It's 11.11 day at AliExpress

I ordered a few knobs from aliexpress, but man that site gives me a headache. I don't know if it's worth the money saved to spend the time on it.

Also, I have no idea what's happening: there's no correlation between the price on the page, and the price once it's added to the cart. I ended up ejecting several things from the cart because they weren't as discounted as the page said.
 
Everything about AliExpress feels like a scam to me - the prices aren't reliable, shipping is all over the place, there's lots of flashing sale symbols, etc. There's coupons codes that don't seem to work for me.

And for the things I was looking for, the deals weren't that great (enclosures were the same price as Tayda, or much more when shipping was included). Or the quality just looks suspect, like Temu-level materials.

The one time I actually placed an order (a few budget Joyo pedals), the order was cancelled by the seller after 2 weeks.

I've basically sworn it off. I keep hearing about people finding great deals and I feel like I'm missing something.
 
rwl said:
Everything about AliExpress feels like a scam to me - the prices aren't reliable, shipping is all over the place, there's lots of flashing sale symbols, etc. There's coupons codes that don't seem to work for me.

And for the things I was looking for, the deals weren't that great (enclosures were the same price as Tayda, or much more when shipping was included). Or the quality just looks suspect, like Temu-level materials.

The one time I actually placed an order (a few budget Joyo pedals), the order was cancelled by the seller after 2 weeks.

I've basically sworn it off. I keep hearing about people finding great deals and I feel like I'm missing something.
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I use it a good bit for small stuff. LEDs(grown fond of these, sanded to be flush with the enclosure), bulk resistors, cheap cable ends for non-mission critical cables, banana plugs and cables, Dupont lines and adapters, $30 looper pedal for bench testing, Daier aluminum knobs, pogo pin clamps, ESD bags, thin washers and hardware in general(outside pedals) can be a good deal, especially stainless. I think the hot air station has been my largest item purchased.
The trick is getting Choice items which all ship free. I haven't really had much issues with prices changing but shipping can be weird when there are shipping charges. 1 item cost $4 to ship, 2 cost 6, 3 cost 12. I think the looper is the only pedal I've actually purchased but the Mvave Chocolate midi pedal that recently came out is tempting. Some of the Joyo reverbs sound nice for the $. I have a Joyo Atmosphere that I got off of Reverb for $35 that's really good for the price.
SBP actually had the best price for 125bs a couple of months ago with the volume discount and the quality seems a little better than tayda, seeming smoother and more level.
Outside of bulk resistors and jellybean diodes, I don't fool with any components from there. I did get some Chinese germanium trannies a year or so ago out of curiosity (that look a lot like the ones Warm is using in their pedals). A couple were functional but the rest were trash. Got an immediate refund.
I tend to purchase with the thought process of "buy to cut out the middleman, don't buy the cheap Chinese version of the thing" and that tends to work out okay. There are good things to be had, but it's far from everything being good.
 
jwin615 said:
I'm curious how good the intonation on a Chinese fanned fret guitar is.
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probably just copying a proven ratio/formula from other reputable builders. probably not a deal breaker.

like any guitar, even off the shelf 'brand name' guitars almost always require servicing/adjustment (for my needs anyway).
e.g. why does every manufacturer just not give a fuck about doing the nuts properly?
it's just how it is.

IME, you can have a cheap as chips, 'good enough', starter guitar that's been to a luthier/tech - frets levelled/polished, intonation, etc. VS. an equivalent untouched out of box ~$1K guitar, and the cheap one will probably shit bricks on the untouched guitar, for playability at least.

same reason why I believe most guitar reviews are kinda moot*
they're always trying them right out of the box. of course it's gonna have some issues.

*with exception for the real ones that actually give the guitars a bit of love to fix simple intonation/ string heights before giving them a real shakedown.
 
owlexifry said:
IME, you can have a cheap as chips, 'good enough', starter guitar that's been to a luthier/tech - frets levelled/polished, intonation, etc. VS. an equivalent untouched out of box ~$1K guitar, and the cheap one will probably shit bricks on the untouched guitar, for playability at least.
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I tend to agree.

The only other thing, though, is that there are elements where a cheaper guitar may end up falling flat. Improperly dried woods, thick finishes, all kinds of stuff that tends to kinda choke the way the instrument "feels" when one plays. Look: I cant quantify it. But it's the difference between playing something that's fun to play unplugged, and something that really needs to be plugged in.

