Stratocaster Clones Blind Test: Can you guess?

Hello everyone, I would like to share a video that I made back in the day to compare 4 different Stratocaster clones side by side from different companies and organise a competition for our customers. I believe you will also enjoy this Stratocaster Clones Blind Test video and will be surprised at how these entry-level guitars sound in comparison to each other.

The guitars were Squier by Fender Bullet Strat, Jay Turser JT-300, SX SST-57 and Stagg S300. All of them were recorded by me using the same riff and a Marshall JVM 205C guitar amp microphoned with a Shure SM57. Please listen and then see the full video for the correct order of guitars.

Stratocaster Clones Blind Test (no talking)

Correct Answers

Before I provide you with the correct order of guitars and reveal the original video featuring longer takes on each guitar and on each pickup position, I would like to mention a couple of points regarding these guitars.

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My regular readers here may already know that I really dislike the Stagg brand and how they approach manufacturing and quality assurance while making guitars. Please see it yourself in action!

Stratocaster Clones Reveal Video (no talking)

Out of these four brands, I personally really like Squier Bullet Strat and SX SST57, then I would say Jay Turser JT-300 and of course, Stagg S300 as in the last place in terms of playability and build quality at this price level.

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You should also be aware of the fact that I’m a big fan of SX Guitars and used to own an SX SST62 Stratocaster.

However, in this particular video, I played an SST57 version which is basically a 50’s Strat clone.

During my service in the musical instruments industry, I almost played every single Stratocaster by Fender (USA and Mexico), Squier (Almost all series) and also many Strat clones made by other brands.

So my opinion is purely personal and based on real-life experience. I never liked 50’s style Strats or Teles as they always felt very rough on my hands due to neck profiles and also the pickups. On other hand, I really like 60’s style Strats and I believe it’s built for me 🙂

There’s an interesting point here about SX Guitars. I think they were so successful in being able to build clones that whenever I had a Fender or Squier 50’s Strat and an SX 50’s Strat clone, I immediately dislike them both (again, this is my personal choice, these guitars are great!).

So if I had to list them according to my taste, the Squier Bullet Strat would be my first choice, then the SX SST57.

I must say that even though I was importing Jay Turser guitars for Turkey when I was working in my 2nd job in the industry, I didn’t really like every guitar they built. So I would put Jay Turser JT300 in third place and obviously the Stagg in last place…

Please carefully watch this video and see how Stagg sounds and feels. I think it’s a piece of .hit! Sorry Stagg, don’t make guitars!

If you want to know more about my opinions on a Stagg S250, please see my brutally honest review here.

Answers

Here is the correct order of guitars in the first video!

1. SX SS5757
2. Stagg S300
3. Squier by Fender Bullet Stratocaster
4. Jay Turser JT300

Did you manage to guess the guitars in the correct order? Let me know! I hope this has been an entertaining piece of content as well as an insightful one! Thanks for visiting my blog and supporting me so far! I will hopefully see you in the next review here!

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