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Those of you who like a bargain will love the SX range of guitars. I bought a translucent blue Swamp Ash series with a bound maple neck and it is beautiful at the princely sum of £217. The normal one in alder is £150.
I will be gigging it, but so far doing a bit of Shads stuff in the house with BTs using my Hall & Collins through a 40 watt Fender Rumble, it sounds spot on, plays great out of the box and looks stunning.
I rate them at least as good as the Squier Classic Vibe, may be better. Check them out.

Agreed on SX. I have a 5-string SX bass that does all that a 5-string bass (low B) should do and cost less than £200 by quite a few notes. Fret dressing (where a lot of cheap guitars and basses fall down) is good. I changed the strings to my preferred Rotosound Trubass (65 - 135), which are black nylon coated and give an excellent sound with my Eden World Tour pedal.

dave robinson wrote:Those of you who like a bargain will love the SX range of guitars. I bought a translucent blue Swamp Ash series with a bound maple neck and it is beautiful at the princely sum of £217. The normal one in alder is £150.
I will be gigging it, but so far doing a bit of Shads stuff in the house with BTs using my Hall & Collins through a 40 watt Fender Rumble, it sounds spot on, plays great out of the box and looks stunning.
I rate them at least as good as the Squier Classic Vibe, may be better. Check them out.

Dave, what is the comparison with a similar priced tanglewood nevada fst 32k, or is there no comparison?

I can’t tell you Norman as I haven’t tried the Tanglewood.
What I do know is that after being pointed in the direction on the SX guitars by a music shop owner last week, I tried several in his shop that were fantastic to play before ordering my Swamp Ash Sx VTG Series in translucent blue with a bound maple neck (he didn’t have that one in stock) and then I found a rosewood fingerboard one on eBay for £90 and bought that.
We had a long discussion about guitars and talked about the Fender Masterbuilt, Custom Shop etc and the cost of them, as I own and have owned a few of those. As good as they are, I don’t think they are worth anywhere near what they cost when compared with some of the Squiers, SX, Vintage and quite a few other brands.
In truth, if these budget guitars had the more expensive hardware, there wouldn’t be too much difference between this Swamp Ash SX that I bought and my £5000 Fender Masterbuilt - certainly not £4800 difference.
The £90 one I bought on eBay is a standard SX VTG Series that is about £130 new and it is just as good to play and hear as the Swamp Ash model at £218.
I also rate Vintage guitars too, but I only have their Gibson copies, the 335 & SG, having sold my real Gibsons of the same models.
You have to get out there and try them.

Same here Dave,

Sometimes I wish we could have started with this quality low budget guitars, instead of the bow and arrow ones we had way back when....
For the last few years I pickup several "low budget guitars" surprisingly good wood, building quality, playability, sound.
Sometimes a small customizing with a Wilkinson bridge or so is a pre....and then the guitar is capable to go head to head with big name samples.
So far I bought some Harley Benton, Jack&Danny,SX,Quincy,Chevalier,partcasters of parts of Ali and eBay etc....
With wonderful results!!
Dave, you know what I have in my collection more or less and I'm with you...those expressive CS Fenders or even Pre CBS are on there own merit great instruments, but not worth the value they present in compare with the cheap-po cricket-bat department as we called them 20 years ago
Let's face it, it's more relaxing to do a pub gig with a 200 GBP then any gig with a 2000GBP let alone a 50K or more guitar....

Cheers Rob

I’m just off to my gig this afternoon up at The Dusty Miller and I’m taking the SX SwamP Ash to play.
I have a couple of great Harley Benton guitars too, well a G banjo and a little parlour guitar and they are excellent, amazing value.

Thanks anyway Dave. The reason I asked about the Tanglewood is because
I picked one up in cash transformers for the princely sum of £34.99. It looked like new,
lovely purplish colour and sounds pretty good to me through my little home setup
(Roland Cube). I just wondered if anyone else had any experience of one. Thanks for the
heads up on the SX.

Norman

The main thing is Norman is if it plays well, sounds well and stays in tune, it’s what it is, a good guitar - Irrespective of who the manufacturer is.

Ta Dave, common sense words, from one who really knows.
Norman

hi
where can you buy sx guitars there dosent seem to be many suppliers around the trans blue looks very cool
regards charlie