Originally Posted by: The AceUmm forget the whole I want this guitar to do everything line, 'cuz I don't.

Stuff I hope to get out of it:
Jazz (top, if anything this style, priority)
Blues
Rockabilly
just small dabbles in hard or classic rock (not that much though, on the occasion)...

OK, so we all had a good laugh about Daisy Rock guitars on another thread. When I first heard about them, I thought the 'petal' body style was all they had, and I thought they were a joke. I'm not laughing now.

Take another look at the RetroH guitars. That's a serious axe for $250! I wouldn't worry about the fact the packing is no longer factory sealed. That usually means that a box corner got torn in shipping. The contents would have been inspected before they offered it for sale. If it had been damaged, you'd see it listed as a "scratch'n'dent" special, called "New B Stock". Grab the $50-off deal!

For another $100, ($350) you get full-size humbuckers in their Stardust Elite. I don't know how you feel about 'pearloid' guitars. The Crimson Burst looks pretty good, actually. Although a fully solid-body axe with full-size humbuckers doesn't have that Rockabilly sound you can get with a hollow-body and mini-hums. And the process of laminating plastic to the body is not going to do good things to the sustain, or the tone.

Then there's the Rock Candy Special! For $400, you get Seymor Duncan pickups, mahogany neck and body, with a quilted maple top! I don't know what the advertising regulations are like in the U.S. (I live in Canada), but I think that if that top was some kind of 'cheat' (like a laminated photographic simulation), they would have to give some kind of indication that it was not actual quilted maple veneer. For a new $400 guitar, that looks pretty good to me.

I still hold that the best way to buy a guitar is to spend some time examining and playing the actual guitar you're going to spend your money on. And I [u]know[/u] you can get more guitar for your money by buying a good used instrument. So, by all means, keep poking through the racks at your local music shops, and search eBay as well. These guitars from Daisy Rock are just more options available to you.