I bought the CHEAPEST GUITAR on AMAZON - A bargain or...

[Music] i just feel the kick of the body it doesn't do anything what is that so i just got this guitar 50 bucks 3.7 rating out of 5. i mean best bang for buck ride the reviews are mixed and to be honest i'm not so sure [Music] but i wonder how this compares to this [Music] this 50 000 guitar unbelievable and can i with just some basic tools make this 50 guitar play and sound a little bit like this 50 000 guitar let's go so today i thought it'd be fun to look at the extremes like what does money get you when you go all in and what do you get when you get the cheapest [Music] possible [Music] [Music] so this is the cheapest guitar i could find the philosophy must have been how can we make guitar as fast and cheap as possible so we can all benefit from the low price but what can we expect from such a guitar is it even playable how does it sound is it a good guitar to start out with or is it the worst gift for a beginner guitarist you can possibly buy and i'm comparing that to the holy grail for vintage acoustics and maybe even the most copied guitar of all time the martin dreadnought and to be more precise d28 from the year 1943 and thank you so much for letting me use this guitar for this video so this is a guitar from the so-called golden era of martian guitars and it is extremely rare hence the price of 50 000 so this this guitar is roughly a thousand times more expensive than this one but does it sound a thousand times better [Music] so first we're going to talk about the obvious right this d28 does not sound like a 50 000 guitar right nothing does nothing ever will sound like a 50 000 thing the value is not only the sound but also the fact that this guitar is highly collectible so there is only a few left let alone in this remarkable condition so that drives up the price just like a painting it features the extraordinary and rare brazilian rosewood back inside just look at how lovely it looks super straight grained and a beautiful adirondack spruce top scalloped x-bracing diamond inlays the herringbone trim around the side just all the good stuff but not only that the guitar also sounds like no other guitar i've ever played and i hope you can hear it in this demo i mean i'm sure you can it's just the sound and it's it's a sound you can only get out of a vintage guitar these high quality guitars they do get better year after year and it's not something you can just fake and i think if you're into that vintage guitar sound this is probably the best you can get or real close anyway [Music] [Applause] [Music] so playing these guitars you can get around the fact that the cheap guitar is just it's so much work to play this thing i would probably give up after a week the action is just ridiculously high the neck feels like horrible i just don't know what it is but i've never felt this shape before on a guitar and that's probably for a reason because it just doesn't feel very comfortable the threads are sticking out at the top of the bottom they're totally smudged and covered in paint it's this has got to be the most horrible paint job i've ever seen on a guitar the rosette is just a sticker that's been smacked on poorly there's glue literally everywhere like the insides the outsides and it smells what is that there's a lot of brown what happened putting this guitar together there's like brown stuff on the inside that is gross we gotta talk about the tunis as well like when i turn these it's like nails on a charcoal it feels ugh scary to turn them even the intonation is way off when playing a chord down low it's in tune when i go higher it's out of tune so just before recording this video i i think i found out why because you won't believe this the bridge at the back is actually coming off there's no contact and whenever i pull the strings or push the bridge i see it wiggling and i'm really afraid it can come off when i tune the strings it's honestly pretty dangerous i guess and the saddle is just completely hanging forward i mean honestly this guitar is just a piece of junk but before you think you have to spend massive amounts of money on the guitar which you don't let me be clear about that let's do another demo and then let's have a closer look at the 50 000 guitar [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so sure this guitar is almost 80 years old and when you look at it there's a lovely patina on the on the top and on the back everywhere to be honest it just tells a story every scratch everything but it still feels so sturdy and beautifully built and if you've got some experience playing and holding fancy guitars you just know you can't fake it so first of all the thing that stands out most is the neck of the guitar it's super comfortable it it actually feels thinner than my d42 which surprises me also the guitar is so much lighter than my d42 and even the insides look beautiful and that's always a tell of a great guitar so now it's time to discuss the sound and with all the comparisons you've heard so far i'm sure you've got some thoughts about that too so feel free to let me know in the comments what you think we all know that resonance is a big part of the sound quality since sound is just resonating air so it has to start somewhere [Music] this is just so when playing target vintage right not martin you just can't believe your ears as you