THE BEAST

When we think of the major electric guitar companies in the world today, we think of Fender and Gibson — those are the "Big Two" and they both happen to be based out of the USA. Both companies also make guitars under their respective corporate umbrellas overseas — Fender with Squier, and Gibson with Epiphone — and we often think of Epiphones and Squiers being "lesser than" or "cheap copies" of the flagship US-based brands. While there is some truth to the quality of hardware being different on Fenders and Squiers, this is a small part of a larger over-generalization that instruments made in the US are of superior quality than those made in factories in Japan, Korea, Indonesia, China, or Vietnam.

This seems to be something that some people (especially in the US) take to be true, whether it is out of a sense of blind patriotism or a false correlation between cost and quality. I've heard people claim, loudly and proudly, "American guitars cost more because they use quality products, and they are hand built by skilled luthiers. The ones made overseas use cheap crappy parts and are all made on CNC machines." I want to dispel some of those claims for those who still believe that quality workmanship gives a shit about borders.

First of all, most production guitars are made on CNC machines — having toured several major US factories, I can tell you, there is plenty of CNC use in US factories, and rightly so, they're awesome and they take a lot of the "grunt work" out of building guitars — roughing out the bodies and necks. CNC machines don't give a sh*t what country they're in — they're robots. They will churn out the same guitar parts in the USA or in a pod on the moon.

Certain shops have more quality control and attention to detail. We've seen lapses in consistency in top-of-the-line guitars from just about every company, some more than others, especially during certain eras. (I'm not going to throw anybody under the bus but you probably know exactly what I'm talking about…)

That is not to say that US factories have better quality control. Let us not forget the Ibanez Lawsuit era guitars in the 1970s when Ibanez was making Les Pauls and Explorers, arguably, better than Gibson was at the time. Those were made in Japan. Barry Stock of Three Days Grace has one of the best collections of Lawsuit Era Ibanez' I've ever seen, and he plays them on record and on stage all the time.

Some companies use different qualities of wood for their Custom Shop, which are often based in the US. But these differences are typically more aesthetic than anything - a nicer flamed maple pattern, for example. The difference in the cost of a guitar can be attributed to, among many other factors, labor costs, shipping costs, and marketing. It's cheaper to make things in Asia and ship them over to the US than it is to just make them here. There is a lot of politics involved with WHY that is but we're not going to get into that...

But we've all heard a Squier that sounds just as good, if not better than Fender, or an Epiphone that sounds better than a Gibson. Sometimes you just get the right chunk of wood. There was a period when many players would swap out American Fender necks for their Japanese counterparts because they were thinner. Again, "better" is a matter of subjectivity.

The generalized myth of American-made guitars being "better" is more likely something perpetuated by American manufacturers as a marketing technique. You can slap a "Made in USA" sticker on anything – it doesn't make it better quality. There are great guitars being made all over the world. My advice has always been to lay your hands on a guitar and play it before you buy it, you'll find that will take any inconsistency issues from materials or the factory out of the equation. No one wants to drop $4000 on a guitar only to find that you got one inspected on a day when the QC guy was hungover. Don't be afraid to try out cheaper guitars as well, some may pleasantly surprise you. Some of the best guitars I've ever played were made in the Asian market.

Via UltimateGuitar