I Bought This Guitar For $70 and It's Awesome! Monoprice California Classic
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.พ. 2025
- This is no joke! I paid just over $70 for this new guitar and it's been awesome. If you were lucky enough to stumble upon this super low budget guitar from Monoprice, called the California Classic, then you probably know what I'm talking about. In this video we'll check out all the features and then compare it to an identical model that has heavily modded.
Clean Tone Samples: 7:43
Dirt Tone Samples: 8:29
You can get the Lace Sensor Pickups on Amazon: amzn.to/2E3Q0kz
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Check out how they sound here:
Clean Tone Samples: 7:43
Dirt Tone Samples: 8:29
Actually these got down to $59 U.S. around late 2017 before the "indeio" line was introduced
Wow! what a crazy bargain!! 😃👍🎸
@@landonbailey + yeah man no b.s. they blew them out I assume so overlaping the old over the new Indieo line came out.
6:44 And what's that red cable? I think you forgot about it.
Since they do not have these in stock anymore, what other inexpensive beginner's electric guitar would you recommend?
This is almost identical to the Indio Cali Classic now sold by Monoprice, currently less that $100. I'm test driving one and I don't have many complaints: Action at nut and bridge came set high, and it only takes the slightest touch to accidently change the volume. Haven't tried the trem but I don't expect much in terms of tuning stability. Maybe it'll surprise me.
Nothing about the guitar is really high quality but nothing sucks and it was playable out of the box after tuning up. The G string broke within four days of playing it about 3 hours a day, which says something about the strings. Hope the other materials hold up better.
The gig bag is padded and definitely nice to have and you also get a cheap cable. Pickups sound about the same as your stock guitar. Fretwork is good, some sharp edges but it's not a problem, no fret sprout that I could detect. Fretboard edges are rounded. It's actually quite well crafted especially for the price.
I didn't get a setup certificate so I guess mine was setup at the factory in Asia.
Sure, if you're willing to spend more, you can do better in the $200+ range.
(11/27/2022)
are the Indio guitars full size/thickness?
@@landonbailey I measured the body thickness at 1.5", so it's not full thickness. It's described on the Monoprice website as: "Standard, full‑size solid body electric guitar". Don't have a Fender Strat to compare it with. It's lightweight, weighs about six pounds. Monoprice Product # 610164.
BTW, the pickguard on my sunburst is layered black white black. I notice yours are white.
A bonus over Squier is the extra fret. Squier typically has 21; Cali Classic 22. Most people don't seem to care but I find that it's an annoying feature of Fender marketing strategy. How much more should you have to pay to get that extra fret? Hundreds of dollars? I don't think so.
A friend of mine just gave me his California Classic and one of his Arrowhead Vee's lastnight, along with a small amp. Being new to the world of guitar playing, I'm stoked about these scores. I'm 46 years old and I think you're never too old to learn something new.
I have that exact guitar from Monoprice. $75 in the US. Awesome deal and plays and sounds great
Nice! I knew someone would back me up :)
For $70 bucks, that's a pretty nice guitar. Definitely a nice base for some upgrades. I actually like the brighter stock pickups, but that's personal preference. I might have only replaced the tuners, trem block and pots/switch. MAYBE the bridge. Darrell Braun actually modded the same brand recently. He was equally happy.
Ya his video was cool! It reminded me that I had this guitar
I know this video is older, but gotta relate my experience. I wanted a cheap guitar I could work on and not mess with my good ones, so I ordered the Indio Telecaster from Monoprice last Monday for 87.99 on sale(reg 109) plus tax with free shipping. I received it Saturday night at 7 pm and opened it to see what I got. It was in super good shape with no blemishes, the really nice satin neck, sunburst finish and setup as nice as I've ever seen. Once I tuned it, the action was super low, but not buzzy and all I had to do was adjust the intonation just a little. The fact that this week's sales are even better is just crazy. This one is still on sale for 93.99 now, but 3 of the other colors are less than 80 along with a stratocaster at less than 80. I'm just very impressed with Monoprice.