strum the guitar the power the volume the energy that comes out of it is just unheard of and you start to wonder if there's like an acoustic amp turned on somewhere you haven't seen it the sound just blows up in such a gorgeous way with wonderful overtones [Music] creating more than you thought was [Music] possible [Music] sound is also extremely balanced from thick lows to a lively mid range and a crisp top end and it's unexpectedly light weight and that's why it's so resonant the age of the wood made it dry super stiff and super resonant so somehow i always like lightweight guitars and i think this is no exception it honestly feels like it's punching you in the valley when you strum the chord you just feel the kick of the body you feel it pumping it's just insane so when you do the same with the cheaper guitar [Music] it it doesn't do anything when i play the chord i just don't feel the body or the guitar resonating at all the sound just pops off of the strings into the void the guitar doesn't enhance the sound it doesn't do anything i i guess if you just have a piece of wood with strings attached it would probably sound the same so and that is because all the little elements combined is the laminated wood it's cheaper it's not always bad honestly but in this case it is there's also massive amounts of glue as i told you and that just sucks the life out of the tone entirely of course also the construction of the bracing the neck where the neck meets the body it's everything combined and that's why it sounds sounds bad so actually when playing a guitar playability is more important to me than anything it doesn't matter how good a guitar is or how good it sounds if it plays badly i just don't want it it has to feel like an extension of me super easy to play so everything i can think of comes out and this martin it plays like a dream i just can't believe it it plays better than most of my own acoustics which is annoying on a cheaper guitar though it's not that easy like the action as i told you is extremely high and i wondered if i with some basic tools everyone got lying around can fix that let's find out the first suspect was the neck but the relief was within spec so i wanted to take some height off of the saddle turned out there wasn't a whole lot of room to lower it but i did my best so there was a piece of thing stuck under the bridge a piece of wood this didn't do too much for the guitar actually so i figured the nut slots needed some attention this is already beyond what you can expect from a beginner but let's just give it a try let's make playing down at the lower frets a little easier but honestly okay so that didn't work i can't get the action lower than this and it's still way way way way too high so that means the whole construction is just bad you can't have this guitar and let it play nicely you should not buy this guitar but there is also some good news because i also bought a few guitars that are a little more expensive but still pretty cheap and affordable and these well these aren't that bad to be honest this one for example and this one [Music] they both play fine i mean they don't sound all that great but not bad value for the money so if there's a takeaway here don't buy the cheapest guitar on amazon maybe check out some guitars around the 800 bucks mark but maybe a better idea check out second-hand guitars so now about that martin you hear people say all the time that guitar above 2k or maybe 1500 even makes no sense it doesn't get better above that but i don't agree with that actually so let's say 1500 2000 brings you to 90 and they can be awesome guitars like the best guitars you will ever need after that the smaller increases just are going to cost you thousands and thousands and for some that is worth it and for other it's just a dream which is great as well dreaming is fun it's it's the best part about life but this made me wonder at what kind of value do we find best bang for bug i would love to hear what you think about that where does the money we invest still yield in a result that justifies the the amount of money that you spend on it an interesting discussion as well maybe something for another video anyway if you're just as much into acoustics as i am i would love for you to check out my brand new acoustic guitar course acoustic adventure where we're learning so many great styles and genres from finger picking the blues to strumming to flat picking all the good stuff it's a true celebration of the acoustic guitar more info on that can be found at acousticadventure.com and for now i just want to thank you for watching and letting me have a great time with this guitar anyway cheers guys

Channel: Paul Davids

Views: 351,081

Rating: 4.9355969 out of 5

Keywords: paul davids, guitar, 50000, 50, dollar, expensive, cheap, martin dreadnought, golden era, Martin d-28, vintage, cheap vs expensive, amazon, cheapest guitar on amazon, martin D28 herringbone, davids, paul

Id: PcuPkqPhxn4

Length: 14min 16sec (856 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 27 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/codymiller_cartoon]

i hate the stupid faces youtubers make on their videos

[u/Kryptosis]

Great video, does a good job explaining that "nothing will ever sound like a $50,000 anything" while also explaining why the more expensive guitar blows the cheap crap out of the water.