Schecter guitars are a good value for the money. Now if you could have it at a dealer's price they'd be ridiculously cheap. As is the case with all Korean and now Chinese guitars. Crafstmanship is not an issue, whatever you wanna pay for as a client, you will get. I met Michael (director of Schecter Korea) many times back in the 90-ties when he used to work at ESP custom shop on Sunset Blvd in L.A. One of my best buddies played with him in Gene Loves Jezebel. He did a great job for Schecter and it's now a model in the industry. Cut the costs, increase the profit, all that good stuff. Anyway, my point is, and I know of this firsthand, if you want a top quality Korean guitar it will only set you back $250-$275 US. That's what everyone pays for top models which retail for well over a thousand bucks here in US. Dealers of course command most of the profit but I won't elaborate on that here. If you use some analogy, deduction, whatever you wanna call it, Korean guitars in $400 to $700 range cost about $100-$175 to make. Either way, Koreans and now Chinese make a heck of a job mass producing some of these babies. If you really wanted an instrument that kick the living crap out of a $5,000 PRS, they can do that as well. For about $700-$800 US. This is where capitalism comes into play. You just can't have it at production cost, or even dealer cost. My best buddy works for Gary Kramer Guitars (yeah the guy who started up 2 guitar companies back in the 70-ies, that Kramer). He's the man behind each and every one of them. We talk and meet almost daily. All guitars you see on their site are built in Korea, albeit in a new up and coming facility. Craftsmanship is utterly amazing. They blew us away. It's one thing when my buddy, the master luthier, creates a prototype from scratch with his own hands, after countless hours of deliberation and fiddling with the woods and electronics. It's quite a thing when you get a batch of exact same guitars from Korea at their factory prices. Setup and ready to go. They retail here for $1300-$1400 and you have to understand that dealers pocket half of it. True, some of the electronics and wood in general is not up to par with my buddy's hand made American version, but should you desperately wish your guitar to bear Made in USA, you will have to pay $2500-$4000 for equivalent model. I've checked the woods and played most models myself, can't really tell the sound difference. This does not imply that Koreans use lousy tonewoods, quite the contrary. It's just that if you order an instrument from custom shop, either you get to pick the wood or they pick it for you, but their woods are the deli shop of the woods. For custom shop, they get tonewoods from the most reputable tonewood dealers in the States, along with PRS and a bunch of other people. I posted pictures of some of my guitars elsewhere on the site, and if you call those PRS tentops, mine would be , oh say 15. Some of these woods have been drying for 20 years people. Under strictly controlled conditions, but that's an art form in itself.
On another note, I have a Lo-Pro-Edge III tremolo on one of my custom guitars, I think I posted the picture of it here somewhere as well. It was a gift from Steve's (Vai) tech. It's one of his replacement tremolos. Since he abuses them quite a bit, his techie has a stash of tremolos hand-picked by Ibanez. I don't know if and how they might be different from your regular stock LPEIII, it simply rocks. Seven years now. Of course, I ain't no Steve. To be honest, played an 'original' (i.e. Schaller made) Floyd Rose and had a few. What's to say, Germans do not goof around with these things. Made for eternity. Unfortunately, I just don't like the design of it. Irritates the palm of my picking hand too much. Or is it my technique (or lack thereoff).
As for Japanese guitar quality, even my mom knows that some of the best production line Fenders are 80-ies Japanese models. That in itself speaks volumes. However, they started cutting costs in the meantime, like everyone else matter of fact.
Anyhoo, cheers and keep on jamming.
