Monoprice Indio Cali Classic Electric Guitar - Sunburst, With Gig Bag

Pretty awesome guitar

Bought this for a learning experience Basically to learn how to work on guitars. Had to return the first one due to a damaged item. Only took an extra week turn around. Had a good experience as far as e-mailing and get something done quickly. But it gave me a good sense of consistency for production and qc. Both guitars have great finishes, but the returned one had far less fret sprout then the one I have now. So yes I will be learning to do fret ends. As far as the fret board I won't hardly have to do anything as the frets are quite level 17th and 19th fret. Little extra steel wool when cleaning should be fine. Haven't plugged in yet so can't attest to tone/sound. Pots and switches fairly smooth, but tuners need tightening up. Woopy de do. Minimal work to get it up to snuff. All in all a great guitar for the money. There was never anything this close to playable out of the box in the 60's growing up, if you remember all the teisco junk back then. Only thing I could remember cheap but fairly good back then were the silvertones/danelectro's you could get at sears and other big stores of the times. Over all I'm pleasantly surprised. Get one for you. Get one for the kid. For the money it's a no brainer.

Purchased this 1.5yrs ago as my first electric guitar after playing acoustic for over 20yrs. Did so based on price and reviews on YouTube. I enjoyed this guitar so much I now own 5 electrics all from different makers. This guitar is on par with far more expensive and far more well-known manufacturers and is far better out of the box than my next closest priced guitar from a very well-known brand. What I like about this guitar: Price, Blue burst finish is surprisingly nice, Fret board's flat radius, Set-Up, gig bag (better than $30 bags I've purchase for other guitars). What I had concerns about: Tremolo, pickups, nut and tuners. In the end, I replaced the pickups, all pots, caps, and wiring because I wanted to learn how to and I thought it would sound better. In truth, I learned a lot, but the guitar didn't sound better. The only upgrade that did help was replacing the nut. I haven't replaced the tuners because they work fine. I did so on other guitars. I didn't replace the tremolo because I just don't use it. In the end, this guitar was so good that in hindsight, I should have only replaced the nut ($15)....PRETTY AMAZING.

Fantastic and quality in every respect. Precision, detail, fret polish, tuners, even the set-up out of the box is great. High end brands wish they still produced instruments like this. I got the SR bass just before this and it?s my go to. Now this is my go to guitar. Not sure how they are able to pull off such quality at that price, but definitely I?m going to buy a second one.

Love it! Also have a blue T-style model by Monoprice. These are not cheap guitars. These are affordable guitars and I am impressed with the quality. If there are any issues, Monoprice addresses them quickly and returns are EZ and pre-paid. They want you to be thrilled with your purchase. The electronics are great. Was expecting to swap out pickups but don’t need to. I like the sound and voicing these pups deliver. Always wanted to try an S style and glad I got this one. I love these guitars. I don’t know how they can possibly provide this quality at this price. Musician and guitar player my whole life. I want one of each. Get yourself some.

I have done a bit of setup on the guitar after receiving it. I am very happy with this guitar. The finish is great and set up was simple enough. In intonation however the Low E had to be set back as far as it would go compressing spring. Some people have shortened the spring in their setups. I did not but my spring is completely compressed as far as it would go to intonate. Great value plays and sounds great.

Hello, I've been playing since 1976, prefer Stat-type guitars, have owned both Fender and knockoff "PartsCaster" guitars. I play through an all-tube amp with a multi-effects processor. I am a fan of the ST sound from SRV to Clapton to Knopfler. This is my 2nd Monoprice Cali review. PICKUPS/SOUND: Pickups are surprisingly good. A nice "woody" tone comes through with moderate blues distortion. I estimate these Indio pups are medium output. On a clean setting, they sound like "Lenny" by SRV where he plays on all 5 settings. NECK/ACTION: My biggest issue with Strats is the neck - I usually hate them - but THE INDIO NECK IS QUITE "FRIENDLY," easy-to-play. Contour isn't super-thin like Ibanzez Wizard or super-fat like 'boat-back,' somewhere in the middle. I feel a tiny bit of fret-sprout (that will be easy to remove w/foam sanding block), but � I haven't had to make ANY adjustments to the action - GOOD ACTION right OUT-OF-THE-BOX. HARDWARE: The tuners do have a little grip and slip, so this is where the tuners on the "DLX" version are better (my other review). The vintage-style trem is what you expect, but again � this guitar was $100 and seems every bit as good as a the last $500-Fender I owned. AESTHETICS I REALLY did not like the white-pickups-on-black-pickguard-look AT ALL and it kept me from buying this guitar initially, but I found some black cosmetic parts from MusicLily/Amazon and Stratosphere parts to replace all the white with black - even black screws! Pictures included. CAUTION TO MODDERS: As much as the black plastics improved the looks (in my opinion), I found out the hard way that STRAT PICKGUARDS WON'T MOUNT ON INDIO CALI. The BIG problem is distance from neck heel to bridge hardware is apparently longer on a Fender by at least 1/8" - there was no forcing it in, so I had to return the (2) after-market pickguards I wanted to install. :-( ALSO: did you know that some PUPS are all same length (width) and some are not? I had to return the black PUP covers that were all 3 the same size for a MusicLily set that were 52/50/48mm (bridge/middle/neck). I've done PUP swaps on ST guitars before and never knew this. RECOMMEND TO A FRIEND? Abso-fricking-positivi-lutely!

Needs a fine tuning on the craftsmanship. Extremely rough edges on frets/neck need file & sandpaper. Not a bad fake, best as a player axe you can mod all day long and not feel any pain during shop upgrades. Purchased with the fake Telecaster, both have identical craftsmanship issues, don't expect to play them immediately out of the box or you may shred your fingers on the frets. Finish is very good, but different color as the internet photo... my Sunburst Tele came with a lot of yellow and none shows on the internet pics.. Time will tell, but for now a solid 4 is my score. If it was perfectly set up out of the box, it would be a solid 5 (in its class).

Smooth frets with no edges at all. Neck feels good and finish looks great. Packaged nicely. Only beef I have is that it needs to be retuned after a few surf guitar tremolo pulls. Not sure if it just needs to break in a bit or if this is standard with tremolos. Otherwise this guitar is a steal for the price.

I was looking around for a guitar to jam around with until I get another Fender strat. The Indio Cali Classic has good reviews so I decided to buy. It was shipped in a timely manner. The guitar was inside a white bag inside the gig bag and packaged inside a cardboard box. Upon inspecting it, the paint was well done. There were no blemishes. First thing i did was the check the sound. Tuned it and the sound was decent. There was one sharp fret and a few frets needed leveling. Now it's time for setup. This shouldn't take too long. I was wrong. It will not intonate and it will not stay in tune. I do not use the whammy. Oh well, it's not a Fender.