R
Insane bang for the buck, perfect body and neck, ideal project base
This should be either considered a project guitar or just a toy to mess around with, but not a final product for studio sessions or live performances as is.
However, the fretboard is near perfect, the D profile neck is very comfortable and the body is pretty decent, and those are the most important parts as swapping either would not seem reasonable.
The passive humbuckers are trash (at least for playing on the low strings), pure mud, but the shape is fortunately exactly the same as an EMG 808 or a Fishman Fluence 8 soapbox and there is enough space for a 9V battery under the hood to go active without too much hassle.
The bundled string set was clearly not meant for a multiscale guitar (the tensions are all over the place) and the thickest 0.065 gauge is laughably light for F#1 (even more so for E1) considering the 27" scale. Best set I found to swap to is the .strandberg* Boden Optimized Strings 8, very uniform tension - around 14 lbs for the thin end and 17 lbs for the thick end when tuning to drop E1 (EBEADGBE) according to the string tension calculators - and the total tension is pretty much same as the original, so the neck doesn't have to be adjusted too much in theory.
The tuners are not great, but I'll give them a chance and maybe stick with them if they seem manageable in the long term. Worst case scenario, they can be swapped for something better.
The bridge saddles have a lot of overhead so tuning the octaves shouldn't be an issue and the strings go through the body, which is nice but also a potential issue for thicker string clearance.
The nut needs some fine-tuning (especially when swapping to a heavier string set), but doesn't need to be replaced necessarily.
There are some minor factory dents and scratches, so maybe not the best guitar to put behind glass...
I'm also missing the double dot for the 12th frets from the top of the fretboard (the side has it), but that's beyond nitpicking.
Unfortunately the initial setup was appalling (the bridge pickup laying at an angle, the bridge saddles were not tuned, the strings were hitting the pickups etc.), but it shouldn't matter that much when swapping pickups and strings anyway...
tl;dr:
- swap passive pickups to active ones like EMG 808(X) or Fishman Fluence Modern/Tosin Abasi 8-string (a set of these cost more than the guitar itself, which is a bit silly)
- swap strings to .strandberg* Boden Optimized Strings 8 or similar
- maybe swap the tuners for locking ones?
The end product should be a very usable mid-range 8 string multiscale axe for nearly half price compared to the cheapest alternatives!
However, the fretboard is near perfect, the D profile neck is very comfortable and the body is pretty decent, and those are the most important parts as swapping either would not seem reasonable.
The passive humbuckers are trash (at least for playing on the low strings), pure mud, but the shape is fortunately exactly the same as an EMG 808 or a Fishman Fluence 8 soapbox and there is enough space for a 9V battery under the hood to go active without too much hassle.
The bundled string set was clearly not meant for a multiscale guitar (the tensions are all over the place) and the thickest 0.065 gauge is laughably light for F#1 (even more so for E1) considering the 27" scale. Best set I found to swap to is the .strandberg* Boden Optimized Strings 8, very uniform tension - around 14 lbs for the thin end and 17 lbs for the thick end when tuning to drop E1 (EBEADGBE) according to the string tension calculators - and the total tension is pretty much same as the original, so the neck doesn't have to be adjusted too much in theory.
The tuners are not great, but I'll give them a chance and maybe stick with them if they seem manageable in the long term. Worst case scenario, they can be swapped for something better.
The bridge saddles have a lot of overhead so tuning the octaves shouldn't be an issue and the strings go through the body, which is nice but also a potential issue for thicker string clearance.
The nut needs some fine-tuning (especially when swapping to a heavier string set), but doesn't need to be replaced necessarily.
There are some minor factory dents and scratches, so maybe not the best guitar to put behind glass...
I'm also missing the double dot for the 12th frets from the top of the fretboard (the side has it), but that's beyond nitpicking.
Unfortunately the initial setup was appalling (the bridge pickup laying at an angle, the bridge saddles were not tuned, the strings were hitting the pickups etc.), but it shouldn't matter that much when swapping pickups and strings anyway...
tl;dr:
- swap passive pickups to active ones like EMG 808(X) or Fishman Fluence Modern/Tosin Abasi 8-string (a set of these cost more than the guitar itself, which is a bit silly)
- swap strings to .strandberg* Boden Optimized Strings 8 or similar
- maybe swap the tuners for locking ones?
The end product should be a very usable mid-range 8 string multiscale axe for nearly half price compared to the cheapest alternatives!
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