Routing Rant!

Why have cheaper eastern import copy guitars have smaller internal routing than the American originals? Surely the body sizes are the same (?). First became aware of it when trying to fit a US fender pickup switch to my Squire Tele. Didn,t fit
More recently having started modding an Ibanez and am being forced to buy lower quality switches pots etc, cos the better quality stuff doesn't fit (rear loaded controls so cant rout)/
A lot of cheaper guitars are quite good quality apart from pots, switches etc, so I would have thought that it makes sense to be able to accommodate fitting them?

Metric vs Imperial ....... with everywhere that isn't America using metric sizes.

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Originally Posted by Ouija

Metric vs Imperial ....... with everywhere that isn't America using metric sizes.

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True, plus everything in America seems to be bigger ...Could makers just make their routing larger to accommodate them ? Maybe theres a market for high quality metric parts or do they exist already ?

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Originally Posted by danomess

More recently having started modding an Ibanez and am being forced to buy lower quality switches pots etc, cos the better quality stuff doesn't fit (rear loaded controls so cant rout)

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You can, you just need more complicated jigs and/or supports to do it.

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A lot of cheaper guitars are quite good quality apart from pots, switches etc, so I would have thought that it makes sense to be able to accommodate fitting them?

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Because they only care about the production cost, not people who want to upgrade. If they didn't care about the production cost they'd use the proper parts in the first place, since they're actually only minimally more expensive.

The only time it's really difficult to modify the guitar to fit the better parts are things like some of the Matsumoku guitars from the 80s that use a 'short frame' 3-way or 5-way switch that won't take a proper-size replacement without an unsightly mod to the pickguard.

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Originally Posted by ICBM

, since they're actually only minimally more expensive.

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on single untis/ low volume, multiply that by three or for titems on 100s of 1,000s of guitars and thats quite significant on profit margins.....

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Originally Posted by bertie

on single untis/ low volume, multiply that by three or for titems on 100s of 1,000s of guitars and thats quite significant on profit margins.....

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Yes, but then buried in the larger costs of thousands of guitars, so it's still the same proportion.

Don't get me wrong, I understand why corporate accountants do this sort of thing - but it doesn't make it any more justifiable.

When Fender and Gibson made 'student' guitars in the 1950s and 60s - the Juniors, Mustangs and other cheaper models - they used exactly the same parts as on the top-end professional models, and still sold them for what was (in those days) very low prices.

The same used to be true of amps - a Fender Silverface Champ is built using the same parts quality as a Twin, and even a 1980s Marshall solid-state amp like my Reverb 12 is exactly the same constructionally (apart from not having valves in) as a JCM800 valve amp, some of the best ever made.

This "cheap" gear sounds good and is reliable for a reason. Crap parts are a false economy.