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This guitar had the worst fretjob I've ever had in 24 years of buying 20+ electric guitars across virtually all price ranges (I've never spent over $2300 on a guitar, but I have spent as little as $70 on crude vintage ones). I have a '65 Japanese Kent and a '73 Sakai-Mokko serviceman SG that smoke it, and needless to say any Squier or Epiphone I ever had blow it out of the water pretty cleanly. My SG Special Faded makes it look like a RAPIST by comparison.
The 2nd fret buzzed because the 3rd fret was too high under the wound strings, there was evidence of sprout (or just poor installation) of several frets at the treble side of the fingerboard and bending the high E provided a "scrapey" feel like they didn't finish the surface of the frets up at all on that side. I'm forced to doubt it was leveled at all, and the dress-job is lousy for consistency, with every fret edge on the treble side telling it's own violent or messy little story. This thing retails for $800. I bought an open-box one for $720. CA tax put it up to $773.
Apart from that the guitar played pretty nicely, surprisingly... it took me a few days to ditch the honeymoon vibes, it was weird. It sounded good, it felt good... it had a nicely-done graphtech nu-bone nut, the bigsby worked great with the TOM and the guitar had overall great tuning stability, the pickups and treble-bleed master volume were really cool, the neck shape was comfy, and having a maple neck and super bright pickups on an Epi 335-alike was really interesting... but the 2nd fret on the low E wouldn't sound properly and I didn't enjoy playing lead on it because of the rough feeling. Finding the workmanship issues just added insult to injury. It should've tipped me off that I didn't play it once on the 3rd day I owned it, but for some reason it was another 3 days before I thought about returning it, and another 2 until I started the process.
These things have an amazing reputation and people say "they feel more expensive than they are!" I'm calling bullshit on that because you can get an Epi G-400 and a spare Epi G-400 for less than this total. You can get pretty much any Squier you want, and most cool Epiphones for this sort of money. You should NEVER pay more than $200 for a guitar with fretwork like this, and if you do the guitar should be potentially worth a lot more if you can get it fixed. On a brand new FMIC import? Fuck the shit off. And the retailer I bought it from giving it a fake luthier checklist and warranty? Even worse, but convenient for return purposes. I was not aware they even sold imports with shit fretwork anymore... let alone Fender doing it with a brand like Gretsch and pricing it like it's a professional instrument. I'd be interested to know how many of these things are this bad and people are just excusing it here and there, I'm otherwise just one of the unluckiest Gretsch Electromatic customers of the past 3 years who uses the internet.
Anyway, had it for about 8 days and sending it back today, and even with a full refund I can't really justify replacing it... and also wouldn't want to. I no longer have any faith in the lower-tier Gretsches and will be gently asserting that Fender/Squier do make some overpriced dogshit guitars when they're told to from here on out.
Short of lucking into a free Electromatic with zero issues somehow in the future I'm not going to be budging on the "they're the worst instrument in their price range" point. Reminded me of reading sublimedo's review of an Eastwood guitar 10 years back or so. People can sing the praises of certain examples they've played all they want but if this is the sort of QC blunder that can occur, it's not a guitar I'd buy without trying in a shop first. I wanted this to work out so badly that I spent most of the week in denial about it having major issues (the worst of which I noticed the instant I unwrapped it and tuned it up last week, quickly convincing myself I'd get over it). I was like "uhh, that's pretty shabby but I bet you won't hear that fretwork-related buzz through the amp."
You heard it through the amp, guys. If anything, it somehow got louder through the amp.
I may be loosely committed to saving a fuckload of money and buying an MIJ Country Gentleman to cheer myself up.
Sorry so rude, I am sulking.
