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Hatsubai « Strat for the metal guys »
Published on 09/17/11 at 18:20This is a bit of a lower quality guitar that Fender released to help appease those who want a Floyd on their strat. The problem is that these guitars don't meet the quality that the old school Classic Floyd Rose series guitars used to have. The guitar features an alder body, a maple neck, 22 frets, dot inlays, licensed floyd rose tremolo, two humbucker configuration, one volume, two tones and a three way switch.
UTILIZATION
The frets on this needed some work. The ends were sharp, first of all. When moving your hand up and down the neck, you could feel them kinda dig into your hand, and it was fairly uncomfortable. The frets themselves also weren't perfectly level. I was having some issues getting the action I wanted without some fretting out in certain areas. The rounder radius wasn't doing the guitar any favors, either. The neck joint on this wasn't the tightest thing in the world, but there were no huge neck joint gaps, so no big issues in that aspect. The finish itself was pretty solid, although I wish the back of the neck had a nicer finish on it. The floyd on this is not the best in the world, and you'll benefit from replacing it with a real one.
SOUNDS
The pickups in this are pretty bland. The bridge sounded a bit muffled, and it wasn't what I was looking for in a bridge pickup. The neck was also the same way. That's the biggest issue with these lower quality guitars. They tend to have really cheap pickups in them, and you'll be spending extra money to help improve the guitar when it should have been better from the factory. If it were me, I'd probably put in some EMGs or something in this. You might need to modify the pickguard for the EMGs, so keep that in mind.
OVERALL OPINION
The guitar is decent, but it's not really worth it thanks to the LTD guitars on the used market. You can get a very solid LTD guitar for just as much money as this, and it'll be way better and more consistent than this. On top of that, the higher end models include real pickups, so you don't even have to take the time and spend the money to replace them. It's an average guitar, and there are better options out there in this price range.
UTILIZATION
The frets on this needed some work. The ends were sharp, first of all. When moving your hand up and down the neck, you could feel them kinda dig into your hand, and it was fairly uncomfortable. The frets themselves also weren't perfectly level. I was having some issues getting the action I wanted without some fretting out in certain areas. The rounder radius wasn't doing the guitar any favors, either. The neck joint on this wasn't the tightest thing in the world, but there were no huge neck joint gaps, so no big issues in that aspect. The finish itself was pretty solid, although I wish the back of the neck had a nicer finish on it. The floyd on this is not the best in the world, and you'll benefit from replacing it with a real one.
SOUNDS
The pickups in this are pretty bland. The bridge sounded a bit muffled, and it wasn't what I was looking for in a bridge pickup. The neck was also the same way. That's the biggest issue with these lower quality guitars. They tend to have really cheap pickups in them, and you'll be spending extra money to help improve the guitar when it should have been better from the factory. If it were me, I'd probably put in some EMGs or something in this. You might need to modify the pickguard for the EMGs, so keep that in mind.
OVERALL OPINION
The guitar is decent, but it's not really worth it thanks to the LTD guitars on the used market. You can get a very solid LTD guitar for just as much money as this, and it'll be way better and more consistent than this. On top of that, the higher end models include real pickups, so you don't even have to take the time and spend the money to replace them. It's an average guitar, and there are better options out there in this price range.