What is the highest quality guitar brand?

SillySarahSee: What is the highest quality guitar brand?
What is the highest quality guitar brand? I am not talking about the most popular or the best cheap guitars. I want to know which brand of guitar uses the best materials available and makes very high quality products consistently. I don’t care about the price, but what brand produces the highest quality guitars?

Answers and Views:

Answer by Giny
Fender.

Answer by watermoccasin
That really depends on what kind of music you play. Do you play classical guitar, flamenco, country, rock? Do you play acoustic or electric, lead, bass, rhythm? Do you specialize in early music?

Answer by 212P
It’s a matter of opinion, and style. Some of the great brands are: Fender, Gibson, Shecter.

If I could have any guitar I wanted, it’d probably be a Gibson Les Paul =)

Answer by Markk M
Gibson’s have high quality guitars prs and erinieball music man ibanez are amazing fenders i mean some of the best guitarists in the world use these guitars

here is a list of some of the best guitarists and the brand they use or used

Slash Gibson
Zakk Wylde Gibson
Jimmy Page Gibson
Joh Petrucci Music Man
Steve Vai Ibanez
Joe Satrianni Ibanez
Carlos Santana PRS
Jimi Hendrix Fender
Eric Clapton Fender
Eric Johnson Fender
Buddy Guy Gibson
Stevie Ray Vaughn Fender
Angus Young Gibson
Paul Gilbert Ibanez
Steve Lukather Music Man

Answer by Norm Jones
Hello there,

While you may think that is a simple question, it is not simple to answer. The type of guitar makes a difference. Some companies make great acoustic guitars, but do not make electric guitars (or make rather common ones). Some companies specialize in high quality custom built classic or flamengo guitars but do not make any regular acoustic or electric guitars. Also are you talking about general production guitars or custom built guitars. Custom builts are going to be higher quality materials and hand crafted. General production guitars are mass produced so they cannot have comparable hand crafting.

All major brands have a custom shop which produce guitars similar to their standard production models but with the highest quality wood and parts and are hand crafted. Gibson, Fender, and Ibanez all have custom shops that make guitars far superior to their standard production models. Frankly there will be little if any difference in quality between major brands custom shop built guitars. All are the highest quality. Now there are small-ish custom builders who may make higher quality guiitars. But they may only build a handful in a year. So it is hard to compare them to the major brands custom shops.

When it comes to standard production guitars, Fender American, Gibson and high end Ibanez are as good as any.

One additional problem in making broad comparisions is that each company makes its own line of guitars. So the materials used are not exactly the same. That makes a comparision of the quality of the wood impossible. Gibson uses mahogany for bodies and necks. Fender uses alder or swamp ash for bodies and maple for necks. Ibanez uses basswood for bodies and maple for necks. So you cannot say Gibson’s mahogany is higher quality than Fender’s, because Fender does not use mahogany. You cannot say Fender uses higher quality swamp ash than Gibson because Gibson does not use swamp ash. Same with hardware. Both Gibson and Fender use CTS pots.

So unless you have a specific type of guitar you want compared across the brands, you cannot really compare the brands.

Later,

Answer by Mikey, just Mikey
Electric or acoustic? Either way, the best “brand” is a guitar from a custom luthier, like Tom Anderson (electric), Jeff Traugott (acoustic flattop), Bob Benedetto (archtop), or Jim Redgate (classical). I’m not sure whether these qualify as “brands,” however.

At this level of building, there really is no best since it becomes entirely a matter of personal taste. For all of the luthiers I named there are dozens of others at the same level who you may very well prefer over these.

Answer by OU812
I have to agree with Mikey. The best guitars will come from a custom luthier. I own Gibson and Fender Custom shop models as well as other top end guitars but my Widman’s, which are built by hand by one man start to finish, are superior to all of my others. There are many great builders out there. There are even some builders that only use wood that is over 100 years old, not gonna get that from a big name manufacturer. Just do some searches on “Custom Guitar Builders” and you’ll see what I mean. Below is John Widman’s site just to get you started. Just an FYI, the Sunburst Deluxe Gigmaster and the Surf Green T-Master are the two guitars I purchased. The ones on this page are the actual guitars I own. No two of his guitars are the same so you really own a one of a kind guitar, pretty cool.

Answer by John Leyo 1
There are many high quality brands: Gibson, Fender, Jackson, Ibanez, ESP etc.

Answer by Michael
Taylor and Martin make the best acoustic guitars

Answer by Adam D
There are a few different brands that you can go with that make high quality instruments. Most of them are going to be guitar manufacturers, who mass produce guitars. Some of them will produce a good guitar. American made Fender, Gibson, yeah, these are decent guitars, high end Ibanez guitars, sure.

But these are all made for the masses. Quality control from guitar to guitar needs to remain consistent, thus, the parts used in these guitars need to be readily available, which means that the company might choose to use a part that isn’t the “best” part, rather than choosing one that is going to be available.

This happens a lot with amps a lot. I see guys who say, get a Marshall JCM800… it’s a great amp… and true, they’re great amps, but there are some better than others, such as the 1983 JCM800. They used different caps that were available, and the later models, although carry the JCM800 name, they were slightly inferior due to a different cap…. a small part, that played a very small role in slightly changing the tone of a guitar amp.

A Custom shop guitar will be better. ESP makes custom guitars. I’ve never played one, but I think they cost over $ 5000. You can be sure that they will put the best parts available on these guitars.

PRS is another company that to me, makes the highest quality guitars…. and this is NOT the PRS SE brand, which is made in Korea, and are utter crap compared to the real deal PRS. There are some PRS guitars that are special, one of a kind. THESE are going to be the top of the line, from this company. On average though, they will have the highest quality from any brand of guitar that I have played.