Plebeians or guitar gods, we all have to start somewhere, and for Polyphia’s Tim Henson, that somewhere is a $150 Squier Strat.

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The guitarist recently sat down with Wired, where he fielded some of the internet’s most burning questions… like whether or not expensive guitars are, in fact, a scam.

“I personally do not think that expensive guitars are a scam,” Henson said (to the collective disappointment of pricey-guitar-denouncers worldwide). Though he does believe that “after a certain price point, that’s about as good as the guitar is going to get.”

“You can find really, really great guitars with what I call ‘mojo’. Those instruments just have a great feeling, you can find those for under $500,” he explained.

“The $1,000 to $1,500 mark is where you’re going to have a fairly intermediate— it’s gonna be a great guitar. And then after $2,000 and up is kind of where you’re going to find really well-crafted guitars and they’re intonated better.”

And when pressed about what makes a “good” guitar, besides comfort and playability, Henson once again referred to the magic word ‘mojo’.

“I guess that’s the feeling — how much it inspires you to create. How much it inspires you to play,” the guitarist explained. “My first guitar ever was a Squier Strat.”

“It’s $150, but it had a lot of mojo. It really made me want to pick it up and play it.”

“Other than that a guitar can be good if it’s built really well. And how well intonated the instrument can be… And that’s the thing — it could be a badly built guitar but still have mojo,” Henson concluded.

Check out the full interview below: