Tafty and his Grote semi-hollow archtop reveal the shocking truth about "affordable" guitars!

Is not the guitar but the guitarist. Simple! Some expensive guitars are overrated.

Yeah - another 'bring-me-your-poor' advert.... I've never bought an up-market or 'expensive' guitar in my life - except by accident, when I was a student! I bought a cheap Sakai Strat in 1978 (their top-of-the-range model), set it up myself - and it's the best guitar I own - damn near perfect. The one guitar I will never sell or modify in any way - and it cost 105 GBP back in the day.

anyone who starts the video with a sales pitch gets a thumbs down, think about it!

instead of targetting a video at people buying the CHEAPEST guitars available (who are also the LEAST likely to fork out money to a guitar tech), I'd aim at people buying NICER instruments AND try to impress upon those people that YOU can do a much better job than they can (which is, admittedly, a tough sell...)

either way, good luck!!!

this is my video number 30 about this guitar... you are the only one hating on this brand....and you didn't even play it... so, I'll stick to the other reviews...

Question is, how many of these things need to be done to any other guitar, sometimes regardless of price. I had a friend bring me a $900 name brand guitar that needed all the same things. What is the price point at which we can be certain all of these things are right when you open the box. I buy these cheap guitars. Some of them are surprisingly well set up out of the box. Some are pretty bad. So far, after working with maybe ten guitars from a variety of sources, every single one was easily sorted out with my minimal amateur luthier skills. AND I ENJOY doing the work and seeing the fruits of my labor. There's no argument to me made that these guitars are not affordable (you put that word in quotes). Of course they are inexpensive and affordable. To my mind, no beginner should be handed a guitar that has not been inspected and set up as needed by a knowledgeable guitar tech - and you don't need to be a professional to do these simple fixes. Finally, I have handled name brand guitars costing twice what these Grote guitars cost that are no better set up than the Grotes I have gotten from Amazon. In fact, the Grotes and IYVs seem to come in the best shape of all the "affordable" brands.

I JUST ORDER ONE I LIKE BUYING $200=300 GUITAR AND MOD THE SHIT OUT OF IT THEY ALL SOUND AND PLAY GREAT

Any fairly experienced guitarist can make every adjustment you mentioned without paying a single dime for a tech to do it. I have ten guitars including two basses and a double neck. I set up every one of them myself and I could'nt be happier with the way they play.

If you have at least a 5th grade education than you can do it. 1st get Bouled linseed oil for the fretboard and bridge 2nd turtle wax spray polish for the body. 3rd a $10 file set for the frets . 4th good strings. 5th take out bows from neck. Replace the tuners. Files amazon and the oil n spray wax walmart and just do it .

Yea yea maybe so but so called techs here around will not take on a affordable and if they do they will only fool money off the customer. A backbow is not that easy to sort out like hey hoo a dual action truss! Hell no, the truss dialed at zero and then the neck is to be forced back to an full bow and to accept it, we are talking many hours, money money money money.
A thick gauge 12`s is oftenly used to tame the neck and those methods used in before is not to be avealed as some people would faint.

As mentioned once below, Chinese products profit the CCP and its military and are made by cheap labour from environmentally damaging sources. The lack of conscience is so sad... and dangerous!

Yeah but do you have to pay a tech to make all these adjustments? Or can you learn to do it yourself - not that hard - and save a lot of money.

Might as well call this the truth about any guitar

Monoprice Indio Boardwalk is setup at the factory and shipped to the consumer

I just got one of these and the frets were perfect. No sharp edges and nice and level, polished nicely. The guitars finish and construction and intonation were also spot on.I could not find a flaw anywhere. I did give the truss rod a quarter turn. Tuners need upgrade replacement. Wilkenson EZ lock is inexpensive and they work great. The electronics and pickups are complete junk. I had to fix bad connections just to get both pickups working. I planned on rewiring and up grading anyway so no problem. It ships with a silica pack under the strings not ideal for keeping moisture in the fret board, so add some lemon oil. If someone doesn`t know how to do guitar work it would have to be shipped back. Guitar is worth the money for the guitar itself but only if you like doing some work.

All good advice. I love my Grote 335. Especially after adding P90s, new wires, knobs, pickguard, roller bridge and locking tuners.

I like Grote .

With discount mine cost $123. If I had another $100 I would buy a better guitar. Therefore I will do the setup myself, thank you very much.

bet he was a 3 chord player....no real content here

This review was not a review of the. Grote 335, it is an opinion review of “cheap guitars” in general. The workmanship and playability of the Grote 335 (copy) is a bargain at their price point and a great beginners guitar right out of the box after tuning it.

how bout the tuners

(Elephant) "What does the guitar sound like?"

I suggest investing in a better mic

AIO WOLF GUITARS ARE THE ONLY CHEAP ONES THAT ARE WORTH IT .

