I had a long dilemma not being able to choose between this guitar and Ibanez AZ242 but after reading countless reviews and watching countless demos I decided to buy the Charvel as many people said it's what they expected the AZ to be and I'm glad I did.
First thing when you take it out of the box is that it looks stunning. The wood is beautiful, the colour combination of the body, neck, pick ups and hardware is perfect. It's also pretty light compared to my other superstrat. It was also surprisingly well set up, at least for my taste. The strings are set quite low, making the guitar easy to play. There was a small fret-buzz on the A string between 4-6th fret but that was an easy thing to fix in few minutes.
The neck feels very comfortable to play. It's thin and smooth. Not a single sharp fret, they all feel well rounded which is great when you're going up and down the neck faster. The luminlay side dots are also a nice touch.
Locking tuners work exactly as expected. Tuning stability is really good even after long playing that includes using the tremolo quite often.
I'm really satisfied with how the pick ups sound. I tried them with two amplifiers so far and also with some plugins from NeuralDSP and they sounded awesome in call cases. The wiring combinations are a bit unusual for a HSS guitar without alter switch but you will still find a sound that you like.
The only thing that ruins the overall feel are the volume and tone knobs which are a bit off-center and not perfectly parallel with the body of the guitar so they "wobble" when you turn them but it's definitely not a deal breaker.
