For the price, this guitar is brilliant. I was really surprised when I got it, it played straight out of the box and the active pickups sounded better than I was expecting.
Firstly, the guitar was already in tune and didn't need any tweaking when I got it, the action was okay and the truss rod didn't need tightening. It seemed to play well straight away. The matte finish on the guitar is nice and is relatively easy to clean, overall the paint job on the guitar is very good, however there are some blemishes and you can see where some of the finish has leaked into the binding, but this is a small problem.
The guitar has great playability and the neck is quite slim, it also has great sustain and you can hold notes for a very long time, even when not using an amplifier the sound just travels. The active pickups are very nice, i was going to change them as soon as I got the guitar but after hearing them i decided not to bother. The pickups are very aggressive and have a lot of bottom end, as well as being able to easily hit the high notes. There is not a lot of feedback from them not in comparison to other pickups I have used, and you have to bear in mind they are high output as well. They are perfect for Heavy metal and Hard rock.
The Tuners are okay they are not great but they will get the job done. They have a tendency to lose tune but this is only after 30 minutes of vigorous practise and is not a major problem. The pots again , they are okay but they feel a bit cheap and there does not seem to be much of a difference in volume as you tun the volume down. It is as if there is only off and on, I don't really find it a problem as if I wanted to change the volume I would do it on my amp, its just slightly annoying. The gold hardware looks quite nice and makes the guitar look more classy. The toggle switch is very good and it has good resistance when changing position which I like. Finally I would definitely recommend this guitar, for the price its a good idea, there are just a few little problems which wont really affect the guitar. On the plus side you get nice things liek the flag inlays and the active pickups.