Pawn Shop Stang worth getting?

[Cymbaline]

Re: PS Mustang 2.0
Now that these have been out for awhile:
I am interested in knowing if the Mexican ones are as good as the Japanese ones.
The headstocks look paler on the mexican one? The colors look shittier on the mexican ones?

Is this a case of bad stock photography or do the MIMs really look crappier than the MIJs?

[Fine Swine]

I still want to know what idiot at Fender thought they could move production to Mexico, and charge as much or more, and not impact sales. No way I'd buy a new one now...

[FreeBird]

I still want to know what idiot at Fender thought they could move production to Mexico, and charge as much or more, and not impact sales. No way I'd buy a new one now...

Hi.
I must say I partly agree with you.
I've got a MIJ one and I love it, finish is great, sound is great (except pickup switch that can largely be improved).
They should have dropped the price of Mexican ones... if quality has dropped.
^v^ FreeBird ^v^

[MMPicker]

?? I understand MIM guitars are supposed to be cheaper than MIA guitars, but is there some law that they have to be cheaper than MIJ too? Maybe there is, I didn't know that though.

Besides, now that they aren't made MIJ, if you want one, you play it and it seems great to you, why would you not buy it simply because the prior version of it, that they used to, but no longer, make, came from someplace else?

I don't get why they are "idiots" for this. The guitars seem competitively priced, compared to say Classic Players.
If some other guitar that is no longer available would have, hypothetically, been a better deal, for some abstract, theoretical reason that may or may not have any basis in reality, that's pretty much an academic point, because that prior guitar isn't being made any more. If you can find one used, great, but used supply usually is not infinite. It's relative worth is best compared to alternative new guitars that one might equally go into a store and play before buying instead of this one, seems to me. And, in that context, it doesn't seem outrageously priced to me, if that's the guitar you want.

I haven't really seen one around here, but it is a model that does interest me. I'd like to check one out sometime. The Jaguarillo too.

If I was buying, and I checked one out and I really liked it, I would buy it. Despite the fact that the prior version, that they don't make now and I can't readily find and play before buying anymore, came from someplace else. So I guess that's where we differ.

[Leather Jacket]

The 3 way toggle in mine never worked correctly, it maintained contact with both sides no matter where it was set. Replaced it with a Gibson brand switch within a few days of buying the guitar and am now very happy.

[Ankhanu]

?? I understand MIM guitars are supposed to be cheaper than MIA guitars, but is there some law that they have to be cheaper than MIJ too? Maybe there is, I didn't know that though.

Besides, now that they aren't made MIJ, if you want one, you play it and it seems great to you, why would you not buy it simply because the prior version of it, that they used to, but no longer, make, came from someplace else?
...
If I was buying, and I checked one out and I really liked it, I would buy it. Despite the fact that the prior version, that they don't make now and I can't readily find and play before buying anymore, came from someplace else. So I guess that's where we differ.

Part of my beef with going MiM over C/MiJ is Mexican quality control is well below that of the Japanese factories. Japanese quality is pretty similar instrument to instrument in the same model, Mexican and American made are less so. IF you can try before you buy a specific guitar, that's fine, but if you got to test one and end up having to buy another sight unseen, you may not get what you expect with a Mexican instrument.

Outside of that, from what I understand the Mexican models are pretty similar in sound to the Japanese, even if there are some differences in the neck (in particular).

[MMPicker]

Part of my beef with going MiM over C/MiJ is Mexican quality control is well below that of the Japanese factories. Japanese quality is pretty similar instrument to instrument in the same model, Mexican and American made are less so. IF you can try before you buy a specific guitar, that's fine, but if you got to test one and end up having to buy another sight unseen, you may not get what you expect with a Mexican instrument.

But in this case you are not "going MIM over C/MiJ". There is no C/MiJ version of this model to take over the MIM version. There used to be an MiJ product , but they stopped making it. There is no choice between the two. You are either buying the MIM, or getting some totally different model with different features.

As for the quality control assertions, this may be correct in the current era, with respect to this particular line of products, or it may not be. I've no idea. I am not a quality control accountant, auditing their respective production lines. Though I do read plenty of people on these boards complaining about the quality of the electronics of the Japanese guitars, in general . I play my instruments before I buy them, but if I were ordering by mail I would never do so without a return period. Whether they were from Mexico, US or Japan. I have one MIM guitar now, it had a couple things to iron out upon initial setup but nothing that wasn't fixable, certainly nothing that would justify not buying the guitar despite the fact that I preferred its features to various MIJ or MIA guitars that I also played. So to me, some theoretical concern along these lines holds little water. If you like the feature set of this model, you play one, see if passes muster, and either buy it or don't. If you don't though, you don't get an MiJ version of the same product in the alternative, because there isn't any. They used to make one, but now they don't. One can look used, but availability is typically relatively limited, with fewer opportunities to try first or return.

[Ankhanu]

The fact that the Japanese version is no longer made is no reason to lament the fact that it is no longer made