How do we feel about Stratocasters and telecasters but from different vendors than Fender?
It seems there are really good brands competing with Fender, at least with American made and some touch the custom shops.
Great question...
It depends on what type of guitar you're after. There's different versions of Fender guitars over the years. Some rough buckets:
Vintage - trying to recreate the original guitars from the 50's and 60's...some of these are trying to perfectly replicate old guitars that have been played for years, others trying to make what they would have been off the rack, and some that are a hybrid of vintage and modern designs. Old guitars typically had things like lower output pickups, fewer bells and whistles, more rounded fretboards, smaller fret wire, slotted tuners, etc.
Modern - classic shape guitars that have improvements or features that players tend to like today...things like 2 point tremolos instead of 6 screw, hotter or noiseless pickups, flatter fretboards, bigger fret wire, etc.
Hot Rod - guitars that stretch out past classic designs, often inspired by the type of modifications Eddie Van Halen did back in the day...things like high output humbuckers instead of single coils, floating tremolos, flat or compound radius fretboards, stainless steel fret wire, locking tuners, different body shapes.
I think if you're after a classic Fender guitar, I would start with a Fender. It will hold value better than other brands and you can often modify them pretty easily if you want. So you could do something like get a Fender Player model and then over time do things like add locking tuners, better quality pickups, upgrade the bridge, etc. Same thing if you like vintage style Fenders, may as well start with the vintage models they offer.
If you're after a hot rodded version that changes the formula, then you want to look outside Fender. Schecter is a good one with the Nick Johnston model, Charvel has tons of hot rodded Fender style guitars (Charvel has the same parent company so they share parts and designs), G&L has some interesting models (that was founded by Leo Fender after he sold Fender guitars).
And then if you have a big budget, like $2500+, you would want to look at boutique builders. Options like K-Line, Suhr, honestly too many to list out.