Loved the video! Haha, I just bought a cheap Strat too.
It was 67 bucks shipped to my door.
Cheap guitars are awesome!
thanks! fun mod projects for me. what did you get?
@@landonbailey
Its actually a lot like yours as far as tone goes. OK, but kinda thin. The brand is Glarrys... I know. Right? ; ) What the hell is a Glarry?
(Im thinking maybe "Guitar Larry")
The oddest part is that is has this baseball bat neck...and I'm surprised that I don't hate it.
I'm gonna mod the crap out of it like you did and your right... modding cheap guitars is a lot of fun because you end up with something pretty good that's also fairly unique.
ya exactly! cool
Good Strat. The rosewood makes it for me. I’ll bet it plays nicely and sounds great in the room. Yeah... I almost always replace pickups and electronics, too.
The original cheapo pickups sound really good! Not quite as refined as the more expensive ones but certainly brighter.
Monoprice still sells this guitar, but only as a kit. I actually found (in black) on Craigslist and bought it today for $50. A lady bought it for her 11 year old granddaughter, but it was too heavy. Never played, gig bag and trem bar lost, but fitty bucks? ...and I love it!
A good budget guitar. Also good for modding for a newbie as you pointed out. Thanks for the video.
modders dream guitar. grear body and neck
The stock doesn't sound terrible, but the modded sounds great!
They still sell these guitars, they just rebranded them as "Indio". I recently bought the Telecaster version for $99 and it was also outstanding overall for the price.
I don't think they are exactly the same build
@@landonbailey Ah, maybe not. Probably just as good though? My "Tele" was.
Great vid Landon, I especially liked the a/b of the pickups. The swapping back and forth whilst playing chords (hurrah) really showed the differences even on my iPad. 🤘🏻🎸👍🤘🏻🎸👍🤘🏻🎸👍🎸
hey thanks Simon!
Very Interesting. I much prefer your upgraded version Landon. But the stock pups are quite useable. You both have really looked after them really well. 👏👏
hey good comparison!
This is the era of good budget guitars. I bought a budget Strat for $110. The pickups were the worst I've ever encountered. I only upgraded the pickups for $160 and it's an amazing guitar now. This is the era of decent budget guitars, they are great modding platforms. Just bought another Strat from the same company for $80 and the pickups are too good to change. I liked the sound of the stock pickups of the monoprice strat you demoed👍
the stock was really good! I agree
The pickup pull alone merited a thumbs up.
Bet you’ve never seen that trick before! Lol
I bought a Squier Bullet Mustang about a month ago. Found it on sale for $129.99. Great little guitar
good find!
Thank you for posting this helpful video
I'm getting into buying "junk" guitars and doing mods. Doesn't always turn out in the first try, but my soldering is improving!
Exactly! That's the whole reason I bought the guitar. Soldering gets better with practice
Right. You got a better deal than Darrell Braun. I wonder how long it will be before someone makes a video entitled "I was paid $50 to take this guitar and it's awesome." ;)
The next video will be “I got this guitar so cheap it was like stealing it” and it will show a video of someone putting a guitar down their pants.
great guitar. good deal. upgrades make it sound fantastic!
Great Video Landon. About a little over two years ago, I got (videos are on my channel) a Les Paul clone from Mono Price. It was like $100. I had all the electronics switched out and Semour Duncan Jb/Jazz pickups installed. It sounds good. The guitar could use better tuning keys and a good fret job to mostly to smooth them out. Other then that, it's a great guitar now. Darrell Braun just got one of those Indio guitars from Mono price and he modded his and looks awesome.
ah ya I remember the les paul copies!
Mitch Haman - I have one of those original Les Paul clones with the original (pre-indio) lawsuit headstock. I got mine from a music store locally where the owner has been a gear snob for the decades I've known him. So, he just wanted it out of his store and sold it to me for $100. He didn't notice that someone had swapped the pickups out for Gibson PAFs from who knows when. The thing weighs a LOT! Very solid!
