Yamaha EG-303

I don't have it with me to check but I seem to recall seeing "made in Indonesia" on it... Or was it Mexico? Maybe China? Whatever. It has 3 single-coil passive pickups, a whammy bar and I got it as part of a starter pack with a very thin, poorly padded gig bad and a small Yamaha amp. Seven years ago, it was the first guitar I owned and it was a good one. I don't play it anymore (not my style,) but I still have it. Good set of features for the money.

It sounds pretty good. The pickup selector and tone knob don't have a horribly noticable effect on the sound but luckily the sound that it does put out is pretty decent. The pickups are pretty quiet for single coils. They aren't very hot but I am also used to the higher output Seymour Duncan pickups in my main guitar.

When I bought this, the action was HIGH - probably getting close to 1 cm high at the 12th fret! Don't get me wrong, it's a good guitar, it just needs to be setup right. After I got a new guitar, the Yamaha spent a lot of time in the basement until I started playing around with adjusting guitars (I didn't want to experiment with my Les Paul.) Adjusting the truss rod to straighten the neck and lowering the bridge really transformed this guitar into something worth playing. It was like a whole new guitar. However, even with the truss rod fully tightened (using a fair amount of force), the neck could still stand to be a little straighter. Other than that flaw and the semi-ineffective tone control, the rest of the setup was pretty decent. The finish is fine, the nut is fine, the bridge itself is fine, the fret wire is fine and the selector is quiet.

It has withstood a lot. It's a surprisingly solid guitar. Once, I unwittingly took the guitar off while standing under a ceiling fan. I think you can guess where this story is going. The head took a chunk out of the fan blade and bent the bracket that held it to the rest of the fan but the guitar was unharmed! Pretty solid if you ask me. I don't know what part it hit but I can't even find a ding on the guitar. Maybe it hit one of the tuning heads? If so, it sure did take the abuse well.

Never had to deal with them.

I've been playing for about eight years with a few gaps in there. I use a DOD GS30 multi-effects pedal and Boss OS-2 Overdrive/Distortion pedal. For an amp, I still use the practice amp that came with this guitar, a 50 watt Marshall Park-series amp, or I connect the GS30 to my home stereo and use its amp modelling feature. Right now I am playing a Les Paul with some nice new pickups so I haven't really bothered with the Yamaha in a while (single coil Strat-style guitars aren't really my thing anyway) but it made an excellent first guitar and would even make a decent intermediate-level guitar for someone willing to put a little time/money/effort into it. It may be "just a Yamaha" but I would recommend it over other, not as inexpensive (but necessarily higher quality) alternatives like a Squire Strat. You will also have more money for accessories (pedals, pickups, new amp, etc) that way.

It's a very simple guitar. 3 single coil pickups, 1 volume control, 1 tone control, 5 way pickup selector. Great for beginners.

I use this guitar with a 25 watt Park amp and a 1 watt Marshall mini amp, but I've also used it with a Marshall VS230R amp. The bridge pickup alone is totally useless, but I like the sound of the bridge-middle pickup and my favorite is the neck-middle pickup with the tone control totally rolled back and a bit of overdrive, I get a lot of sustain this way. The overall sound of the guitar of course is very bright and the stock pickups are noisy, but for a guitar in this price range it's ok.

When I bought it I hated the action of this guitar, playing it was very hard, but after I took it to a repair man he set it right for me. The finish is not that good. The tuning pegs hold the guitar in tune properly. What I don't like is that the volume and tone controls don't stay in a given position, they always move.

I use this guitar only at home. This looks liek a solid guitar but the strap buttons keep coming out of its place.

I took my guitar to re-fret when it was under warranty and they did it properly.

I bought this guitar just to practice scales, never intended to play seriously on it, but now I like to play some heavy distorted rhythm parts with it. I know this is not the guitar for that, but I like the sound of it with a bit of overdrive. I chose this guitar because it was the cheapest in the store, just that. I guess that if it got stolen or lost I wouldn't buy it again.

bought in 1996, so probably made in the same year. made in indonesia.

other specs, as per listed. :)

rating = 6. this is supposed to be a beginner's guitar. just suitable for me 7 years ago. :)

i played metallica. at that time it sounds acceptable, until i got myself a yamaha 420 a few months ago. i know humbuckers are better suited for this type of music.

