternative to the traditional Gibsons of his day...in doing so...he set a generation of guitar players free...AND IT SEEMS TO ME, REGARDLESS OF HOW "FANTASTIC" A SUHR, FANO OR ANDERSON MAY BE...THERE ARE SOME "CHEAPIES" OUT THERE THAT ARE JUST AS FANTASTIC...and keep in mind....where tele's are concerned the more basic the better........peace

[bigmuff113]

Leo didn't make the tele to be an expensive boutique instrument. He made it to be an inexpensive no frills workhorse

[cmm71]

I have to agree. I've long wondered what Hahn and Suhr have discovered that really improves over a solid Tele costing much, much less. Nothing against those guys, I'm sure their quality is second to none, but to charge $2500 and up for what is basically a '52 style-Tele has me scratching my head. Again, I mean no offense to the folks who own them, I'm sure they love them and can justify every penny. I've owned an American-made '52 RI and a Japanese '52 RI and they both pretty much amounted to a nice thick maple neck bolted to a nice piece of ash. Both instruments had accurate and nicely worked frets, and both guitars intonated perfectly and rang out with a nice resonance. The US-made '52 was $1500 and the Japanese was around $800..regretfully, I've sold both. I'm not sure what could have been improved on either of those instruments to justify the extra expenditures. I'll probably never know.

To give it perspective, I have owned a Gibson 335 but had to sell it to help fund our dream home. I tried to replace it with an Epiphone Sheraton but found the Sheraton to be much inferior to my Gibson. The neck, fretwork, electronics...all of it, just weak in comparison. But then the 335 is quite labor-intensive to build and finish while the Tele, well, isn't.

[Jason G]

Well, I have one of those "super teles".. a Tom Anderson Hollow T Classic. I just HAD to purchase this instrument. I had all my stolen and the way my insurance co worked payment/replacement it was in my interest to replace my stolen American Tele Deluxe with the Anderson. They paid so I bought?? No brainer for me!
But to the bigger question, yea there are some real gems to be had very inexpensively!! I'm not sure that I'll keep the Anderson for all times?, but it sure helps when in your mind you got it for nothing out of your pocket!!! It allows me to not worry about nicking it up or scratches, etc. Just play the heck out of it... and man does it sound, feel, play great!!! The perfectness of the neck alone makes anyone play better! and has the Buzz Fieten tuning setup which works wonderfully if you play with a variety of other instruments, esp keys/piano and you're playing alot of chords up the neck.

Bottom line for me.. if I had saved up and dropped the cash on one I don't think I would really enjoy it nearly as much... wanting to keep it all nice and neat. But as it turns out, I got a free upgrade to a very nice American Fender that I had spent alot of time seeking out to be "just right". And the Anderson so makes that lost one pale in comparison!!

[waparker4]

What's inherently wrong with an sx? Nothing. But the nature of cheap mail order guitars, you may have to put a lot of work into it to get it to 'shine' get it pun.

[MrSparkle]

I do agree. Teles and Strats are simple instruments to part together. Key word... parts... A non-luthier can do work on it because parts are readily available.

Suhrs are very nice guitars, but it's my honest belief that people are overrating the tone of solid-body guitars.

Great neck and fret job means it's easy to play and will have no tuning/intonation issues (assuming saddles aren't garbage). A good piece of wood for the neck will mean less warping. This to me is 85% of the "bolt-on" instrument's value. We know now that you can get an unbelievably awesome neck for $200-400 from USACG or Warmoth.

But regardless.. I feel like there's this general momentum w/over-tweaking the guitar instead of over-tweaking the amp. Look if you get an awesome amp and ditch the 1x12 combo in favor of a 2x12 or 4x12 stack, you're going to have a monster tone whether it's a Suhr or an MIM Fender. Lots of guitarists love using these silver-face Twins and Hot Rod Deluxes... and they sit there investing in upgrading their guitar, when it's the amp's fault to begin with.

Get an amp and speaker voiced exactly for what kind of music/tone you play, and that solves 85% of your tone issues, IMO.

All this said, Suhrs I've played are incredibly well made and if I had the budget, I'd own 1, because they (amongst couple others) are the epitome of the Fender design. Again, I just concur that I'd rather invest in a Gibson hollow-body for that kind of money, as the $300 Fender-copies have typically satisfied me after $250-300 of work, much unlike Chinese and economy-priced semi-hollows.

[Rolling Estonian]

For the record: There's a difference between cheap and less expensive.

M

[Shepherd]

A little of this goes a long way.

[Bones]

Funny thing is, a lot of booteek "builders" are starting with necks made by someone else, whether, it's AllParts, USCG or Mighty-Mite and then they tweak them. No way would I pay someone else $3k to "build" me a custom tele, I can piece one together just fine by myself.


As far as SX teles go, I played one over the winter when I went to a guy's studio to complete a trade. We were hanging out noodling around and talking gear when i saw he had an SX tele shape in his guitar pile. I could not believe how good it played and how nice the neck felt, not just for a cheap guitar but for a guitar. That headstock sure is ugly though! Not as Ugly as a Hahn, but very ugly.

[Ramblin Ray]

Originally Posted by Bones

Funny thing is, a lot of booteek "builders" are starting with necks made by someone else, whether, it's AllParts, USCG or Mighty-Mite and then they tweak them. No way would I pay someone else $3k to "build" me a custom tele, I can piece one together just fine by myself.


As far as SX teles go, I played one over the winter when I went to a guy's studio to complete a trade. We were hanging out noodling around and talking gear when i saw he had an SX tele shape in his guitar pile. I could not believe how good it played and how nice the neck felt, not just for a cheap guitar but for a guitar. That headstock sure is ugly though! Not as Ugly as a Hahn, but very ugly.