@@Axess-sv8nq Mine is pretty heavy too. I think my was called a "Route 66".
I have 3 Indio/monoprice guitars- AWESOME guitars period. I have the OS20, OS30 offsets, and a 79 dollar Indio Strat. All great.
Very cool!
I think the stock pickups sound good and chimey but the stock bridge was kinda ice picky but nice still. The Lace Sensors were great all around!
I really love the Red Lace turned up with dirt
'5 years ago, 71 dollars didn't exist' - landomusic 2k19
I scored a Squier (probably a bullet) for $AU20 on eBay a few years back. The price was 'buy it now' because 'it doesn't work'. When I went to pick it up, from a very seedy part of Sydney, the guy looked like he was on something... and his girlfriend in the unit behind him was scratching her arm a lot.
I ended up giving it the guitarnuts shielding treatment, and rewired it with the same pickups and new pots/switch/output, and changed out the bridge. It's still a great player.
great deal! scary story
Great video, as always. I love a good cheap guitar. How often do you play it? If you have a good neck on a Strat or Tele type guitar, then it just takes reliable tuners and decent electronics to make somethng usable and enjoyable. The only other thing it could get is an upgraded bridge, but that's not essential.
Hey thanks! I don’t play it a ton, but I really like it for getting a Pink Floyd/Gilmour tone.
@@landonbailey Yep, Dave was using the Lace Sensors in the 90s. That Strat will be in his guitar auction. Do ya reckon you could score that one for 70 bucks?
my offer might come up about $71000+ short
From Leo: I used to buy guitars like that and use it for a cheap replacement neck or maybe use the body rather than strip and repaint and existing guitar. Then they started getting better, and are actually playable, especially after a setup. With modern effects, you can get pretty good tones out of them. It is almost a shame to scrap them out.
I still play a 6 year old SX telecaster guitar that I bought because they had a really chunky neck. I never scrapped it for parts. I had to touch up one high spot on exactly one fret. It was $130. I did change the tuners and refile the nut.
nice! I wonder how many of these Chinese clones are from the same factory
@@landonbailey I guess they need something to fall back on if Fender contracts the next batch of Squiers out to another factory.
The collected works of Shakespeare are awesome. A blue whale giving birth in crystal clear water is awesome. Mount vesuvious erupting - awesome. Open heart surgery - awesome. The pantheon - awesome. The milky way on a desert night - awesome. Holding your breath for 20 minutes straight - awesome. A good vintage strat into a 60's super reverb - pretty fucking awesome. This guitar with new pups in it ... maybe not so much ...
Douche bag
I have never bought a new guitar for less than $100. The closest I came to that was $99 for a First Act VW Garagemaster. Wasn't new from a store but if you bought a VW in 2006, they gave you a free guitar w/nice gig bag, strap, picks, etc. Mine was as-new--someone bought a car and never played the guitar. People dis First Act for making lousy box store guitars--which is true--but they have also made more refined instruments as well. I love the Garagemaster. It has TV Jones-style pickups and a built-in pre-amp. People are listing them for $250 now on Reverb. I'm keeping mine. p.s. you can find Slash and John Mayer playing the Garagemaster on TH-cam in old VW ads.
The stock pickups have noticeably more of the traditional Strat tone. A little ice picky perhaps, but they are probably mated with 500k pots, switching to good quality 256k’s would most likely do wonders.
We are definitely in the golden age of great, yet cheap guitars now. I’m really glad I got my American Pro Tele before I got my Bullet Tele - because the Bullet is SO good, if I’d have come across it first, I doubt I would have bothered looking at anything else. It really does compare very favorably to the American one.
My wife got me a Harley Benton CST-24 for Christmas with a hard shell case for less that $300. This is my favorite guitar and I own a Gibson Explorer. It is the best value I've ever seen
nice!
