Echoing much of the above…buzzing on frets is very annoying. I have a Squire that is generally nice, but I had to raise the strings fairly high to avoid buzzing, which makes picking more awkward and inconsistent than it should be.
I have an older classic Gibson though that I love, but has some worn frets with some buzz. Not sure if filing or refretting is possible.
Take it to a place that is known for working on older guitars - not some random newbie tech at GC (to be clear: some GC techs can be great if they bring their own experience to the job). The frets may just need to be dressed - i.e., filed and shaped so the still-high frets are a bit more level with the more-worn frets.
If the frets need replacing, it can cost in the hundreds of dollars, and if binding is involved on the neck, more. But if the Gibson is a good one, it is entirely worth it.
Cool, thanks for the feedback 
No way – they forgot two of the knobs! 
This has been a really interesting thread. I’m not a guitar player – I played a little in my teens, but a few years ago I sold my one guitar (a pretty nice SG Special from 1974 – nothing special, but it paid my rent that month, and I wish I had a guitar now to play around with).
I’m of two minds on the beginners needing blahblah – yes, I think they should have some instrument that can work, and clearly, some instruments don’t work. It’s funny as you get accustomed to working with shoddy instruments how any old thing can work, though. I still haven’t tuned my Rhodes up for like eight months, but I still play it every day, and my “acoustic” (digital) is a joke – the thing is falling apart. But it works. I wouldn’t advise any kid to play something like these instruments unless they had no choice, though. I guess musicians can get kind of stuck in our ways just like anyone else.
Late to the discussion, but I’ll add my two cents. I play bass, so have no experience on acoustic or electric guitars. As others pointed out, ubiquitous CNC machining etc. has made it possible to churn out finely crafted electric instruments for little money. The days of having inaccurately cut fretboards, lumpy neck surfaces or crappy plywood under thick paint are gone. I’m currently playing a 230-dollar (direct-buy, no-name) active Korean neck-through 5-string bass with a stunning spalted maple top and a very fast and comfy five-ply maple / exotic neck. The kind of features found on Ibanezes etc. at the 600-dollar and up range.
What the CNC machines and low off-shore factory wages don’t deliver is good-quality electronics and setup. My experience, and that of fellow players, is that the pickups and preamps on the el-cheapos sound mostly really bad, while well-dressed fret ends or accurately filed nut string slots are non-existant. The thing is, upgrading the pickups and getting a professional setup done can turn a 200-dollar instrument into a really well-playing, great-sounding, fine-looking keeper. Even without this, the guitars are perfectly serviceable: one can learn her chops quite well on the 21st century el-cheapo, and upgrading is purely optional for most recreational players.
I love to play but I’m the anti- gear geek when it come to my instruments. I LOVE crazy sounding, oddly tuned, warpy, buzzy goodness in my music. It’s no surprise then that I have an oddball collection of instruments.
As others have noted, the difference is more pronounced in acoustics. Generally speaking I divvy it up into four categories when considering a NEW instrument. (used is a whole nother ball of wax)
Cheap shit: Up to 200.00 These will usually have problems of some sort. I love weird action but it’s noticeable and hard to play around. Grab two or three of the same model and you’ll hear the difference. Sometimes you find a gem though, I’ve got a lovely little six string I got for 200;00 that has some odd properties in the wood and rings forever on certain notes.
Semi-pro: 200.00 to 600.00 These will be correct in terms of tuning and consistent in sound from piece to piece in a series. One is much like another and the sound will be acceptable and pleasant but not mind blowing. The point is that they are work horses and must be dependable.
Pro gear: 600.00- 2k Interestingly, these pieces will combine the oddball uniqueness of the cheap shit with the dependability and construction of the semi-pro models. Sound will be very clear, resonant and different from model to model line as well as piece to piece. This is as high as most people ever need go. Only those looking for a very specific sound or tone need invest further into…
High End Gear for Wankers: anything over 2k. Yes, there are some true gems out there, yes there are some tones that only time can impart, yes there are some magical instruments perhaps blessed by the devil himself. However, for the most part there isn’t THAT much of a difference in tone between a newly produced 4-6k piece and the high end 2k model. It’s splitting hairs, and fancy inlays at this point.
