Recs for American Made Guitars

I think you can find a cool Gretsch hb for around or under $1000
LINK

No current production Gretsch electrics are made in America. That being said, my favorite consistently-best fair priced hollow body guitars on the market right now are the Japanese-made Gretsch guitars (the player in me would take one over a vintage American one in a heartbeat, they are simply better guitars); and the Chinese made Eastman guitars, which are sickly good for the asking prices.

On the used market, I'd get a USA-made Hamer Newport, no question and without hesitation.

Whatever you buy, buy USED

Back to Hamer, in addition to the Newport ...



Another common hollow model is the "Artist," which is a smaller double-cutaway LP-sized chambered guitar. Specific keywords to search for this blueprint include "Artist Studio," "Artist Custom," "Artist Mahogany," Korina Artist," "25th Anniversary Artist" and "Vanguard."

The best bangs for the buck in the Artist line are the Artist Studio (that's a real maple top, not a veneer) ...



And the Artist Mahogany and 25th Anniversary Artist (same guitar construction-wise) ...



The Monaco model also comes in hollowbody version and in a solid mahogany and maple-capped versions. They are slightly oversized singlecuts but not ES big. Here's a spruce-topped Monaco III w/Bigsby and a trio of P-90s. If this doesn't make you drool, you have no business in this TD thread whatsoever.



While Hamer USA no longer exists (closed shop earlier this decade), there are TONS of custom versions of all of the above. All Hamer guitars, even "production" Hamers, were made to order and features custom spec'ed by clients or dealers are very, very common.

Hamer's imports tend to be lackluster and nothing like their USA stock, sharing only a common name. I'd generally say avoid them unless you can test-drive a specific one in person.

Edited to add how to tell the real ones from the imports ... With no exceptions, ALL of the USA guitars will have a tiny "USA" under and/or behind the logo.

Korean made Agile make a nice Les Paul copy. Maybe their Gibson ES-ish copies are good too?


FretShack!!!!???

I don't know about American made but one of the best reasonably priced guitars I've played in recent memory was the Epiphone Genesis reissue that was around a few years ago. They were somewhere around 225-250 bucks, played fantastic, had coil splitters on the pickups, great access to upper frets, etc. I had just bought a guitar when they came out so I had to pass at the time but I'll probably eventually track one down.