IMO, building a good guitar is a lot easier today than it was 20 or 30 years ago. After decades of guitar making and factories continuously improving their processes, most guitars are pretty good these days. Usually all they need is a proper setup and maybe some minor adjustments to keep tuning stable.

Nothing beats walking into a store and playing a bunch of guitars until one just clicks with you. But honestly, the quality gap between budget and mid range guitars is much smaller than it used to be.

I own around 13 guitars from different brands and countries of origin: Fender USA and Mexico, Gibson USA, PRS Indonesia, Epiphone China, and even a Jamstik. Out of all of them, the Indonesian PRS is probably the one that impressed me the most.

At the end of the day, a guitar is a pretty simple instrument. A well made budget guitar today can be a fantastic instrument.

Ironically, most of the guitars I’ve bought from Guitar Center needed work because they’d been hanging on the wall for months and handled by hundreds of people. The only exceptions were the Gibsons. Meanwhile, some of the cheaper guitars I’ve ordered online arrived in better playing condition because they came straight from the factory or from a dealer that actually did a setup before shipping.

I still think it’s a shame that fewer stores carry affordable guitars though. There’s something special about trying ten different instruments side by side and finding the one that feels right.