Acid Lamp - I need, respectfully, to register my disagreement on your ‘Wanker’ line.
For classical instruments, $2,000. is a good student instrument. I’d say $6,000. to $8,000. for a bottom of the line pro instrument. There really isn’t much below $2,000. that will be anything more than a beginner’s instrument. You need to work with an instrument that can actually give all the tonal colours in order to learn how to produce those colours.
In my case, I lucked out - I bought the first instrument that luthier ever sold, and got it for $3,000. Ten years later, it’s still my main instrument, but he doesn’t sell anything for less than $8,000. any more. It was the struggle to be worthy of my instrument that made me become a good guitarist.
Admittedly, playing classical is a bit of a specialization - still, not everybody who spends more than $2,000. on an instrument is doing it for the wank.
Count me as another one who is amazed at the quality of guitar you can get for little money these days, compared to the piece of crap that I had to play when I started. I suspect that there are only a handful of factories in Korea, China and Indonesia cranking out these things, and getting increasingly good at it. I have heard that the Korean company that owns the Cort brand is the biggest guitar manufacturer in the world, producing instruments for many well-known brands.
Only today I was in a guitar shop that deals in low-end electrics and acoustics. Cort, Crafter, the sub-$600 stuff. I tried a load of Strat copies, several of which really nice. The best-finished guitar with the nicest fret job was one of the cheapest. It was £89! (that’s about $140). Well-finished solid body, nice neck with fretwork as good as what you see on $700 Fenders. Neat and tidy workmanship all round. I suspect the pickups and chrome bits were cheap and nasty, but I was tempted to buy it as the basis of a “partscaster”.
Ministre, I believe Acid Lamp is speaking electrics. For acoustics, you are, of course, correct.
(Squeegee, you can make that Nighthawk quack like a strat or power like a Les Paul. Fun stuff. It’s not a LP… all the knobs are properly present. I think it’s something like 18 different pickup combinations.)
And I will agree with Toxy, except, in the specific case of Xaviere guitars, because one of their major products is pickups, and their pickups can ride alongside with Duncans. Not Designed by Duncan, but Duncans. Not the same, but as good.
But yeah, some setup, some fret work maybe, and my Telemaster is confused for a $2k guitar as soon as someone picks it up. And they still think so after they plug it in.
Man, I love this thing. But it works specifically for me. If anyone wants to buy a cheap-ass guitar, right now, let’s lay down some desires, and I’ll try to run you to the right home.
It goes both ways in my opinion actually. Once you get into the thousands range, I just don’t hear that much a of a difference. Certainly there ARE subtle refinements and colors in those very high end pieces, but they are simply irrelevant to me. A good player can make any decent guitar sing, and I don’t hear *anything *so drastic that it commands the absurd prices people pay.
Now I want to add that I’m referring here to NEW instruments, made by corporate type facilities.
Lone luthiers, and tiny houses where everything is cut and assembled by hand tooling is a wholly different animal and should be priced accordingly. Likewise for vintage or antique instruments that simply cannot be reproduced. In both cases you are paying for time, attention to detail, materials, etc that are not within the range of more mass produced instruments.
I bought a Fender Bullet Strat once. It doesn’t come any cheaper than that. And when you play around with one, the pots, switches, and hardware do feel cheap.
And yet it was a perfectly playable guitar. It sounded fine – just like a strat should. The neck was good, and the frets were good. I took it out to gig with a couple of times. I’m playing it on this recording.
There was a time, twenty or more years ago, when you could truly say that a cheap import guitar was an unplayable piece of rubbish. Maybe some of them still are unplayable rubbish, and the stigma certainly lives on. But it is perfectly possible nowadays to get a good, working guitar without the premium price tag. Fender and Ibanez are leading the way here.