I have an original Monoprice Les Paul 'Route 66' that I got used from a local music store. Someone had swapped the pickups out for some Gibson PAF ones. The thing has killer tone and weighs a TON! They had to change their guitars because lawsuits were threatened, I believe.
ah nice! my friend has one of those in goldtop. I'll see if I can borrow it. and yes that makes sense. the headstocks were very lawsuitish! made up that word
Well, whatever works! A gold top, eh? NICE! Yeah, borrow it and do a video. Fair warning, though. If it's the original with the original headstock, then it's gonna be a heavy guitar. They're at LEAST as heavy as a Gibson. I would imagine the weight is around 11-13 lbs (4-5 kilos?).
Here's a recent video I made with mine: th-cam.com/video/r3nvPm7Ab_U/w-d-xo.html - Mind you, I'm a portly old musician who's retired from the music business. ;-) The tone is awesome on the Monoprice Les Paul!
which would you prefer for a beginner?? the monoprice or lyxpro??
Monoprice
@@landonbailey thxxx! :)💯
Perhaps if they let you pick through a barrel of 'em for the best one. I bought one and they had installed the bridge on top of the pick guard and cranked down all of the saddle screws... all of them... to their bottoms.
oh ya! that's a dud
@@landonbailey yeah, it's sitting in the corner. i instead got grandson a mini strat for only 90 bucks. of course then i suped it up with deluxe drive pickups, 250k pots, new nut & string tree all topped off with dunlop 07-32's... slinky baby! he's 5 & playing 12 bar blues already.
Crazy good deal Bud!
I like the modded one best but the stock one sounds pretty good too.
Could you tell me which Trem/Bridge an block would fit as an upgrade. If you happen to know? Any of the parts as in tuners, pots, or whatever info you could give me. Its good for the price, as is but its got that big swimming pool cavity just begging for upgrades.
Thanks in advance !
I cannot
Were the grover tuners drop in replacements or did you have to drill new holes for the screws on the back of the headstock?
I think they were, but I don't recall.
Great video sir although @ 8:15 stock tuners had much more strat quack.
Maybe shows that much of the time, even in cheap guitars, pick-ups don't actually need changed but it's mainly used as a content filler for thousands of guitar videos. Which then becomes the unquestioned and assumed thing to do.
In a blind test, most people wouldn't have a problem with the stock pick-ups.
ya I would be more concerned with the tuners and the condition of the neck work
@@landonbailey Indeed. I was looking last week at buying a Strat 'Player' series guitar. Spent half an hour with it in the music shop - I was unsure because of the neck. I spotted a Classic Vibe squier strat on the wall and asked to try that for comparison and the neck felt immediately comfortable. I bought the CV and saved around £200 ($260) by not buying the 'Player'.
I will hardtail it and buy locking tuners, so it is as you say - neck first, then tuners. Also, life gets easier when you don't care that much what name is on the headstock.
nice! I love the classic vibes
Would you think that this is better than a squier affinity?
in this case yes
Paying $71 for just the body and neck sounds like a good deal for the quality.
The mods are your own custom shop model👍🎸👍🎸👍
Stock pickups are definitely more twangy. If I were to get new ones, I'd go with the Texas Specials. Trying to get an SRV sound out of that. Also bought a Tele clone and will get Tex-Mex pickups for country.
Be it new or used, I will never look down on a cheap guitar...period!
Coulda got the tones from the upgraded one with the eq on an amp probly. Stock tone is very jangly
Stock sounds like more treble, adjusting the amp would probably make them sound closer. I would probably put the money into a better amp and a few pedals, instead of modding the guitar.
Carlisian is back!
Besides. It's the player that makes the difference in 99,9%. Guitar is a second thing.
And a good amp. Speaker on my iPhone is shit.
The stock pickups have a funky sound
funky good? Or funky stank?
@@landonbailey more like funky stank
I like the sound of the stock better.
I had one of those, but the wood is very soft, any bumps to the body and it's bruise the finish, also plastics feel cheap. I sold it.
ya that's one of the faults of Basswood, very soft
Is that where u got that watch from too ?
hey there! no it's a first generation Google watch from 4 years ago
Interesting. Seems like a great foundation for modding.
ya it's been great for that
Oh dang!! I thought you said 'do try this at home!' Ummm!!
