Originally Posted by: ren
the long and short of my advice there would be not to bother buying a guitar you already know you don't like the finish on.
The USA guitar will kick the Japanese one's ass in all respects - if it didn't, Jackson couldn't sell it for 3 times the price, or whatever it is. The quality of finish / fretting / binding and all that sort of stuff is likely to be higher on the US made guitars...
Go play every guitar in your price range until you fall in love with one. Doesn't matter what it is or where it came from...
The first part of that post is about the best advice... Don't buy a guitar if you don't already like it... By the time you put money into it to make it how you want it to be... You could afford a guitar that's in a price range twice as much as it originally was....
The second part of that post is all based on 4 decades of myths... The ongoing myth is that American made anything is better than foreign made anything... Not so. With Strats it's Mexico verse America... Sure... The American guitar is made with more care... and sometimes better components... But a 700 dollar American Standard strat is NOT better than a Deluxe Strat that is made in Mexico.... It's basically a myth that has been created by the american pride... Americans want to own products made in America... Therefor resale values go up for American products... creating a higher value for the said product... Look at Harley Davidson motorcycles for example.... The technology hasn't changed in 30 years... yet they still sell for 20,000 dollars... becasue it's the perception that they're the best becasue they're made in the US.... not hardly... Suzuki, Honda, and Yamaha make plenty good enough cruisers for a quarter of the price...
With that said... Most brand names have rigourous quality control programs that keep the quality of the guitar in accordance with what's expected of the name... Paul Reed Smith wouldn't put it's name on the Korean-made guitars if they weren't up to snuff with what expected of the name... it would be bad for the brand name... Same with Jackson, Fender, Gibson, Ibanez, and so forth.... The best advice is still to play the guitar... see how it sounds. Do some research into seeing what the specific specs are for the guitar. I'm not very versed in the Jackson/Ibanez type guitars... But I've seen plenty of Dinky's in guitar shops and such... Generally they have original Floyd Rose's... Jackson makes good guitars no matter where the factory is located... I'm pretty sure a Dinky isn't made of any cheap plywood either... Most likely a Non-choice cut of alder or poplar.... I'm not certain but those are the basic tone woods for strat style guitars... But yeah... research the guitar... A good place to look is either musiciansfriend.com or the jackson website... Good luck.