Just save up your money and buy American! Or even Korean, Taiwanese - just not Chinese. Everything that you buy from China mostly goes to their military whose primary goal is to destroy our country and, especially, us! I'm saving up to buy a beautiful, but used, Gibson ES 137. It's cheaper than buying new, and if your careful, you can get a guitar in excellent condition and save over a thousand dollars or more!

Thanks for your informative video. All of us here don't everything and it was helpful.

This guy ought to be overjoyed that ANY guitar needs an initial check and setup, and just about ANY guitar (Grote or name brand) WILL need an initial setup.

Next, here's an unpopular opinion that I have. If you care enough about guitar to learn more than three chords, you ought to care enough to understand how the guitar functions and how to do basic maintenance. I'm old school, and I can actually change a tire and check the oil on my car. I have two different Grote guitars, and it took at most an hour of my time to take them from nearly perfect setup to perfect setup, and when these are properly set up, they will play as well as guitars costing many times what your Grote cost you.

The TRUTH is that these really are AFFORDABLE guitars compared to any entry level name brand guitar from a big name manufacturer.

Finally, I have tried some of these affordable guitars, and they cannot all be tossed into on basket and spoken of in generalizations. You may believe that they are all made in the same factory or some such myth, but different companies have different standards, specifications and parts. They also have different quality control standards.

As far as Grote goes, when I restrung mine and took the pieces apart, the hard tail was a casting with the word EPIPHONE cast into the part.

IS THE PRICE OF A FULLY SET UP GUITAR WORTH IT ON THESE CHEAP ASS GUITARS .

Bad clickbait title

I got one of these a year ago. A slight truss rod adjustment, slapped some Gibson strings on it, Damn fine guitar. It has a similar tone to my old Italian 4770/335 copy.

1/3 of this is a commercial for your shyt.

I'm gonna sum this video up in one sentence. If you've never held a phiilips screwdriver or an allen wrench in your hands or have never used a piece of sand paper, don't buy this guitar. These are for people who know how to work on things. it's just that simple.

I've been an owner of a Grote ES 335 for almost 2 yrs. There is no shocking truth about it. Any change, such as the strings or truss rod adjustment would the exact one would do with a $4000.00 guitar. It's all a matter of preference. The title of this video is wrong and the cons regarding this guitar are understandable.

I have one of these too. Out of the box I removed the factory strings, threw them away, aggressively cleaned the fingerboard to remove the dye/stain from the wood. Polished the frets, oiled this fingerboard with Guitar Nomad frine juice, removed the truss rod cover and...the truss rod was not even screwed in :) just came out with my allen wrench, so I turned it until it caught (thank goodness) and set the relief. Put on some decent strings, adjusted string height, neck relief, string height again, then set up the intonation. About an hour in, and it sounds okay acoustically. Lots of leftover wood bits in each side of the guitar; blew them out with some canned air. Replaced the speed knobs with some extras I had laying around. Plugged it in and found it really easy to play and sounced good for a $165.00 USD instrument. Have played it some since, but about to sell it as I've lost interest in making it a 'project' guitar. Oh and the wiring was messy, hard to move so that you can't see it through the f holes. Not a bad beginner guitar for the money, but a solid body is probably best for a beginner and not a semi-hollow. FOr the intermediate guitar player - go get an Epiphone 335.

So it needs a setup....

It was always my understanding that any guitar under $500 is going to need a set up. I factor in the cost of the setup as part of the cost of the guitar.

I got that very model and I can't stop playing it. Set it up myself and slapped some Gibson strings on it.

Useless video. 3 minutes of you talking about your merch...lol...you have 522 subscribers, who the hell are you trying to sell merch to. I'm guessing the next time we see you will be on the "5 worst guitar videos"

You could include some info in this video. Information is the key to these videos.

I been playing and repairing for over 55 years. Most guitars come from overseas now and even high priced guitars need setups. In other words, you are useless to everyone

This video hated me. So I hated it back. Click bait. Don't waste your time.

why not show how to set up save $

3 minutes in and havent seen anything pertaining to the title ,, and its only a 9 minute video
sorry ,, moving on

Hey just an update to this video. It's 6 months later, and although the Grote played pretty well out of the box, it is pretty much un-playable now, as most of the frets have lifted out of the fingerboard. Maybe I'll do another video on how to re-seat them.

I guess a lot of you never had a Zen-on or a Teisco or some other brand as your first guitar. The guitars they make now are like driving a Honda as compared to a Model T. Most all these guitars are playable right out of the box. And many are super nice with a good setup and maybe some new hardware (if needed) no matter what I did to my old Zen-on it still played terrible and sounded like crap. We live in some good times and some don't even realize it.

I love my two grotes. Both came out of the box setup pretty good.
All I did was change the strings.