That's exactly right! Be sure to ask, Caveat emptor.

[TeleMan59]

I have a nice 96 MIJ Fender Tele I really like but my Powder blue SX with P90 neck PU is my favorite. Amazing neck. And my SX HH ash strat is played much more than my 86 MIJ E series Squire strat....for the same reason....the neck. Replace the nut and saddles and you are good. The PU's on that SX tele are surpisingly good sounding, especially if you like the scooped, clean sound that I like. Lots of good twang.

[Radspin]

Like anything else, you can get great inexpensive guitars and dogs. I've had/have a few cheapos that were wonderful--a Jay Turser SG copy, a Peavey Raptor Strat. On the other hand, I've played cheapos that felt like utter lifeless, well, cheap crap. If the neck feels good and the guitar isn't dead and stiff sounding and feeling, go for it!

[Jason G]

Originally Posted by MrSparkle

Get an amp and speaker voiced exactly for what kind of music/tone you play, and that solves 85% of your tone issues, IMO.

I'm with you 150% on this!!

Originally Posted by Bones

... No way would I pay someone else $3k to "build" me a custom tele, I can piece one together just fine by myself.

I think this is the reason these posts pop up on a regular basis, yes? These high end instruments aren't made for the guy handy with doing setups, soldering pups, or being able to confidently order in a bunch of nice parts he will enjoy assembling.
And none of the aforementioned builders are simply piecing together instruments from a pile of parts. Their cost is accumulative from start to finish, lots of labor at every step. You can see it and feel it and hear it when you pick one up! That perfect neck, gleaming mirror-like frets, awesome sunburst done by the finest finishers on the planet, gleaming lacquer sanded and buffed out many times over many days, and etc, etc. All that adds up to a product that demands the high price. And these small builders aren't getting stone cold rich doing this. The talent and skill they must employ costs alot of money. It has its value for the guy willing to drop the $$ for one, and it doesn't for the guy unwilling to. It should be as simple as that...

[Telenator]

The major flaw in this entire concept is the assumption that "all people experience things the same way."

We don't.

There are a lot of people who don't care about the fine details that theoretically make one guitar higher quality than the next. To them I say, "you're very lucky." You don't need to bond with an instrument as much as some other people who find the details to be very important.

And some of us who hold quality and refinement as attributes to be considered in a guitar, we are fortunate enough to have Suhr, Hahn, Kern, Anderson, etc....

But the biggest difference in all this is, you won't find a guy who owns a Suhr telling you what a piece of crap your SX is.

Why do SX owners, and the like, feel compelled to tell others that their high end guitars are a big rip off?

[chrom-freak]

Originally Posted by Radspin

Like anything else, you can get great inexpensive guitars and dogs. I've had/have a few cheapos that were wonderful--a Jay Turser SG copy, a Peavey Raptor Strat. On the other hand, I've played cheapos that felt like utter lifeless, well, cheap crap. If the neck feels good and the guitar isn't dead and stiff sounding and feeling, go for it!

+1 on this. The two strats i play are a mim std and a cheapo out of a beginners set. The mim has a fullness and sweetness to its sound like no strat i've played. It's also amazingly resonant. The cheapo was dead sounding plugged in but resonated and played well acoustically. New pickups and electronics and there she shines!

[Doug 54]

I have a very nice $ one, but play the SX alot. Had to l&c the frets and a few other tweaks.

I play it especially now with trying to assemble a small group:
We guitarist often listen with our eyes and wallet instead of ears. It kinda
disarms people when they hear it is the player...

[nopicknick]

Why do people complain/compare the small builder to mass production when what it gives us is actually more choice. You can find very good and very bad regardless of who built it. There is plenty of room for all builders and I certainly welcome the variety we have today as opposed to what was available 50 or 60 years ago. IMO quality guitars in general are way over priced......including the outragous prices you see with Fender's custom line. If you want a guitar built to your specs and will hold its value fairly well......then you will most likely pay more for it.....and that is just fine. If you choose to go another route then that option is there as well. The term "cork sniffer" should apply to those who spout to get better you need to pay more. Don't blame the builder or the player who simply want something that is not massed produced. I personally own a Suhr and a Warmoth Esquire style guitar. Both play and sound really good and the price between the two were quite different. I could care less what other opinions are when it comes to gear.....and it certainly doesn't make a difference depending on how much I'm comfortable in spending.

[JackStraw]

Why people who enjoy paying as little as possible for a guitar feel the need to constantly malign folks who prefer to spend more for their guitar is beyond me. The posts on these threads are always agressive and a bit nasty. People with expensive guitars never slam the budget models around here, wouldn't be a very classy thing to do.

[Bones]

Originally Posted by Telenator

But the biggest difference in all this is, you won't find a guy who owns a Suhr telling you what a piece of crap your SX is.

of course you will.

[Bones]

Originally Posted by Jason G

I'm with you 150% on this!!



I think this is the reason these posts pop up on a regular basis, yes? These high end instruments aren't made for the guy handy with doing setups, soldering pups, or being able to confidently order in a bunch of nice parts he will enjoy assembling.
And none of the aforementioned builders are simply piecing together instruments from a pile of parts. Their cost is accumulative from start to finish, lots of labor at every step. You can see it and feel it and hear it when you pick one up! That perfect neck, gleaming mirror-like frets, awesome sunburst done by the finest finishers on the planet, gleaming lacquer sanded and buffed out many times over many days, and etc, etc. All that adds up to a product that demands the high price. And these small builders aren't getting stone cold rich doing this. The talent and skill they must employ costs alot of money. It has its value for the guy willing to drop the $$ for one, and it doesn't for the guy unwilling to. It should be as simple as that...

Frankly, I don't know how they make any money at all, even starting with a manufactured neck, there is a lot of work to be done.