I'm about to pull the trigger on a well made locally produced copy of a '72 vintage mod thinline, with TV Jones Magnatron pups. Maple neck, Schaller bridge, beautiful sunburst. Costs less than fender, better quality, & hand crafted from prefab parts. I love my 3 se's, but nothing I have looks or sounds like a thinline tele with mags.
......So got the guitar on Friday, looked & played okish...for the money, for about the first half hour, until I looked closer.
On closer inspection, POS!
Pickguard looked like it'd been salvaged from another guitar, then spent a year gathering sawdust in the workshop - the dude's garage; also looked like the pick guard had been cut by a primary school kid with blunt scissors . Pickup selector was not smooth.
Vol & tone knobs somehow just didn't feel right, & the trestle block running down the middle had been shattered when the pickups were loaded in via the pickguard - this was clearly visible via the F hole.
The guy said that this had no impact on quality or sound, - BS.
If a guitar doesn't look well made it's not going to last the test of time.
Moreover, if you can see physical problems from a badly built guitar, you have to expect corners have been cut "under the hood" too.
The only thing I couldn't flaw was the neck & frets, they were smooth, but as I've learned owning many guitars over the years, neck quality - even on some higher end guitars, can be pot luck.
Not that I expect that's ever an issue with PRS - certainly my SE's have the best necks I've seen.
So I took it back on Saturday, had to listen to the guy's BS for a while, then he said he'd refund me - not 'cause the guitar was crap, not because I was entitled under consumer law (I am, it's called major failure if you buy something you wouldn't have accepted had you known about the problem prior to purchase) but to protect his reputation.
The money was refunded, but not without him having another few shots at me, basically saying I should have accepted the guitar 'cause he thinks it's fine.
I would have thought if he cared about his reputation he wouldn't have sold a badly made inferior copy of a Tele Thinline (or any guitar that's inferiority built for that matter) & broken it by modding with poorly installed Magnatrons!!
I was naive enough to have bought it sight unseen, & got it delivered; a safe enough gamble from chain & big box retailers, but not so safe from unscrupulous sole traders!
I'm now wondering if he's importing from Asia, & getting his headstock logo printed on?
- It certainly looks that way, as there is a Chinese guitar maker selling guitars that look very similar to his style with a similar headstock!
This guy claims to be a luthier, but I wouldn't trust him to do a setup!
I also had another look at his website - amazing how clever one can be in hindsight, & noticed he's got acoustic guitars listed for sale with bird inlays, so just had to contact PRS about it.
Bad enough I nearly ended up with a crap guitar, but to think he's also selling what looks like counterfeit PRS - that's a bit rich.
So just ordered a Squier Vintage Mod '72 Thinline Tele instead.
If I'm gonna have a copy, I'd rather have a better made one with support from a reliable company if anything goes wrong.
This is the only way I'm going to have a guitar I can legitimately call a Telecaster without buying a Fender, & of course today's Squier maker is tomorrow's O/S Fender factory if their standards are high enough.
Ironically, I managed to get the Squier for about half what I paid for the "luthier made" version (apparently some sort of pricing issue which the retailer was happy to honour, so bought it for around cost price to the retailer).
Stuff like this puts guitar players off forking out for customised or hand made guitars!