i used it with crate GX-15 which i bought together with the guitar. now mostly for practice if i'm lazy to pick up the 420.

rating = 6. not for serious guitarists, but if you're learning this is a great starting point.

back then i did not know what is action or pickup adjustment. so i accept it as it was. now i have the guitar torn apart, rebuild, etc.. etc.. and it is now OK. but again, only for practices.

the frets are shwoing signs of wear, that's why i got myself the other guitar.

it can be used live. no problem if you can live with the sound. but then, not many people out there (non-guitarists) can really appreciate the difference in guitar sound and tone anyway.

the body finish dents very easily. hardwares are all corroded. but then after 7 years with little attention paid to it, it was very respectful.

never deatl with them

this guitar is suitable for beginners. the small frets are quite difficult for scaling. use jumbo frets and you'll know what difference it will make.

if it's stolen, i wouldn't buy a new one as i already have another guitar. but i would save up the money to buy a better guitar.

i really liked that it is well built for little money.

features for this guitar are bottom of the line minimalism at best. 3 single coil pick ups, volume and 1 tone knob, bridge saddles suck strings have a tendancy to get stuck in the back plate unless you adjust it. The jack/jack plate are the only things that have given me trouble by braking however, total pain. But for what it is (a beginer guitar) it is suitable, not enough stuff to get you confused but enough to let you have an understanding of what goes on with guitar sound.

can't complain, sounds just fine for what you pay for, you can tweak it and change strings to get different tones and such, good for noise/indie/experimental rock, punk (is there a guitar that cant play punk?) and the single coils can pump out some surf if you like that cheap pawn shop retro sound.

i didnt have to do much adjusting with it, of course i didnt always know what to do if i did have to adjust it, the strat copy head bothers me alittle bit i am thinking of sanding down that little round part that has the point, that irritates the crap out of me. paints not quality, but i drew over the pick guard with perm marker any way so it doesnt matter on this guitar.

hasnt died 100% yet, probably wont. back strap peg kept coming loose so i replaced it with gibson peg (the other went to my acoustic which was the reason i had an extra peg)and of course the jack plate was broken, which caused other problems later on. i think my relative broke it though, not sure.

never bothered

my first guitar and a guitar that has tought many lessons, it allowed me to expand into the world of music and the problems introduced me to guitar maintanence 101. all around a good experience for a begginer and you probably wont part with it later in life if you learned on it. if your more advanced at guitar look for something else though, like an ibanez for cheap guitar.

Solid basswood body, rock maple neck and rosewood fretboard, all fabricated in Indonesia. It's got a really soft and shoddy (looks nice from a distance) black paint job which dents really easily.
I managed to nearly cover it with stickers, however, so I don't see much of it anymore :)

Out of the box the features on this guitar are about standard for your beginner's guitar: 3 single coils, a 5 way switch, and master volume and tone. It's quite well equipped if you're learning, although without a little work this guitar could be a bit discouraging to a guitarist.

The standard sealed tuners on this guitar work well, the nut is plastic but not too tone-sapping and it rarely binds, but the 6-screw old school Fender-style tremolo bridge was a bit fussy out of the box (read more about it down further in this review). The bridge stays nice and square though, with rare tuning problems unless you decide to dive bomb on the whammy bar.

For those of you looking to upgrade it, I recommend having a pro work on the frets and intonate it first. The inside cavity allows for nearly any sort of pickup arrangement, as it is a universal cavity.

My EG-303 came in a kit with a 15 watt amp (pretty nice amp for a little solid state practice amp), a gig bag, strap, cable, adjustment tools, picks, and a book and a video to boot. :) Overall, the features are pretty nice for a beginning guitar.

I generally run this guitar through a Crate 2x12 solid state amp with distortion and sometimes a Morley wah.

Sustain is something you don't expect from a cheap bolt-on like this, but the neck and body are very tightly assembled, so this guitar has a bit of unexpected sustain to go with the 25-1/2" scale bite and sizzle. This guitar stings with a lot, and I mean A LOT of treble, so don't expect to force any kind of jazz tone out of it.

