Guitars are technology - just like computers - actually, ALL musical instruments are, and people I think, in the guitar community, don't really understand what the **cheap** guitar thing is relaly all about.

The first thing is that these things were always expensive. There is no cheaper time than now to own a quality instrument. People always forget two things - first off, the Boomers/the mathmatically challenged/woefully nostalgic complain that a Telecaster was only $158.88 in 1949. Yes, by NUMBERS that's cheaper than today, but adjusted for inflation is closer to $1588.88 - so Teles were ALWAYS expensive, professional instruments! BUT....any time my generation or younger gets ahold of this data, we start to say "but...inflation". They only get it half right on THAT front, because while yes, Inflation does mean an object that cost $159 in 1949 costs $1599 in today's money, it fails to capture the fact that while the cost of the object in question was roughly the same as today despite the lower price, politically and socially, our society has FAILED to keep up with inflation so that the relativity is the same.

Think about it, in 1949, your average non-college educated vocational worker could afford a pretty nice house - like a 3 bedroom 1ba rambler located in the nicer side of tw2on, with a brand new work truck in the driveway with the family car, and probably pay it off and own his property 100% ourright without an HOA pestering him every 5 minutes. In 2024, your average college-educated white-collar worker lives in a $2000/mo. apartment "unit" they don't own and cannot alter beyond a certain threshold, has to drive a 12+ year old car that gets the same mileage as that guy's 1952 DeSoto that they struggle to make the maintenance payments on because a car costs about $68,000 new, and there's several "requirements" that we did not have in the 1950's - which make even things some people in 1949 would deem essential, like having children, difficult to afford if not an outright impossibility financially! And many other things, such as internet access, which are a requirement for our modern society that did not exist back then (no boomers, the "jobs" won't be taking our "pen and paper" resumes anymore, that's not how work works in the 21st century). So with this financial landscape, it is little surprise to me that people today are glorifying a once-budget guitar like a Squier AFfinity as if it were a $1500 FENDER telecaster - because in reality, at the end of the day, a guitar is for making music.

All of the formulations about "vintage" and "tone wood" and "tone" or "mojo" in general, are the construct of guitar companies marketing based on interviews with various baby boomer and early GEn X guitarists who think that the older stuff is "better" because the older stuff was made by hand in factories by some kind of magically trained "Luthiers" who will somehow, just by their very existence, make the guitar "better" than a CNC milled instrument made in a factory. While these interviews do garner a lot of information that's useful, there's also a lot of psudeoscience bullshit. People forget that guitarists are not always techs, techs are not always guitarists, and neither is always rooting their beliefs, hypothesis, and theories in science, nor is science 100% all knowing about everything either.

These points are taken by the guitar companies to try and sell you a product based on sensationalized bullshit created by the company's marketing department to get you to buy more expensive guitars. Prior to the 1990's, when all the grunge guys pre-fame had like 10-20 guitars a pop because they were so bloody cheap, or at least made it SOUND like they did, these instruments that once were "cheap crap" now were more expensive, and being sold on the merits of their famous connections, and whatever claims the ARTIST made about the guitars merits. Some of it quite to the chagrin of the artist themselves.

Remember, what's today's "cheap" will be tomorrows "Expensive" thing as soon as someone gets famous while playing one. Jaguars and Mustangs were $50-350 guitars - I'm not just talking the JApanese reissues, but the actual USA made at the FUllerton California factory guitars from the 1960's-1980's, before Kurt Cobain came along. Prior to the 1980's when the whole "vintage" thing REALLY got it's start largely due to guys like Slash, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Tom Petty & the HEartbreakers, and whatnot, these 1960's and older guitars were just seen as "old" and not worth a lot of money until celebrities made them popular.

So what does this have to do with cheap - to get to the point, because I'm a wordy guy....