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(More customer reviews)I've only owned this guitar for a couple of days, so this review is based on the condition of the guitar when I received it and it's current playability. I may do a follow up about any long term issues.
First thing, this review is based on a guitar I bought here at Amazon for less than half of the currently listed price. I saw the guitar had been heavily reduced and took a chance. In fact, right after my purchase, the guitar went back up to its current price. So it is possible that the guitars listed at full price are of a higher quality than the one I bought although there was no mention of the guitar being 'B' stock or otherwise substandard from a new guitar. Also, the guitar came from UPS in a single box that I know guitar companies use when they ship the guitars in bulk inside another box. I can't really mark this against the guitar; this is Amazon's issue. A guitar should always be double boxed when shipped. The guitar did arrive undamaged, however.
It looked very nice right out of the box and I saw no immediate issues when I first looked it over. The maple top was nicely flamed, although I'm sure it's some very thin veneer. The body, as seen from the back, showed three fairly well matched pieces although I'm not sure of the wood type. I read a review at another site where someone said it was Alder, or probably some Asian variation of that wood. The neck was straight and there was actually a little flame in a couple of places on the back.
Then I found the big problem with this guitar. I immediately noticed that there were sharp edges on the frets. I ran my finger along the bottom of the fretboard and when I looked at the tips of my index finger, I found a bunch of micro-cuts! The cuts were very shallow, and I didn't feel them, but there they were. I've owned over forty guitars and never had one with such poorly finished frets. I could see little sharp edges at the bottom of the frets where they had been nipped off and not properly filed away. The side edges of the fret ends had also been minimally finished. Then I checked for high frets and found three: the second, seventh and thirteenth frets were all high.
I contemplated sending the guitar right back, but decided to deal with the frets myself. I have the tools for doing a fret job and have done them before on cheap guitars, but never had the quite the challenge as the frets on this guitar. So I cleaned up the ends of the frets, leveled them, recrowned, then used emory cloth and steel wool to polish them. I did a little work on all of the frets, so the whole job took about three hours. I honestly like doing this kind of hand work so I didn't really mind. I'm sure someone else would want to take the guitar into their local luthier to have this work done.
At this point, I still hadn't even plugged the guitar in (which might have been foolish). So I put on new strings, lowered the action, which was incredibly high, probably because of the high frets, and then tuned it up. I was able to get the action down to 3/64" on the treble and 4/64" on the bass, which is really quite good, showing that the neck itself is true. The neck is fairly thin and the fretboard doesn't have much of a radius, but I liked the way it played. After adjusting the pickup height, I found the pickups to sound much better than I expected. The treble pickup was clear and not fuzzy and had a nice touch of the 'ice pick' tone that tele treble pickups are known for. The neck humbucker was very warm, if a little bit muddy and I got a nice mellow jazzy sound out of it and even a little blues growl when I turned up the gain. In the middle position, I could actually hear the two combined, the warmth of the humbucker with the slightly piercing tone of the single coil.
I like this guitar now that I've done the fret job and tune up. It sounds and plays much better than I expected. I may replace pickups and electronics down the road if the guitar proves to be a keep, but it's OK now. I did find a couple of other small issues in that there were a couple of slightly mottled areas on the edge of the body and the headstock where it looked like the stain had not been applied correctly before the poly finish was put on. They are very light and hardly noticeable. A bigger flaw is that the neck plate on the back of the guitar was put on crooked. I didn't remove the neck when I did the fret job, so I don't know if it's something that could be easily fixed, but it really doesn't bother me that much. Otherwise the rest of the guitar has a pretty good fit and finish.
To sum up, for the price I paid, I think I got a very good deal on a nice guitar. The poorly finished frets were annoying but now that I know that they've been finished properly, it doesn't seem like such a big deal. I would buy the guitar again, knowing how well it plays once it's set up, and I would probably feel that way if I'd payed the current price for it. Bottom line, it's a good cheap guitar and you may get one that has none of the fretboard issues I had since I speculate that this issue might have been known and the low price was to placate the person who bought one at this price and leave them money to have that fret job done. I'm hoping this review helps the next potential buyer of one of these guitars make an informed decision.
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