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MGR/Steve « Squier Bullet Strat »
Published on 10/02/04 at 15:00Bought new from a Music Shop in Abingdon for my 12 yr old son. Paid just over £100 and they threw in a Ritter bag, strap, plectrums and lead!
We tried ALL the budget guitars in the shop (Encore, Yamaha, etc.) and this one immediately stood out as soon as we picked it up.
Thin neck (good for youngsters), v. playable, nice action. Tone was thin but has character, unlike many other cheap guitars we tried.
No whammy bar and would have liked at least one humbucker. There is a bit of hum sometimes.
Here goes:
1. Jack socket keeps coming loose despite adding a locking washer.
2. The top E string had a nasty 'twang' sound which I traced to a bad slot in the nut. I redressed all the nut slots (which seemed a bit wide) by using a thin blade of a hacksaw and carefully angling it sloping towards the headstock so I did not reduce the slot depth at the front.
3. The neck was not at all curved so we got fret buzz. I slackened the truss rod quite a bit to fix it.
4. The neck pickup magnets do not allign with the strings and the middle one is slightly off too. The bridge pickup is angled so that is OK. This can't be adjusted and makes one wonder if they fitted the correct ones?
Apart from these annoyances, good quality finish and average h/w.
I got the feeling that this is a budget guitar because they don't bother to choose the best bits when they make it. It gets just any old nut, no adjustments to the neck, etc. and the hardware is not particularly the best. These probably get used on the Strats and better guitars that they make in the same factory.
The bottom line, I think, is that quality can vary and you may need to cherry pick or give it a bit of work to get it right (or ask the shop to do it for you, e.g. Regent Guitars will do this for free).
All in all, a very good starter guitar that is very playable with a great sound!
This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com
We tried ALL the budget guitars in the shop (Encore, Yamaha, etc.) and this one immediately stood out as soon as we picked it up.
Thin neck (good for youngsters), v. playable, nice action. Tone was thin but has character, unlike many other cheap guitars we tried.
No whammy bar and would have liked at least one humbucker. There is a bit of hum sometimes.
Here goes:
1. Jack socket keeps coming loose despite adding a locking washer.
2. The top E string had a nasty 'twang' sound which I traced to a bad slot in the nut. I redressed all the nut slots (which seemed a bit wide) by using a thin blade of a hacksaw and carefully angling it sloping towards the headstock so I did not reduce the slot depth at the front.
3. The neck was not at all curved so we got fret buzz. I slackened the truss rod quite a bit to fix it.
4. The neck pickup magnets do not allign with the strings and the middle one is slightly off too. The bridge pickup is angled so that is OK. This can't be adjusted and makes one wonder if they fitted the correct ones?
Apart from these annoyances, good quality finish and average h/w.
I got the feeling that this is a budget guitar because they don't bother to choose the best bits when they make it. It gets just any old nut, no adjustments to the neck, etc. and the hardware is not particularly the best. These probably get used on the Strats and better guitars that they make in the same factory.
The bottom line, I think, is that quality can vary and you may need to cherry pick or give it a bit of work to get it right (or ask the shop to do it for you, e.g. Regent Guitars will do this for free).
All in all, a very good starter guitar that is very playable with a great sound!
This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com