You didn't include Silver Creek, but I will....
I just received a Silver Creek T-170 and T-160 a week apart, and was really pleasantly surprised at the quality, tone, nicely book-matched tops, and overall playability of these instruments. These aren't the first I've owned and know about buyers' concerns re. lousy strings, poor tone, non-existent set-ups out of the box, and overall poor quality. I got to tell you, these two newest Silver Creeks have very decent strings, great tone, and very good playability. Sure, any new guitar is going to benefit from a set-up to meet the individual player's specific likes; but these two are extremely nice and playable right from Musicians Friend. If these two Silver Creeks are indication of what's coming out of China, we'll no longer have to qualify our praise with "for the money"....