This is cosmetically a beautiful guitar but quality is measured in thousandths of an inch.

The slot for the low E string was cut too low, causing .003" clearance over the first fret and buzz on the open E string. There is no cure for this and I had to replace the nut.

There is no way that this guitar passed through the hands of a luthier in Southern California, and Monoprice should stop repeating this lie.

I recently received this guitar after many struggles with FedEx (not monoprice's fault). The guitar is definitely an upgrade from my previous guitar (a $200 learner's guitar from 15 years ago) however there were a couple of problems with it that I'm likely going to need to get fixed. First off, the Low E string had a pretty nasty buzz that I was able to fix by raising the action of the guitar a bit but it was a bit annoying to have to do that. Secondly, the middle pickup doesn't always work. The switch is really finicky when you try to play that pick up by itself indicated some sort of wiring issue. Unsure how much it'll cost me to get it re-set up but hopefully not too much. Besides those issues though, it looks great and plays pretty well so you could do worse.

The guitar looks amazing and the pickups are surprisingly clear and strong for what they are (or aren't). Weight and balance are good.

However, while I usually use 11s on my electric guitars, the tension of these heavier strings is really doing a number on the bridge, which seems to be designed to function best with 9s. I was able to adjust the bridge a bit but the tuning doesn't hold for very long. Always having to retune is irritating, but not surprising given this kind of bridge. So I may go back to 9's for this guitar specifically. That said, I have the Indio strat clone with 11s and it holds tune very, very well.

All in all, this guitar is a fantastic value for the money.