Oscar Schmidt guitars

[blackba]

I had never heard of Oscar Schmidt till fairly recently my new guitar student came with an Oscar Sschmidt acoustic. Then a buddy I played with came in with an OE30 electric (looks ES335ish). The OE30 sounded really good, which surprised me a bit since I expected the stock pickups to be kind of microphonic like I find most Epiphone pickups to me.

It looks like Oscar Schmidt has been around a long time, but I am not sure when Washburn bought them out. So anyone have an Oscar Schmidt or tried one?

http://www.oscarschmidt.com/products/electrics/

 

[1big1]

a friend of mine bought one a few years back. it was a 335 style. he's mostly a blues player. i have tried it a couple of times and thought that for the money it wasn't bad. iirc it seemed to play well enough and i don't recall any issues with it that jumped out at me. it had a laminated body.. top.. back and sides i believe.. and straight into the amp it had very usable blues tones.. bit was a bit dark for my tastes. another friend of mine has no older epi ae 250 that i could compare it to.. and other than the os being a bit darker i think the os had better build quality than the epi. the ae 250 is rather notorious for a collapsing neck pocket.. which i shimmed and repaired for him. will the os hold up better in that regard? time will tell i guess.

 

[marvcus]

Back in the late 90's I worked at a retail music store that sold Oscar Schmidt "classical" (used loosely) guitars, 1/2 and 3/4 size for under
$50 for a big Christmas push. They were horiffic and the tuners did not work, wouldn't stay in tune...basically they were toys, not instruments.

When I see "Oscar Schmidt" that's what I associate the name with -- toys not meant for real use. However, if they have a different line of gear above that, I would assume it is produced by Samick, who makes 80% of the world's guitars anyway.

 

[blackba]

Back in the late 90's I worked at a retail music store that sold Oscar Schmidt "classical" (used loosely) guitars, 1/2 and 3/4 size for under
$50 for a big Christmas push. They were horiffic and the tuners did not work, wouldn't stay in tune...basically they were toys, not instruments.

When I see "Oscar Schmidt" that's what I associate the name with -- toys not meant for real use. However, if they have a different line of gear above that, I would assume it is produced by Samick, who makes 80% of the world's guitars anyway.

I would assume that most of their higher priced models are produced by Samick as well. I had never heard of Oscar Schmidt until a few months ago.