It depends on the guitarist rather than the guitar, I find. Fender's Squier series has always stood me in good stead. The pickups are good, the body feels right and the Telecaster versions have good necks. The Strat version's necks are less than optimal but you grow accustomed to them with time.

The Gibson Les Paul Jr. reissues are a steal at $650.00. A fine plank to spank.
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/g=h ... id/517341/

I bought this guitar:



from these nice people. It cost me £170 (now down to £143!) and with the money you save you can put better pick ups on it. Something I never got round to.

They also knocked a few quid off for being 2 days late.

Aww, they're out of stock on that one.

That's a pretty good deal. Glued in neck?

Some of the Epiphone stuff is good, but it's hit and miss.

Guitars are such personal things, as CR says. As such, I can give you a kinda leftfield personal recommendation - I've never been much into wank planks, but one manufacturer who totally confounded my expectations a few years ago was Ibanez with their Talman range - I had a lipstick pickup beastie with a strat-style tremolo. It had a really nice "train on springs" tone with a really unique clarity that it never lost even at high gain levels, and it was also very solid and compact, and took a lot of punishment gracefully. The Talman has a very neat asymmetric body that doesn't get caught on things too easily, and (to my fingers) a very comfortable neck that held a great action and intonation steadily once properly set up. It was also fucking cheap - the equivalent of $200 US, I guess a side-effect of being a flash-in-the-pan, yesterdays curio type design. Despite the price, it had tone in spades.
I would readily buy another any day of the week.
Just so you have a reference point, I also like Aria Pro II's, Music Man Sabre II's, some strats, Firebirds, ES335's.

Redline wrote:Aww, they're out of stock on that one.

That's a pretty good deal. Glued in neck?

Yeah.

Some of the Epiphone stuff is good, but it's hit and miss.

It's actually Vintage. I asked around on guitar forums before I bought it and was told Vintage are actually better than Epiphone. Apart from the pick ups. Which I still need to replace.

i ended up getting a vintage because it was really cheap (i got change from my student grant cheque!), really heavy & sounded best when i played 'not great men' on it.

Ok, check this out! http://www.fairplay.demon.co.uk/
A friend of mine told me about Gordon Smith guitars. He's an english luthier. Another friend has just bought one of the gs models through music ground. Its pretty much a gibson junior. He recieved yesterday. I was really impressed how well it was built and set up. It sounded very good. very full body, sustain and enough output to overdrive a blackface fender bassman. He ordered it with a couple of extra features: the thick body and the p90 pickup. Okay, it was delivered to his home outside madrid for about 500 pounds (sorry no pound sign on this key board...) 700€. I couldn't believe it. This is a beautifully made instrument. I've never seen anything like it. Custom guitar for this price? Wow! Forget about the fucking pacifica. Fucking yamaha!

edited to get rid of a smiley face emoticon...


Hope this helps

(I can't think of a single yamaha product I've actually liked except for one preset one the small fx unit (what was it called? spxshit90?), number 63, I think.)

Javier Ortiz

...hates yamaha.

And safari hates spellcheck. Sorry guys...

big_dave wrote:I have this wretched yamaha pacifica thats been thoroughly, thoroughly raped by two years of Louie Louie & Sex Bomb.

basically i need something that'll last me a few good years & still sound acceptable, with a little distortion but not much. ill be playing in a 'noise' orientated rock and roll band, but i mostly like to finger pick around rather than make awful noises.

i don't know much about kit, i'm not the kind of dude who plays voodoo chile in the guitar shop every friday, so suggest away.

Kramer Striker.

Aria M Series are serious guitars. Mine is better than the gibson i payed £1200 for