Basically, the stock pickups are bad if you want really grandiose tone. They are noisy single coils with relatively low output. However, if you're going for a down and dirty overdrive tone, they may suit your needs. With the stock pickup configuration, it has all the tonal range of your average bargain Strat-copy. After a little incident, however, in which the switch was broken (never drop the guitar face down), I was forced to either spring for a new switch or go with one pickup. So I removed the switch and wired the bridge pickup directly to the tone and volume controls. I also removed the other unused pickups from the body. For some strange reason, the guitar has never sounded better. Since I rarely used the other pickups on this particular guitar, it worked out quite well. I recently installed an EMG-SV active pickup and it sounds really sweet now, and I've managed to eliminate much of the noise.

The action was just OK out of the box, but after a professional once-over, the neck plays BEAUTIFULLY. I'm not exaggerating, I really enjoy the feel of the slim neck once the action was adjusted and intonation and fret leveling were performed.

The pickups on the guitar were as well adjusted as that cheap of pickups were ever going to get...and the whole Strat-copy idea makes it pretty easy to adjust them yourself.

One of the glaring problems I had when I first got this guitar was the tremolo bridge: the saddles weren't properly sanded so small shreds of steel would cut the high B and E strings, leading to a lot of string breakage. After I had a professional go over it, I didn't have the problem, but I did have a lot of difficulty removing strings from the bridge for a while. The B or E strings would manage to get caught in the trem so I'd have to open up the back and pry them out with pliers. This was only for the first few restrings though; I haven't had the problem since.

First off, THE INPUT JACK IS ABSOLUTELY ATROCIOUS on this guitar. It is a really cheap jack with only one piece of metal to latch onto the end of the plug. Sometimes the metal bends back and contact is lost, so I have had to disassemble the little jack plate many times. The screw holes for the jackplate eventually got a bit ragged so the screws wouldn't stay in. One day I unplugged the cord from it and the entire jack assembly fell out of the bottom of the guitar and sat there dangling by the jack wires.

I have since replaced the jack assembly with a sturdier jack that came with the EMG pickup. I simply taped up the original side input hole and put the jack in one of the control pot holes on the pickguard (which, by the way, is a very very sturdy pickguard for this type of guitar).

The hardware on the guitar seems pretty sturdy, but still a bit cheap, so years and years of wear could probably cause some problems. The finish is bad...very dentable and kinda ugly. I recommend covering it with stickers like me :)

Although this guitar is a dependable old friend, I would abstain from using it as my main guitar, especially without a backup. It IS my main backup guitar, and I would rely on it in a pinch. But it IS a guitar that I have had to work on often to keep in good working order.

My EG-303 is one of my best friends, since we've shared lots of time together. If you're looking for a guitar to get under the hood and poke around and experiment, this is a great choice. I've enjoyed owning and maintaining and experimenting with this guitar. Overall, I don't have any regrets in the purchase. I just wish the input jack would've been a bit less of a pain in the neck :)

Unsure of year, but late 90's. This strat copy has 22 frets, is plywood with a maple neck/rosewood fingerboard. Master volume/tone, 5 way selector, 3 single coil yamaha pickups. Reasonable quality bridge and sealed tuners, stays in tune as long as you dont use the whammy.

Sound - not unusable, decent for cheapass guitar, but far from amazing, as to be expected, with the original pickup configuration. I work part time as a luthier, and modded this guitar with a cheap humbucker in the bridge. This pickup has actually turned this guitar into quite a decent rock guitar. Original bridge single coil lacks balls, pretty much useless. Original neck pup not too bad, but would prefer more open clean sound. Not used. Middle pickup is actually surprisingly good. Nice open bitey sound, as it should be. Combines well with Humbucker, clean gives nice acoustic like sound, distorted gives thick les paul type sound, great, but obviously with lots of buzz due to 3 coils being engaged. (I deliberatly wired it this way, yes. Normally strats with a bridge hum are wired with the hum split in this position.) Humbucker gives great open rock humbucker sound. Rating above is based on standard. With mods, rating is 8 1/2.

Neck fits very neatly into neck pocket(good). All chrome finishes corroding badly(not good). Plastic nut(not good). Guitars finish has deteriorated terribly, despite being quite reasonably looked after (not dropped or thrown or anything stupid, cased, but it is just a backup after all). Paint is bubbling and dents easily. Body is routed out grossly, not for indivdual pickup routing, just great big 'bathtub' rout(bad). The neck was sanded back, profiled and waxed by me, and is now damn fast. Unfortunately it is impossible to get low action without fret buzz, due to shoddy fretwork and fingerboard. I may even refret it myself, as i really like the feel, and this is a damn good backup guitar. And its cheap. Rating is on standard guitar, and lowered by shoddy finish and fret job. Guitar still plays very reasonably.

