what cheap chinese made gems have you found

stickyfiddle

I've heard they have a lot of recipes for soup...  

chris_john

I've gone through tons of chinese gear. Some good, some not so good. IMO, the honorable mentions are: Hotone Grass, Mooer Hustle Drive, Joyo American, Hotone Britwind, Nux Horseman (Klone), Donlis pickups. I picked up a cheap Mooer GE150 and it has surpassed my expectations.
I had a Chinese made Tokai 335 copy. Once the pickups were upgraded it was quite a respectable guitar. 

TuffNut

darthed1981 said:

 I've got a Squier Vintage Modified Jazzmaster which came with a crap bridge which I simply had to swap to make it playable, and now I've done that it's brilliant, except for a dead buzzy spot at the 9th fret on the low E - which really shouldn't be there even on a £300 guitar.

I have a Fender Jaguar MIJ '94, Mine was made before the Squier and MIA reissues. The bridges suck all the Jaguar / Jazzmaster reissues except the American stuff they use a different thread. Some people now use a mastery bridge or put lock tight on the threads, the other option is a Mustang bridge. I bought Seymour Duncan pickups also as the original ones sucked also. It stinks buying a guitar then spending extra to get it playable.

TheMarlin

Mosky Golden Horsey
Joyo Sweet Baby
Nux Horseman
Celine Blue Ocean
Squire Classic Vibe butterscotch tele

MagicPigDetective

Behringer SF300 Super Fuzz. Clone of sought after Boss FZ-2. For Doom and Stoner it sounds amazing. And only round 20 quid.

earwighoney

I've got a guitar from Alan George, a Tele Hybrid.

Out of the box it wasn't great, possibly the worst cut nut I have ever seen in my life.  The bass side was 5mm too high and the nut slots were all over the place, even after lowering the slots it was never quite right and I imagine for those reasons the tuning was all over the place.  When I got around to trying to replace the nut, there had been an almost industrial quantity of superglue used and it chipped a piece of wood out when it came out. 

However, after putting a cheap bone nut I bought from Ebay and suddenly even with the really poor tuners, the tuning stability is now actually superb.

The tuners did require a lot of machine oil, and I used a bit of pencil in the nut slots which did make a huge difference.

The bridge was a standard Ashtray bridge, and it was ok, but a little wonky so I replaced it with one with cut sides.

The wood for the neck isn't bad, I've owned the guitar for over a year and after putting in a bit of relief I've not adjusted the truss once, and the guitar has never been put in a case/left in rooms with very erratic humidity.

The body itself I presume is made from a quite heavy piece of Basswood, it has a nice tap to it. A lot more resonant than the other cheap guitars I own be it Squier/Epi etc.

The pickups are standard cheap pickups with a Ceramic bar at the back, they don't sound bad but not really much to get excited about. I'll replace them sometime.

It took a bit of time to get up to scratch and it needed some very, very important mods/upgrades to get into playable condition and I appreciate I might be lucky in getting a good one but overall I am delighted with the one I received, but definitely not a guitar I'd recommend to someone who isn't comfortable performing a few mods themselves.

Bork

chris_john said:

I've gone through tons of chinese gear. Some good, some not so good. IMO, the honorable mentions are: Hotone Grass, Mooer Hustle Drive, Joyo American, Hotone Britwind, Nux Horseman (Klone), Donlis pickups. I picked up a cheap Mooer GE150 and it has surpassed my expectations.
I had a Chinese made Tokai 335 copy. Once the pickups were upgraded it was quite a respectable guitar. 

Plus one for the Joyo American sound, it sits alongside an Amptweaker Tight Rock on my board and I use it as a mid boost into the TR for lovely, thick, creamy sustaining overdrive ala Alan Murphy.  I've been consistently so impressed with it over the last 6 years that I'm considering getting two more and rehousing them into a single pedal that I can configure in parallel or serial.  Where I am I can get them for less than twenty quid each.

I also have a Nux Chorus Core because I'm into cheesy 80's session guitar sounds. It's OK but I haven't really used the trichorus setting in stereo much.

Finally I have a Mooer Ocean Machine, the Devin Townsend signature pedal which combines reverb and two delays.  It's really good, seriously good.  Mooer are obviously trying to lift their game given price points for their other products but the OM still represents outstanding value.

Harley Benton do some very nice stuff these days, particularly semi hollow and tele copies.

prowla

Right now I'm not particularly into Chinese imports...

Bork

In the interests of full disclosure, I live in China.

Blueingreen

Anybody else misread the thread title as "what cheap chinese made germs have you found"?

Bork

No.

adamino

Mosky Demon Tube Screamer

thecolourbox

I've an Eno Octaver which is so unbelievably poor, it actually sounds awesome in a kind of fuzzy Octavia kind of way. Cuts the volume level though

Rune

Vox AC10C1

munckee

TheMarlin said:

Mosky Golden Horsey
Joyo Sweet Baby
Nux Horseman
Celine Blue Ocean
Squire Classic Vibe butterscotch tele

The Joyo sweet baby is a tremendous low gain/clean drive, the joyo vintage overdrive is a TS clone, their tremolo pedal isn't bad either.

DrJazzTap

To echo what Lee said, the mosky silver horse. I tried out rocket archer, and I couldnt hear a pedal which was worth five times the price of the silver horse. 

digitalscream

DrJazzTap said:

To echo what Lee said, the mosky silver horse. I tried out rocket archer, and I couldnt hear a pedal which was worth five times the price of the silver horse. 

Cheers. For what it's worth, I've got two of them on my board now...

bananaman

viz said:

Jem-alike, red doubleneck, 300 quid. It’s really nice. https://i.imgur.com/p2sY1Ue.jpg

What's the neck through superstrat thing with a clear finish?

JoeyKalifornia

vox ac 30 cc1

JMP220478

Mosky EP Booster  - excellent value EP booster clone - internal dip switches map to original , low noise ..

Mooer Rumble Drive - online reviews it compares well with many brand name clones of ZenDrive - and Its sat on mini board 1 at chez JMP with very respectable kit and holds it own into a Mk V25 fat clean channel ...