Horror stories from people for whom you built pedals

[Travis]

Having owned both Gibson and Epiphone guitars, my opinion is that the Gibson is generally higher quality (to me) for a couple reasons

Epiphone feels like they use a thicker polyurethane or polyester based finish. I prefer the look and feel of nitrocellulose personally. This is really personal preference more than quality I guess but very important to me

Epiphone tends to use lower quality hardware. At least they did on what I owned. The gold plating will come off any guitar that gets played heavily, but the gold plating wore off my Epiphone in no time.

The electronics tend to be better quality in Gibson guitars. My Gibson came with CTS pots, switchcraft jack, arguably better pickups. With the Epiphone you tend to get cheaper Asian generic electronics

Of course there’s nothing wrong with owning an Epi and they can be upgraded. And of course Gibson has really tarnished their reputation in recent years. I won’t attack Epi nor will I defend Gibson’s poor decisions, but my opinion is still that Gibson is GENERALLY higher quality (as they should be for the significantly higher price)


I also own a variety of Fenders and a Squier. I have

American Deluxe Stratocaster
American Standard Telecaster
Mexican Standard Stratocaster
Japanese Mustang Bass
Chinese Squier Affinity Jazz Bass

I think there is an appreciable difference in quality there but again it is just my opinion

The American Deluxe Strat is the creme de la creme. The body is a stunning piece of ash with the grain so beautifully oriented, you can kinda tell that somebody put the body blank together with some artistic mindfulness. The finish on that body is perfect in every way. The thing stayed in tune great straight out of the store. Beautiful dark rosewood fretboard, perfect fretwork, nice quality hardware. I literally have no complaints about that guitar, it is perfection.

My American Standard Tele is the same deal. Flawless fit and finish, great fretwork, nice hardware and electronics, just a beautiful and reliable guitar.

The Mexican Standard Strat is a great guitar. The body and neck are excellent and it seems to come with the same hardware that you’d get on the American version. I notice a few slight differences. Mine came with a polyester finish. It looks and feels slightly more plastic-like compared to polyurethane. This is again personal preference. The stock pickups are not the best in the world, but certainly not crap. The fret ends are not as smooth as my American Fenders, but not bad. Overall I feel this is noticeably less nice than the American Deluxe Strat but the American one cost about 4 times as much, and is not 4x better

Then there’s the MIJ Mustang. Body and neck are perfect, hardware is great, pots are sortof crappy but pickups are fine. Basically put in some CTS pots and the thing is pretty on par with USA

Then there’s the Squier. The hardware, particularly the tuners, is low quality. The pots and jack are low quality, though I have to say it sounds fine. The body is thinner than a Fender. The fret ends needed work. The finish however is pretty flawless and beautiful, and the neck has a comfortable profile with good string action. Just needs some light fretwork and upgraded hardware and electronics to be a truly professional instrument. I paid $200 for this bass brand new, it’s just an incredible value but the quality is absolutely not as nice as the American counterpart

My overall opinion is that with these particular instruments, the quality is reflected in the price differences, however that is not to say that the cheaper instruments can’t be upgraded or just played by a more talented person to sound incredible

I think there are plenty of easy to build circuits out there which Joyo etc are producing just fine. I’m sure that even with the easy builds, we have people here who could produce products with a little more style and quality, simply because the truly passionate and knowledgeable DIY people will always be at the cutting edge compared to the big Chinese companies who rely solely on copying existing work (sometimes including mistakes due to lack of understanding).

I tend to agree that the knockoffs are generally inferior of course, but with music and art, there’s always that element of creativity where someone out there is going to take the cheap shitty product, and create something beautiful with it. For that reason, I don’t mind the existence of the cheap knockoff stuff, though like Zach I know I can do better

[nostradoomus]

Guitars especially are such a case by case basis, as well. Ive played and owned American Deluxe strats and some of them are just duds. Personal preference obviously comes in to play as well but i think the "alchemy" aspect of gear is what i love about it so much.

For what it's worth I settled on a Squier mascis jazzmaster haha (and a custom Monson but that's a whole nother thread  )

[Muadzin]

The way I see it master crafts men may be better, but it takes time to reach that kind of level. And not everyone who advertizes quality has reached that level. Just look at the shoddy work some of the boutique builders have been delivering. With CNC and robots you do get consistency. And that is a quality in itself as well, one that allows companies like Yoyo or Mooer to deliver reasonable to good quality pedals, assuming they use that of course. Not outstanding, for $30 nobody expects outstanding. But if they can deliver Boss levels of build quality that's good enough for me.

Thing is, robots and CNC are game changers. It used to be that you had Western builds, which were expensive, but since they were made by well paid skilled labor that were well motivated and who had pride in their work so the build quality was good. And you had cheap ass 3rd world builds, cheap as hell, but made by unmotivated, unskilled labor, working for peanuts, so the build quality was, as you say, what you paid for. These days the differences are narrowing fast thanks to modern technology. Quality is no longer the provision of the Western worker, who thanks to modern business practices is no longer that well paid nor motivated. The West is in for hard times, as I'm not sure how we can compete with places like China. And unlike China, which is playing the long game, our politicians have no vision whatsoever. The Chinese have a grand economic vision spanning decades, our politicians can barely look past the next election.

Sorry to soapbox, it's my age, as I get older I notice I do this more and more. And I do think that cheap pedals and guitars are but a tiny piece of a much greater puzzle.

[Silver Blues]

The reason I like DIY is because I can make things however I want them to be. I'm not terribly concerned about the whole quality vs. nationality debate, you can find things of good quality and things of bad quality that come from anywhere. All that it takes is to do some goddamn market research lol because people seem to be really bad at this. Take some care to think about what you purchase, evaluate the pros and cons and your options... and you'll be happy with it. It may be partially because I can't afford a really high end instrument but I love to go scrounging for pawn shop specials and then give them a little TLC, make some mods, new electronics... great sounding, unique instruments for not that much cash and the labor of love experience. It's all fun.

[moda]

Ive sold probably 3 dozen different pedals to friends and freinds of friends. Always put that money back into making new ones for myself. I generally get a few people to try my latest pedal just to gauge an opinion. Its through this that i get a few requests.
Had a couple of bad payers and one guy who pestered me to build a clone for him then just as i was boxing it texted me to say he played a real one and didnt like it so sorry no thanks. That irked me. People tend to forget that like most of us its not the components, its the time and love that goes into each creation, from the pride in the wiring to the external paint finish and design.
When i do complain though my wife always brings me down to earth when she says, “ when did this stop being a hobby and become a business?”
That always sticks in my head. Happy holidays everyone, stay safe and merry soldering.