This guitar will rapidly look like crap with hard use, or even without, but its not going to break. The only thing of small concern to me there is the crummy plastic nut, and that is common to even a lot of far more expensive guitars. Will remain playable through anything within reason. Just dont be stupid, its not meant to be left in the rain, or thrown out of a car (though it may well survive the latter). Change rating to 8 if you dont care about appearance.

N/A

I dont remember exactly how long ive been playing for, but as a luthier a lot of gear goes through my hands and this guitar has provided a good basis for a backup guitar. As a beginner guitar it would be reasonble, but the base ibanez is a better guitar, and, as with everything you get what you pay for the most part.

Im not really sure where it was made, made in early 90s.22 frets, s/s/s 5-way selector. not sure about the body, but the neck in maple with rosewood fret board. not bad for a 150 dollar guitar. single volme and tone, wish there were two tones though

i think sound from this is incredible for a low cost guitar. i have a mexican strat (fender) and think this sounds better than it! the best way to describe the tone is take a strat and roll back the tone nob a few clicks. gives a nice fat clean tone. i like playing metal, and i thnk the brigde pickup sounds better than my strat's. the strat makes this wierd ringing over tone that drives me nuts.

ive droped it, kicked, drop kicked it. still works!stays in tune great!

never dealt with them

i was really surprised by the over all quality of this guitar. i bought a mexican strat after leaving this under the bed for a few years. the other day i took it out and re-did the wirgin and sounds great@

Made in the late 90's,22 frets,has a tone and volume control,standard trem,s/s/s.I have no idea what wood was used on this thing,except for the rosewood fret-board.It came with a horrible amp,a "how to play guitar book",a strap,a cable that probably cost $1 to make,a pretty nice gig bag,a tuner,and picks.Overall it is a really good beginners package.

I love the sound.In my oppinion I think it sounds better than any fender standard series s/s/s strat.It deffinately kicks the @!#$ out of any affinity or whatever squier strat.This guitar can almost nail the strat sound,but it has way better distortion capabilities than a strat.Great for punk(VIVA LA GREEN DAY!),rock,and alternative(some metal),good for blues and country.

Had to do the typical setup,and stuff.I took off a point because there was a small dent on the pickguard by the neck pickup.

It's as hard as a rock,yet as light as a feather.

Best guitar in its price range.Great for begginers.No I would not buy another if it got lost or was stolen because it is a beginners guitar,and I have moved up to a pac 412(great guitar)which I use with a Yamaha DG-60 112,a Danney Honey Tone mini amp,and some Danney effects.Although I would try to get the guitar back because it has alot of sentimental value being my first guitar and it led me to the goldmine of quality that is Yamaha Guitars(Fender you reeeeeeeeeeeeeeealy suck).

I think it's 99, made in indonesia, 22 frets
1 volume 1 tone 5-way selector, but there is no difference in each way, 3 single coils and it sounds preety good clean or distorted.
Its made of rosewood I think.
enough for that cheap price.

I play limp bizkit, metallica and my own songs, its suits very good but the sound is not so deep like wes's guitar (limp bizkit)
I use an epiphone ep-800r, rich sound
I like it, it was my first guitar, for that price

setup is very good exept for the neck, it is a little out

it could survive a nuclear war, it has fallen anything happened.
throw it from the window, hit it, let it fall, this baby won't break

it is not a 10 its a 12 yamaha is always kind and helpful

I've played long enough to tell that This is a good Option
If you're looking for your first guitar, buy this one

crapy pick-ups frikin floating tremalo. white finish mediume frets. pick-up configuration s/s/s.

the sound sucks unless you put single coil size humbuckers in there place then it's a ten. I play mettalica korn and other metal stuff and single coils just don't do it. but with the humbucker it's a 10

the tremalo needed lots of adjusting as did the pick-ups but the pick-ups sucked so I replaced them with humbuckers

I would use it as a back up for my flying v 7-string but i would probonly just use my les pual custom instead for a back up.

i dealed with yamaha to see if they would adjust my tremelo and pick-ups for me and they were really nice a bout it and did it for me right away and i got it back in ten minutes.

If it were stolen the only reason i would be mad is because i lost those little humbuckers and overall (for all reaplacement parts and the guitar)730 frikin' bucks