In this golden age of guitar building, we have available to us access to cheap and decent guitars, usually meant for starters and beginners but are these instruments that bad to the point of not even worth mentioning? The purist may argue yes however, not everyone of us can afford a $3000 Gibson or Fenders.
That aside, there are aspiring DIY-ers out there who just want to try modding guitars without spending a bomb on an expensive mid range to high end guitar later to be screwing up rendering the guitar unplayable. However at the same time, one wouldn't like it sounding like a sub $200 guitar. Well, the good news is, you can actually make that sub $200 guitar sound way more expensive than it cost. As a matter of fact, you can make that sub $200 guitar play and feel a lot better.
Let's face it, what makes the guitar playable? I will argue it's the neck that you are holding 90% of the time, telling you if you like the guitar or not. Majority of the sub $200 guitars come with un-even frets, badly sat frets and etc. That usually is a huge turn off to the most of us. However that can all be rectified, especially to Diy-ers.
The next thing that we will look at are the electronics included with the guitar. Sub $200 guitars usually comes with below par bad muddy sounding pickups. Pots and switch that are included usually oxidize faster than you can change your strings, causing more unwanted scratchy noises. However, that isn't that much of a problem either. Pickups can be swapped out while electronic parts can be changed. One might argue that the pickup is only a "microphone" to a singer and it only amplify what the guitar produces. However, I also believe that there are Gems within the sub $200 category and not all of them are bad. I've personally played Made in China Squiers that sounded sweet and Made in USA Fenders that sounded crap (No I don't have them in my memory on their particular models). On a solid body electric guitar, the electronic plays the biggest part in the tone while the wood sets a tonal characteristic to the tone. That being said, being conscious of the wood materials used to craft the instrument can set up a step ahead in modifying our favorite instruments. For starters, I highly suggest Alder, Basswood or Mahogany as these wood appears to be tonally similar with each different pieces.
Lastly, things that I will usually change are the hardware themselves. Especially the Tuning pegs and Bridge. Most of the Tuning pegs that comes with sub $200 guitar usually aren't of high quality and can give us tuning hell. Changing those can maintain tuning a lot better. The bridge of sub $200 guitars are usually made of mystery pot metal to cut the cost. This once again kills off the whatever tone the guitar might actually have. This can be changing the Vibrato Tremolo (Floyd Rose), Vintage Tremolo or a fixed Tune O matic bridge. A change of those parts can guarantee an immediate improvement in tone.
An optional change is the nut. Usually the nut is badly cut and require some additional work but for the extreme DIY-ers, Graphite is a good replacement nut. Not only does it maintain your tuning better (From excessive Whammy) it also improves your open string tones.
The answer to the question posted at the top of this article is "Yes". The general rule of thumb is, if the guitar sounds good to you, if it feels great to you, then you should probably try doing some DIY yourself. The next argument will be, after changing those parts, it will cost as much as a mid or high range guitar. Well yes and no. Mid range guitars definitely don't come with higher end pickups (Dimarzio, Seymour Duncan, EMG and etc) nor hardware you hand pick for yourself. While it might not necessarily be cheaper to mod a cheap guitar, however it is a fun experience and satisfying to call a guitar "your own".
Disclaimer:Some of the guitars shown as pictures in this post might not necessarily be a guitar with inferior parts. However they will fall under the guitars I will get and modify category.
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