Rogue ST-4 Reviews 5

I got it from Musicians Friend for $90, since it is my first guitar,I didn't want to waste money on it in case that I didn't like it.

For $90 you can't get anything like this from any other company. I've played the Squier Fat Strat, the equivilant of my guitar, and mine sounds better, with 2 single coils, which are good for clean sounds, or light distortion and a humbucker that gets a great heavy distortion out with the use of my Ibanez Smash Box pedal. Also it is thin and very light, while the level up (Squier) is thicker and much heavier. I move a lot while playing so the lightness is a good thing.

There are a few problems with this guitar, which is expected for only $90. One is with lighter gauge strings 9-42 the first 3 frets buzzed badly. I put a set of 10-46 strings on, and this problem went away, I also tightened the truss rod a bit and now there is no more buzzing. Second, the tone knobs have no fine control, you can either get a very bassy sound with no high end, or a strong sound which sounds much better, but can not be fine tuned. The guitar also falls out of tune after playing hard for about 45 minutes. Other than that, it is a great guitar.

I believe that it is made of plywood, because I can't think of anything that could be that light. The neck is a bolt-on with 4 bolts, which is effective.

For a starters guitar, go with the Rogue instead of a Squier, the Squier will cost you 2 and a half times as much, and sounds pretty much the same. If you are advanced, you could buy it, upgrade it, or smash it because of the price.

Greg Yeager rated this unit 5 on 2002-03-29.

I bought it from musiciansfriend and it cost 110 dollars at the time I bought it. I think it was well worth the money for a starter guitar. I look forward to buying more guitars from fender. I would definately buy from musiciansfriend again.

The neck joint is solid, I detected no rattling when I got the guitar the pickups work great. The volume knob is ok from 3-10 the tone knobs I don't think work but Then again I just started playing 5-6 months ago. I love the flawless paint job. The fine craftmanship. Plus for a guitar of this quality and craftmanship at the local store in town would have cost atleast 300 dollars.

Nothing really I guess except for the aformentioned tone knobs. Other than that I'm perfectly happy with it.

As I stated before the quality and craftmanship definately A+ I loved how well it was built and the paint job was superb.

This unit was very well put together for the price and the craftmanship. This was more than I thought possible for the price range. It was definately money well spent. I would recommend it for anyone wanting to learn the electric guitar.

Richard A. Baker rated this unit 5 on 2001-06-27.

I got this guitar from Musician's Friend for a mere $70.00. I'm basically a beginning guitarist, and was looking for a cheap electric, since I wanted something I wouldn't feel bad about plastering with stickers, banging in to walls, taking apart, setting on fire, etc. Er... all in the name of 'practice', of course.

It's a pretty standard Strat clone, with two single coil pickups and a humbucker. It has a couple nice bells and whistles, like a tremolo system, two tone controls, five way selector switch, basically everything you'd get out of a Fender Standard Fat Strat, only cheaper. Considering it's priced like a toy, this guitar is phenominal. I'm not saying it's without faults, obviously, but it's well worth the money. It handles everything I've thrown at it nicely, which is everything from hard rock to bluegrass. Well, I haven't subjected it to that much bluegrass. The humbucker gives it a nice twang for country stuff, and takes quite nicely to most distortion. The single-coils are pretty much your standard-sounding, somewhat buzzy Strat pickups. The neck is fast enough for most of the stuff I've tried. I'm not a speed demon by any stretch, though. Then again, if you're a hotshot lead guitarist, you're probably not interested in a $70 stratoclone.

Well, nothing's perfect, the guitar has a considerable weakness in it's tuners. It can handle about an hour of play before it gets noticably out of tune, assuming you're just playing. But one whammybar nosedive is all it takes to throw it totally out of tune. Interestingly, As you play, the low-E string gets higher... It's buzzy on the first, third and fourth positions, but hey, it's a strat. What do you expect? And finally, it'd be worth $5.00 to grab a set of new strings. The ones it comes with aren't too fantastic, and I had one break right away. But that's a given with new guitars.

As near as I can tell, it's a plywood body. Nice finish (I got black). Points against for the lowsy tuners, but aside from that, it's a very sturdy little guitar. It's also a little thin, as is true of it's Squier brothers. It's also pretty light, I'm guessing largely because of it's plywood construction.

An almost perfect guitar, especially for the money. If you're looking for a practice guitar, here you go. If you feel so inclined, you can buy some locking tuners and improve it quite a bit, but that would almost double the cost of the guitar, so it's kind of a tossup. I think it's a great little guitar, and I think it actually sounds better than the next step or two up (Squier strats), so it may be worth it. If it were stolen, I'd hunt the guy down and hit him over the head with it. Or just buy another if he was, like, really big, or had a hook for a hand, or something. I'm quite happy with it.

Alex Steven Dixon rated this unit 4 on 2001-06-27.

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