I've been wanting a short scale offset guitar for a long time. Was just curious in short scale and vintage tremolo with floating TOM style bridge. Well, in terms of those, I am blown away! As I mid size human, I am loving a guitar like a strat but with a shorter neck and a brilliant weird tremolo.
It has an amazing color! My first order came in wrong color (sonic blue, i think) and I sent it back to get the surf green - just so beautiful with tortoise PG and the dark wood fretboard with block inlays and cream binding! As a piece of art, it is just lovely to look at.
Finish work is very good! Color is consistent everywhere on the body. Not very thick but not very thin either - I saw worse on american Fenders. I didn't notice any issue with the finish on the body or the neck. No scratches, dents, orange peel etc. Also very well polished! The tinted yellow color on the neck is almost matching my american 54 strat and 62 japan tele, both Fender - just a little darker. Awesome job!
Fretboard is extremely dry. I oiled it with Dr. Duck's AxWax 3 times in the last 3 months. Now it looks beautiful and the feel is also like a high quality fingerboard wood. Fret edges are clean thanks to binding I think. However, they are not polished at all and you can literally hear the friction between the fretwire and the strings. After polishing them and crowning, they are as good as any stardard fender fretwire - just okay.
The tuners are as good as any standard vintage tuners from Fender I think. They are holding the strings in tune very well - (1) after the nut is filed and polished well.
PUs sounds amazing. They are powerful/hot enough for amazing crunch, fuzz or distortion tones but crispy clean or slightly overdriven tones as well. I opened the hole body and all potentiometers are Japan (might be Korean as well :/) made Alpha which is one of the best alternatives to Bourns or CTS. No noise or whatsoever on the pots, action and built quality is solid. However, the solder joints on the switches were cold and the neck pickup's hot wire's solder joint was broken. I needed to redo the solder work on those joints.
Mustang style bridge saddles are amazing! (2) after achieving some angle on the neck pocket with a shim*. *When I disassembled the neck, I realized there's already a shim, but a very bad one (a piece of sand paper). So, I made my own shims from maple veneers and increased the neck joint angle like an archtop body guitar (well, not that much of course). Then raised the bridge to have enough string tension on the saddles. A lot of people complains about the moving saddles. The trick is the neck angle and enough height on the floating bridge. :)
The original tremolo is a decent one, but built quality is not that good. One needs to open it up, sand and round the edges on the moving/touching parts of the mechanism. (3) I upgraded the tremolo with an American vintage one from Thomann. Plus, it has a locking button to avoid back action.
After doing the modes (as listed above), spending extra 100-150 euros for the tremolo and the arm, you can make this guitar sound as good as an american model, even better if you use/make full-pocket shims as I did. Offset guitars are not easy to set correctly, keep in tune, etc. However, when the neck angle and bridge height is right, you have an instrument you can't get enough of on your hands. It plays and looks like an american vintage jag. If you know your ways around shimming the neck, fret polishing, sanding, etc. Like tinkering, working hand tools... This is one of the best offset guitars you can get for this price, I am sure of it.
However, if you just want a guitar that you can order, pick and play, this might not be the right one for you.