All five of my cheap Chinese instruments, including the three multiscale guitars, feel *great* to play unplugged. My experience.

Also: yeah, the norm is that intonation isn't given a second thought when they send these things out. They set the truss rod and action to *good enough* and send it out the door.

This doesn't bother me, because setting up a guitar is babytown frolics. Trivially easy. Plus, I use heavy ass strings and tune down, so I need to adjust the nut and do a complete setup on all the guitars I buy.

Here's the thing though: Ignore the bit about needing to have the frets leveled and polished. No need. Already good enough.

I mean, I'm sure that QA outliers happen. But I'm 0 for 5 at this point, and that's better than I can say for my US made guitars.
 
Stickman393 said:
elements where a cheaper guitar may end up falling flat. Improperly dried woods, thick finishes, all kinds of stuff that tends to kinda choke the way the instrument "feels" when one plays.
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totally agree.
and this is why i tend to avoid the cheaper alternatives.
last few months been so close to pulling the trigger on a JS series jackson, everyone keeps frothing the build quality vs. price, but then you look at the grain and finishing on these necks and it's just sad when i compare it to the impeccable tight grain single piece maple neck on my MIJ RG550 (still remains one of the best value MIJ guitars money can buy imo).

Stickman393 said:
This doesn't bother me, because setting up a guitar is babytown frolics. Trivially easy. Plus, I use heavy ass strings and tune down, so I need to adjust the nut and do a complete setup on all the guitars I buy.
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same, i'm in drop C all day every day, so 'factory' setups are never gonna suit.

Stickman393 said:
Here's the thing though: Ignore the bit about needing to have the frets leveled and polished. No need. Already good enough.
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more often than not - yeah, its not necessary.
but it really depends on the guitar and how you play.
some people can tolerate an amount of error and don't notice or care if you're playing cowboy chords below the 5th fret all day.

but then sometimes you just get fucked, you'll be bending the 13th fret up two semitones and get caught on the 14th fret cause it wasn't seated properly or some shit
 
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owlexifry said:
it really depends on the guitar and how you play.
some people can tolerate an amount of error and don't notice or care if you're playing cowboy chords below the 5th fret all day.

but more often than not - yeah, its not necessary.

but then sometimes you just get fucked, you'll be bending the 13th fret up two semitones and get caught on the 14th fret cause it wasn't seated properly or some shit
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I'm speaking specifically in regards to this newish batch of Chinese instruments coming out of Shenzen.

If I had to venture a guess: they're using stable woods (roasted, quartersawn, reinforced, yada blah). Newer CNC machines designed for high volume. Precise machine work, plus extremely competent folks finishing off the fretwork and other things that can't be completely automated.

I'm a 0.006" neck relief, 0.05" on the bass, 0.04" treble kinda guy. Heavy picking hand, generally using X-heavy top/medium bottoms tuned to C standard. I'm good with a little buzz in terms of "fret noise", but I've got no tolerance for fretting out. To my standards, these do that out of the box with a bit of setup work.
 
I haven't ever seen a price increase in car except when I wasn't logged in when first browsing. They seem to do a "First time buyer" discount that obviously disappears when you add it to the cart in an existing account, but it's not really explicitly spelled out. I think I've also had it happen sometimes where it thinks I'm buying from the US and shows a lower price, but when I log in taxes are added so the price jumps - but that shouldn't be an issue for you guys.

I do sometimes find that coupons don't work, that's annoying as hell and I'm not sure what's going on there, it might be because some coupons are by the stores themselves and it's hard to see which store you're buying from, so maybe the coupon isn't for that store.

I don't think I'm going to buy anything this time though, like others said prices for a lot of components really aren't lower than Tayda (to be fair, Tayda is the lowest prices I could find for a lot of stuff, it's popular for a reason), I don't trust them for buying most IC's, and I don't really need more pedals (or really much else either).
 
jwin615 said:
The knock off bare knuckle covers make me laugh for some reason.
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Knockoff construction as well.

They're damned similar to aftermaths. I tend to swap: those I deem "good enough". The other two have SD pegasus/sentient combos. I had to make those from a normal set and a set of double whites.

What. I like zebras.
 
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