what should i buy? a squire? what pickups??

nothing metal, alt rock distortion i guess @@

Check out SX guitars. They are ultra cheap, and are actually pretty decent quality.

A lot of the guys over at talkbass.com have bought SX stuff, it's a great place to start if you plan on upgrading the electronics.

buy a crap fender/squire used and start by replacing pickups.

yea...

why?

a shitty guitar will be a shitty guitar no matter what you do to it.

lol. good one. squiers are good for modding. you might have to get a set up, and make other changes besides pick ups though. Pick ups are a good start. Lindy Fralin makes some damn good vintage-styled pick ups. For higher output, I'd look into Seymour Duncans or DiMarzios.

this is true to an extent. but you can get a good tone by investing in nut/saddle/pickups/strings. things that are not worth trying to fix are: intonation, warpage and refret/fret dress.

Waitu, you are buying a shitty guitar with the intent of studio recording with it?

it will be a bad investment in the long run. The pickups will only make it slightly better, but the guitar will crap out very quickly. He is better better off buying a decent guitar that would be worth upgrading in the future.

ive had a few cheap guitars, i agree they are nothing to brag about and believe me i detest them. but i dont think its a bad investment. if you drop $150 into a $200 guitar it will last you a few years probably a few more. anything that "craps out" should be easily fixable. there are a few exceptions of things you dont want to go wrong on a cheap (or any) guitar. warpage happens on any wood that is cut while still wet -neither china nor mexico agree with this statement. a warped neck can eventually mean a useless guitar. on an expensive guitar you would pay to atach a new neck or have the neck straightened (very pricey).

working with violins we see this only in cheap instruments. still, we have a violin fire about once per month.

This post was edited by juliusjuice on Jan 25 2010 10:36pm