Monoprice Cali DLX Plus Solid Ash Electric Guitar - Cherry Burst, With Gig Bag, Ash Body, Maple Neck, Professionally Set-up in the US - Indio Series

I've purchased several Monoprice "Indigo" brand guitars, and I've been totally impressed with each one! They're solid instruments. My one complaint is the lack of side dressing the frets. They arrive with sharp ends and need to be ground down to be smooth. A Dremel tool does the job. As a melody or lead player, I also swap out the strings with .008s. The tuning gears seem to hold tunings nicely. Fit and finish is very good. Spend too much more than this and you're just buying high end furniture.

This guitar is easily on par with name brand strats starting at $750.00. The wood, electronics and tuners are very good quality and the overall craftsmanship is unbelievable. The guitar came set up spot on. Well dressed frets with perfect string height and intonation. The neck is satin finished, nice slim profile that is very fast. It has a bone nut and the tuners are very stable, staying in tune after the initial tuning. Wood grain and finish is beautiful. I am still in shock that this quality instrument cost $250. I will be picking up the deluxe tele and LP over the next couple weeks.

This is my second Monoprice guitar. The first was a Cali Tele and this Strat. They keep on getting better. This Strat is very good. It arrived in four days (Mich.) in perfect condition. Playable right out of the box. Nut was cut right, frets were clean, level and smooth. Trem Block is large and heavy. The electronics are clean and solid. I recommend this guitar for anyone interested in a good Strat. Great dollar value. Thank you Monoprice.

I have only had the guitar for about a week so these are my initial thoughts and impression. The Basics: Two piece solid ash body, maple neck, rosewood fret board. Came with a padded gig bag and adjustment wrenches. Weighs a bit over 8 pounds, but it's not boat anchor weight by any stretch of the imagination. The guitar feels solid and has a very resonant body. Workmanship: Outstanding fit and finish ! ! ! The neck has a satin finish, the rosewood fret board looks like a really nice piece of wood. Finish on the guitar is perfect. The frets are dressed nicely with no fret sprout or rough edges. Hardware: Has a really nice (and very adjustable) Tremolo style Wilkinson bridge. Not sure what company made the tuners - they are non-locking - but at first blush they seem to stay in tune fairly well. Ceramic pickups. Knobs were a little stiff at first; but they seemed to loosen up after awhile. Cream colored three ply pickguard, knobs, and back plate. I think the cream color compliments the finish very well. Playability and sound: Has a flatter radius neck compared to Fender Strats. I'm going to guess it's close to 12 inches. The frets are narrow and not very tall. It took some getting used to the neck but after playing it a few times it started growing on me, The neck is very playable. The pickups sound OK. I compared them to an 80's MIJ Squier Strat that I have. They seemed not quite as bright. I think the Ash body makes for a little darker tone though. Bottom Line: It is a fantastic value and worth every penny.

I bought this guitar a couple years ago, have done some minor setup adjustments, rewired the tone controls and added a tremolo stabilizer and a vintage style pearloid pickguard but otherwise it has been rock solid as is and my go to guitar for traditional Strat sounds. I own 30 guitars of every size and shape and every time I'm about to pick this guitar up I brace myself, expecting to be shocked at how heavy it is and every time I'm literally stunned that it's even heavier than I expected. In my studio environment it's absolutely hilarious, but I probably wouldn't be so amused if I was playing it live for hours. My chiropractor would be laughing all the way to the bank. I wouldn't have it any other way...

This is a fantastic instrument that will need just a little set up work, mostly dealing with slightly sharp fret edges. The pickups are AlNiCo and each of the 5 positions sounds very unique - something I don?t notice on other instruments as much. The Ash body is beautiful and the entire instrument feels really solid! I compare it to main brand guitars easily!

While I have some criticisms, overall I'm very happy with this guitar. PROS & CONS + Beautiful finish on the body, appears to be 2-piece ash. + Impressive tiger striping on the back of the neck w/ super smooth satin finish. + my guitar came with the new Indio logo. (Sorry to the person who got the old logo. I'd be a little disappointed too!) +/- I'm not a botanist but I'm not convinced it's a rosewood fingerboard, looks more like ebony to me based on colour and grain patters. - fretboard arrived SUPER dry, but an easy fix with the appropriate conditioning oil. - Several small pock marks in the fretboard but don't impact playability. Purely a cosmetic issue - That nut... yikes. The nut wasn't cut properly and was pinching the strings causing major tuning issues. I'm going to replace it with a TUSQ nut but it was barely even playable without a quick filing. +/- my setup was passable. Action was super low, but major fretbuzz, partly due to... - frets not level. I had to spot level about half a dozen places, but I should probably have just done a new level. - Strings were rusty. Like they dipped them in the ocean and left them on the beach for a month before putting them on. I know the first thing you gotta do is swap the strings, but this was just funny. Except that it left a few rust spots on the frets which required a bit of work. + Alpha pots move and work quite well +/- 5-way import style pcb switch, moves OK but I may replace with something a bit nicer + pickups are OK (bridge sounds great, neck sounds a little bland, may replace eventually) and not quite as hot as advertised - 6.2 (bidge) / 6.0 (middle)/5.6 (neck) which doesn't bother me but I can confirm they are indeed AlNiCo (NOT ceramic). + RWRP middle pickup for hum cancelling in positions 2 & 4 but other positions are not very noisy at all + cloth covered pickup wiring was nice to see and soldering was well done + swimming pool rout with room for humbucker upgrades if desired (though pickup cavity is not shielded) + pickguard looks like better quality than others I've seen - machine heads/tuners are not great and should probably be replaced. + Wilkinson VS 50 II K bridge & vibrato is pretty nice. +/- gig bag is surprisingly well padded but the zipper is about as cheap as they come and is frustrating to open/close. But it's a gig bag! Some mixed feelings about this since it took a bit of work to get this even to tune properly, but my plan was always to upgrade this guitar. Slap a new set of tuners on there along with a properly cut nut and this guitar is quickly going to become a favourite. If this is your first guitar or you're not into DIY setups, take this guitar in for a proper setup and you'll feel like you're playing something worth MUCH more than you paid for it.

Great guitar and well set up. Plays really well.only complaint is the tremolo could have been set up better ,it was decked to the body and would not budge ,but after some utube videos I learned how to adjust it. It?s well worth the money and I love it!

The guitar looks great and the Wilkinson pickups sound fine. In my case, the Wilkinson Tremolo bridge seemed to be okay, but the mechanism for attaching the tremolo arm would not secure the arm tightly. After removing the entire bridge and tightening the 'hidden' setscrew, I was still unable to insert the arm in a way that felt solid. Additionally, the control knobs are set too high (about 1/8") due to the excessive shaft length of the control pots. This further interfered with tremolo operation. The basic guitar is nicely built, but I'm returning due to the tremolo issue, as the Wilkinson tremolo bridge is part of the reason I chose the Cali Classic DLX Plus to begin with.

My guitar has really bad buzz sound even if I am touching strings. I wonder, has anyone else experienced this too?