I think the stock ones were very close to the modded and in some cases they have more edge than the modded., and I'mpretty particular
I bought a bpi california classic for $115 cad in late 2018 the tuners were not good. It wouldn't stay in tune. I think the neck was a little wobbly.
hey thanks for the story. I recently saw that exact model listed on amazon.ca, bestbuy.ca and couple other places.
The photos did make sense, one showed it with a maple fretboard and the other showed rosewood. and the knobs were black in one pic and white in another. I think I'll stay away from that one
For me, the stock pickups sound far more like a genuine Strat, but pickup sound is a very subjective matter. Either way, a nice guitar at a silly price.
ya exactly, tone is all personal taste :)
I actually liked the replacement pick ups much much more. But that said I listening on very shitty laptop speakers so there's that.
Landon, go look at woodcreations1 store on Ebay. Lots of $75 plus guitars for sale and sometimes very good sales. I bought a couple when they had a sale for $46 a couple years ago and they really surprised me. I just put good strings on it and set everything up and it sounded great.
As for a new axe thats cheap you cant beat a SX hawk (strat) or Furrian (tele). You can mod them but theres no point they work great out of box.
I always hear great things about SX in general
@@landonbailey ive owned a few. I had a strat, tele and theyre 3 p90 jazzmaster styled one. Much higher quality than squier. On par with a mim or classic vibe series.
It's a copy of a Fender Stratocaster which seems to be in good shape.
Sounded better stock. :)
Stock pups sounded dramatically better. Listened to on high end Denon/Polk audio system.
I paid $109???? Wtf? Decent for the price. No complaints here. Did need a few adjustments. Nothing major.
You can't get these in the UK!!
ya I don't think Monoprice shipped to Europe
There are some chinese-made guitars on Ebay (Glarry and other brands - even unbranded) that are actually great if you know how to set them up. They go for cheap and they're a great guitar to experiment with dragonfire or similarly inexpensive pickups on. Once set up properly, they're actually decent. There are Strat clones, ESP clones, and Ibanez clones that I've seen. I will probably pick one up eventually to mess with. I have a Glarry acoustic that I got for $40 which is great once set up!
Bones!
you got it!
I think the stock pups had better quack.
they are more traditional for sure
Played Floyd. Subbed!!!!!! Lol
hey cool! ya I'm a huge fan of them and Gilmour's playing
@@landonbailey Still here buddy! Hahahah keep it up.
😁🎸
What's with all these youtubers "buying cheap guitars and finding out they are wonderful." Is it an algorithm thing or what?
I bought this guitar in 2014 and Braun’s video reminded me about it
amazing what you can buy these days for under $100.. I'm just not a fan of basswood. I have one chinese guitar made of basswood and I just have to look at it to cause it to ding. lol
ya it is very soft wood. I'm sure that's a huge $$ savings on their end
stock all the way
That's how I change the parts on my guitars too, you don't need tools.
Brute force is so much cheaper!
Stock pickups are better
Modded are like humbuckers
good description. I think that's how Lace Sensors are generally seen
Man i wanna have a guitar so bad but this country is just too poor to me and expensive guess I'll never be an artist one day😔
Dude you're Canadian???? I'm Canadian....wow!!! so are about 35 million more people but I live in Europe now. Back in the 80's you either had 1000 bucks for a fender or you were fucked....because cheap guitars were sooooo bad....that monoprice is a gem compared to the cheap guitars of the 80's.
ya I'm from Ottawa. take care!
Bargain ! There are so many bodged in China, guitar shaped toys at the lower end of the market, it's refreshing to know guitars like this exist . I could even live with the stock pickups as long as it stays in tune .
I think replacing the stock tuners is pretty much needed if you play the guitar hard and bend a lot
Oh come on now Landon how can a $70 guitar sound good? The pick ups gotta be junk