tl;dr: This thing is impressive for the money, but if you're interested in getting one, be aware it has its caveats. It's heavy, the neck is extra chonky, and the string spacing is a bit narrow. Because of the reverse headstock and string through body, most baritone strings aren't long enough for the top two, so you'll either want to go with Bass VI strings, or cannibalize a Bass VI set to get the extra long .056 and .072 strings. Also, if it's like mine, it'll have a handful of quality issues you'll want to sort out before it can be a real player. Classic case of "you get what you pay for", but I knew that going in and sure had fun making it "mine".
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I actually had been eyeing these for a while, but with Gear4Music being a UK-based company, didn't want to spend the money on importing a £250 guitar of unknown quality. Apparently someone local to me did, though, so I scooped this up for cheap. The guy plasti dipped the pickguard, which doesn't look awful, but it is coming off near the neck pickup and on the edges, so I'll do something different eventually. As I got it:
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The price point to quality ratio shows in certain areas. Their website claims the fretboard is "oiled laurel", but I suspect it's some lighter wood, as what looked like dye could be seen on the binding. (Or maybe somebody used Sharpie in spots? I dunno.)
The inlays aren't very well fitted, and green glue had seeped out of the edges. It cleaned up OK though (last picture). The binding isn't Gibson-style, the frets go through it with the ends exposed, so fixing that was the same as if it had no binding.
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I first shimmed the neck pocket, thinking it'd lower the action in higher frets and allow me to raise the bridge. Sure, it did, but then it actually WAS unplayable due to the strings hitting the first few frets. No amount of truss rod adjustment could fix that. The nut is cut WAY too deep on the bass side. I had no replacement that'd work...it's got Fender string spacing, I think? But being a slanted headstock, it's not a Fender-style nut, in that it doesn't go in a slot. It sits on the headstock and butts up to the fretboard. So I took it off and shimmed it. Then I had to shim the neck pocket even more, and adjust the truss rod again.
The price also shows in how it sounds plugged in. The factory pickups just don't work well for tunings that low. No clarity, especially with gain. So I swapped in a set of GFS Fat Pats I've had laying around. Decided to give it a bit of a makeover to match. Haven't decided if I want to keep the amber top hat knobs or go with black witch hats.
Finished product (for now). Whenever I do something about the pickguard I might change things up. The Fat Pats are definitely an improvement, but IMO still not ideal for this tuning. If anyone has suggestions on humbuckers that work well for B or lower tuning, I'm all ears. All eyes?
