Monoprice Cali Classic Electric Guitar - Blue, 6 Strings, Double-Cutaway Solid Body, Right Handed, SSS Pickups, Full-Range Tone, With Gig Bag, Perfect for Beginners - Indio Series

EDIT: I finished a modding project on this guitar, and I am over the moon. I replaced all of the electronics, the bridge/trem, string trees, and tuners. I also sanded down the edges of the neck, so the frets no longer stick out. Lastly, I did a custom paint job. So yeah, believe it or not, if feels like a whole new guitar...because it mostly is. BUT consider that body of the guitar and the neck are both fantastic. This is a great guitar for learning how to do all of those things that I mentioned above. The whole project only took about a week and for sub $300 (including paint and tools) I have a really awesome new axe.I bought this guitar as a project instead of a kit guitar. I expected so much worse than what I got. I can't really believe it.The good-The neck feels great. It has a satin finish, the wood itself is quite beautiful, and it actually plays very nicely. I am enjoying it more than my PRS neck, to be honest. It's also straight and the action was perfect straight out of the box.The paint job on this guitar is flawless. I am still going to do a custom paint job, because, well, I want to. But having a perfect surface to start is going to make my work easy.The body shape is nicely contoured. It feels like the cutouts for a player's leg, body, and picking motion are just right.The bad-The hardware stinks. The tuners are mediocre, the string trees are crummy, the bridge is thin, and all of the plastic parts feel cheap. Then again, they are cheap. This guitar is cheap. What do you expect? All of those parts are easy to swap out if you want. As it stands, I wouldn't use the whammy bar- the hardware is too sticky, so the strings go out of tune immediately. The guitar stays in tune well if you don't use the whammy bar.The neck- specifically, the fret metal sticks out of the sides of the neck. It's pretty harsh. However, for ~$5 you can buy a sanding block and soften those edges tremendously. That's what I am going to do later today. There are some great videos on how to do that.The surprising- these pickups + electronics don't sound too bad, actually. They don't sound *great*, but with a little amp EQ, I got some legit strat sounds both clean and dirty. A good amp obviously makes a ton of difference.I'll swap out the pickups, switch, and pots, but I don't feel like I need to. If you're a beginner or just want to mess around with single-coil sounds, this isn't too bad. I am truly impressed.If you can pick up this guitar for $100 or less, go for it. It's a steal. A little TLC and this thing is going to be a great sounding player.

I been playing for around 35 years and always had a strat in my life. Now that I am retired and get bored easily I like to pick up decent cheap guitars and to play and mod them. I bought this Indo strat recently and was really impressed. I did not give it five stars for beginners because the neck had zero relief in it and a beginner would not be able to recognize that or know how to adjust it. All they would know is the guitar plays like crap and give up. Slight adjustment of the truss rod and it was playable.The guitar plays great. Neck is comfortable, weight is light compared to real strat. Upper frets are easy to get to and play and the guitar sounds good. The pickups gives a wide range of tones and to me are just as good as any amazon $25 pickup upgrade. If I didnt have more than a couple dozen guitars now and 3 strat builds in my future I would pick up a couple of these. Sweet solid guitars at a excellent price.

What a nice guitar for the price. Can't be beat. Played good rt out of the box. All I did was sand the fret edges a little bit. Stays in tune and came intonation well. I'm very happy.

I bought this to get my hands on the bones. These Monoprice (Indio) strats are routed for humbuckers in the neck and bridge. So I got an HSH pickguard and threw in some hot p90's I had, worked the neck with polishing/leveling the frets and installing some locking tuners and it's pretty awesome. Also installed a pickup switch to throw the neck pickup in with any combo on the 5-way switch. All in I have under $200 in this really cool Strat that has a great range of tones. For $99 you get a decent foundation to do your own improvisations. The maple neck has really good figuring and one you adjust the truss rod it's good, I had to level the frets but they were not really all that bad to be honest, and they needed polishing but I have had to do that to big name guitars. I could not have walked into a Guitar shop and walked out with all the features, fit, and finish I wanted for under $200. This guitar would be fine for a beginner as is once the neck and intonation is set up (intonation out of the box was super close AND the nut was actually spot on. If you have no desire or ability to work on your own gear then maybe you should consider a Squire Affinity or better, anything lower tier (regardless of the name on the headstock) is going to require a little setup/adjustment.