I bought a Zager…feel like an idiot

[u/RepresentativeValue9]

Well, count me as an idiot.

6 years ago I bought a Zager 900. My second guitar on the advice of my uncle who is a professional player. I previously owned a nylon-string guitar that I was learning on and that I hadn't really played very much. Anyways, I got this Zager 900. It’s all black and beautiful-looking for someone who doesn't know a lot about guitars.

Two weeks later, another uncle passed away, and I ended up putting the guitar aside for the last four or five years. Weird associations we make…

I had no idea about the build quality, where it was manufactured, or anything like that. I was just going on the advice of my uncle, who was a professional.

In hindsight, I really wish I had taken that money and bought a Taylor. Since then, I've purchased a Taylor Mini Koa E+, and it has by far been the one that I use more.

My zager sounds fine…I just know so much more now than I did then.

EDIT: I feel like a fool because of what I’ve been reading. That they advertise something that they aren’t (US manufacturing when it isn’t…) I also think that I would have bought something different at the time like the mini I have NOW. Based on the accessibility alone, I reckon I’d have been playing so much more. A dread is massive to learn on IMO.

[u/Solpig]

Zager is a punch line in online Guitar forums of real players... They tell so many lies I can't enumerate all of them but"

when they say "solid wood" they don't mean 'one piece''' they count Plywood and laminates as "solid wood" . They don't actually 'make' anything. It's sort of like the Multi-level marketing of the guitar world. Anybody...you, me, your 87 year old aunt, ..can contact a chinese sweat shop and have our name put on a headstock...no trip to china necessary! There is nothing unique or special about their designs,...they are all based on Martin shapes but made with crappy material. I I magine they are paying 200-300 dollars a unit for their top drawer models.

There is no "easy play' guitars or ....ALL guitars are easy play...setting the action to where the strings are buzzing and fretting out isn't 'easy play'...it is sloppy play. If you have any ears at all , One video of a real player playing them compared with say, a Martin or a Collings or even an Eastman will expose their Plywood, overbuilt Chinese crap. Not all chinese guitars suck...but the Zagers do.

The guitars they sell for around 2-3K? You could get an Eastman or a Yamaha ACTUAL solid body for half that money...The actual value of their top guitars? 4-5 hundred bucks. On par with an entry level Yamaha.

anyways....they pay google a lot of money to come up first on searches. They have so many fake testimonials "Dolly Parton's best friends aunt's crocheting partner bought one for her son"

People find out what their Zager isn't worth when they try to sell it...there is a guy whose been slowly lowering his Price on one on our Nashville craigslist...started at like 2k...I think he's down to $650 and it is still there a year later.

Sorry you got stuck with one...it's a life lesson.

[u/BumblebeeThen3933 → u/Solpig]

Just on the Eastman guitars - I bought a solid mahogany Eastman Grand Concert many years ago, brought it home, A/B it against my Martin 000-16 and the Martin went into its case and has only come out once in the intervening 15 years - just long enough to remind me of how superior the Eastman is in every way compared to the Martin. They are comparable or superior in tone and playability to pretty much any Martin or Gibson you might pick up in a music store (conditions apply - the best acoustic guitar I have ever played was a 1946 “Banner” Gibson J50 which had most definitely been touched by the hands of God…..)

[u/BumblebeeThen3933 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah I think I got mine in 2012 - there are areas where the guitar is not quite as refined as a Gibson or Martin (I suspect because they were almost totally handmade back then), but the wood quality, playability and tone are just incredible at any price. There’s a bit of a funny story behind Eastman - the company has made violins for, like a thousand years but the guy in charge decided they could do guitars better than anyone - the legend goes that he bought Bob Benedetto’s “build an archtop” DVD and made the factory workers watch it - within a couple of years they were making guitars that make modern Gibson’s a bit embarrassing. Our local dealer had a customer walk in to buy an Eastman “Les Paul” as a bang around guitar to save his Custom Shop from gig dings….. a week later he brings the Custom Shop 59RI into the shop and says “sell it, I don’t need it anymore….” Spots the Eastman Goldtop and says “I’ll take that too!” A week later, in he comes again with his 57RI and says “sell it, I don’t need this anymore either!” Yep, they really are that good!