noob question

[blackmajik2021]

hey guys, I know a decent amount about recording but ive never really played an electric guitar untill now. I got one for free (was never used), but everything seems to sound like crap. Is it just a terrible guitar? is there any chance i can get even a decent tone out of it? seriously, i cant even get a nice clean sound out of it without it sounding cheap. I have logic 8 and guitar rig 3, ive tried almost all/maybe all of the presets. the guitar is a squire strat.

thanks for the tips

[chrisofoz]

Hi BlackMagic,

First thing, has it been professionally set up?

Id go to your local guitar repair shop and ask them to do a full set up. This may help. They will set the string height, pickup height, intonation etc. as well as put on a new set of strings.

However as the saying goes "you cant polish a turd". Squiers are a low end guitar that generally have cheap components.
The best thing you can do, is replace the pickups. This will make the entire thing a different guitar.

I met a guy at a gig a few weeks back, and he was playing a Squier tele, which i could have sworn was a vintage Tele, when I hit him up for what he did to it, all he had done was change the pickups, and it brought this guitar up to above average. So there are my solutions, give me a yell if you need to know more.

Cheers,

Chris

[blackmajik2021]

thanks, it definitely doesn't need to be tuned up, no one ever played it, its brand new, even the strings have no grunge on em'. I don't have the cash for new pickups as i just bought a new interface (profire610) and a 57 and an extra boom. how tough is it to install new pickups? im a pretty DIY guy so im sure it wouldn't be too tough for me im just curious....also curious if its even worth it or if i should just get a new guitar. Im not so sure i want to play electric guitar in my songs, i was thinking of experimenting with this here one but not being able to get a good tone makes me not really wanna play it ya know?

anyway thanks for the help.

[chrisofoz]

Its a fairly easy job as long as your fairly handy with a soldering iron. Literally just a swap out, and just solder the old wires where they come from.

As for value for money, Id try and get some pickups someone is discarding, ie. replaced Fender Pickups etc. That way your not gonna blow your budget
way out with top of the line pickups.

As for value for money you'd get a decent 2nd hand guitar for the same cost as 3 brand new Seymour Duncan pickups.

You could still put one in though. Cost you about 130 dollars. It will make a big difference.

[Big Tim]

thanks, it definitely doesn't need to be tuned up, no one ever played it, its brand new, even the strings have no grunge on em'.

Don't think for a second that just because it's "like new" that it's correctly set up and playing how it should do. Newness of a guitar bears no relation to how well set up it is, many guitars come out of the factory with terrible setups (especially budget guitars) and stock strings are generally awful as well.

You say you're handy with the DIY, well, it's not hard to set up a guitar but it does need a little care. Plenty of places on the web will guide you how to do it, so spend a few days reading and then give it a shot. As long as you don't go for the truss rod or over-tighten things you can't really do much damage, although it may take a little while to get things right. Make sure you've got a tuner to hand! And swap out those strings too.