Sometimes, if I’m feeling particularly cynical, I get to thinking that the biggest difference is that the guy in the shop will put on a fresh pair of strings and do a full set up on a $2000 guitar, whereas the cheapie goes up on the wall as is, straight from the factory.
I guess, theoretically, the biggest difference after that would be the quality of the electronic components and hardware on the more expensive guitars. You would expect the more expensive ones to be a bit harder wearing and more robust. But then, you hear a lot of bad stories these days about poor QA on expensive guitars.
Probably the least important differences would be the one’s that get the most hype – the kind of wood a guitar is made from, and nitro-cellulose verses poly finishes. Maybe the choice of wood is important for an acoustic guitar, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference for electrics. And the kind of highly-figured wood that bumps the price up on high end guitars is completely irrelevant to how a guitar plays and sounds.
People love nitro-cellulose because it’s what they used in the “good old days”, but frankly, this is what actively stops me from buying high end electric guitars. I absolutely hate how soft and fragile nitro-cellulose lacquer is. I mean, you know, if you bought a car where the finish wore off through ordinary day-to-day usage, you’d return it as defective. But for some reason, we’re all supposed to love guitars that look like ass.
OK. Most keyboardists, between amplification, mixing, and boards, probably n/m I thought better of getting into the shmear. 
I think what sets aside electric guitars from other instruments is the extent to which they are mass produced.
The reason why you can buy a quite decent electric guitar for $600 (where a beginner’s violin would be $2000) is because the guitar is made by machines on a production line. Stuff like intonation problems stop being an issue when even the cheapest guitar has its frets cut on a CNC machine that’s accurate down to hundredths of millimeters.
Thank you, Leo Fender.
Okay then:
As long as we’re clear on that. 
I guess I will comment on this a bit more: there is the whole “lawyer guitar” thing - where mid-life crisis guys get a bitchin’ guitar to go with their Harley. Listen: a douchebag will find a way to overpay for anything. But there is a big difference between that approach to guitars and deeply-invested players looking for that extra richness in tone or playability available in truly high-end guitars.
Equating both types of high-end spenders breaks down at that point.
As a business executive who has also gigged for 30+ years in a semi-pro sorta way and currently has a mid-life crisis covers band, I walk that fine line. I suspect that going “homebrew” with my electrics is the culmination of years of assiduously avoiding all of the trappings of douchebagginess, and digging that much deeper into figuring out what specific features really matter to my ears and hands. Guitars are cool tools; I enjoy them at that level.
Crap, my GAS just flared up.
I had a Gibson Nighthawk when they first came out and got rid of it when I stopped playing. Now that I’ve started playing again I wish I had it. It was the best guitar I’ve ever owned. I’m going to have to check this reissue out.
heh.
I’d say it’s more like:
" Cheap guitars mostly suck but some are good, and a few are excellent. There’s no way to tell but to pick them up and play though. More expensive guitars are mostly good, but some are excellent and a rare few suck. Expensive guitars are mostly for wankers, being in most ways identical to less expensive ones. Some are perhaps worth their cost due to factors beyond pure performance. "
Basically in high end stuff, my opinion, (and opinion it is at this point regardless of who you are) boils down to: "If you really, really, can only find that sweet tone you’ve dreamed about in a hand made guitar made from the rare, now extinct dingo-dango wood, taken from the hold of a sunken Spanish galleon bearing timber for the great luthiers of the ancient world; then more power to you. Chase that dream. Just don’t pretend that anyone but a very select few, highly trained people will really notice the difference between that and a well made professional modern instrument; assuming both are played by a competent musician. No amount of gear will make you a virtuoso, and while a great instrument will certainly improve the sound of a mediocre one, a good one can make a crappy instrument sing like a lark. It is about having that ear and knowing how to maximize the potential of each individual instrument.