INGD #5!

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I decided to treat myself to a new guitar based on all the hard work I did earlier in the year.

Unfortunately, guitars 1,2,3, and 4 all had issues, which messed with my head. I did not intend to buy and return four guitars. There has been alot of wasted time and effort, although I did learn some things. I'm actually gun shy now and expecting there to be issues with guitars I buy.

1. Jackson JS34 (MF, but they shipped it from a local GC)- I really liked this for a $250 guitar. It had a really nice playing neck. Resonant lightweight poplar that would have been fun to mess with. Sadly, one of the trem posts was leaning over at an angle and no chance of any tuning stability. If the trem was installed properly I would have kept this guitar and stopped here.

2. Jackson SL3X DX (ProAudioStar)- $900 ($500 deal open box new) cool looking Chinese Jackson with crackle finish. It had a really light colored laurel fingerboard that was meh. The neck was absolutely fucked on this guitar. With one side of the neck straight, the other side had 1.5mm of back bow. No inspection stickers, I thought this was a grey market B-stock.

3. Jackson SL3X DX (MF)- Another cool $900 crackle. This guitar had a nice dark laurel fingerboard that could have passed for rosewood. Unfortunately, the bridge/neck alignment was wrong, with the high E string right at the fret ends. When fretting notes they would fall off the board. Even without this issue, the neck was kinda fucked. No inspection stickers. I realized that Fender is selling junky chinese guitars for close to a grand without doing any inspection. Never buying a Fender/Jackson/Charvel again based on this.

4. LTD M-1 Custom (TheMusicFarm)- Got a good deal from local music store, free shipping, no tax. This was a quality guitar except that the trem was installed with the posts leaning back 5-10*. The trem block was closer to the back of the cavity than the front, and the bar moved about an inch before it clunked into the body wood. Wtf. This guitar didn't have an inspection sticker either. This store took return and intended to get me a replacement direct from ESP, but the only guitar they offered me was B-stock with binding defect, not new. I think they were clowning me and trying to sell b-stock as new. They refunded me and acted like they didn't know there was a problem.

5. ???? I took off a couple weeks from the search. At this point, my excitement has waned after being burned so many times. Expecting to be burned again, but there is another guitar coming in the mail. What started as a $250 purchase has become more each time.
 
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Eh, don't be cynical... :nono:

End of the day ..shit happens. So you got burned. But things could be worse .

At least you got your money back every time and have another guitar heading your way. Maybe this was the universe's way of saying "don't buy the shitty poplar Jackson son...you deserve better" :laugh2:

Axe # 5 could very well be the guitar of your dreams :bigthumb:
 
Fedex made a stealth drop off this morning before the expected delivery time. We don't need no signature!


IMG20231004092838.jpg
 
Its another purple M1 custom. This guitar is a fucking mess. Another bridge problem.

The neck of this guitar is not in the same plane as the body. You can see that the neck is "twisted" at the joint with the body; the bass side is considerably higher. I have no idea how/why they would build it this way.

As a result, the trem is also not in the plane of the body. The bass side of the Floyd has tons of adjustment range, the treble side is almost bottomed out. The action as they shipped it is 1.8mm treble side and 1.7mm bass side, and would need to come down .6mm treble side and .2mm bass side.

If the action was set properly the tilt would be even more pronounced. Its obvious that they set the treble side action higher than the bass side to help make the issue less pronounced.


Furthermore:
* Minor ding on point of headstock
* Someone monkeyed with the trem height adjustment while under tension, the posts are pretty deeply scored.

Thanks for nothing Sweetwater!
 
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is there no local shop where you can go put your hands on something before you bring it home?
 
This is with action set 1.3mm treble, 1.5mm bass side. Furthermore, because the trem is angled so much to the side, the knife edges are not perpendicular with the posts which is going to hurt return to zero. I hope you can see the problem. This is not acceptable for a $1200 guitar.

Ideally the action would come down .1mm on each side, but I'm not going to mess with it. Already have the return label.



IMG20231004105742.jpg IMG20231004105752.jpg IMG20231004105802.jpg
 
jeremy said:
is there no local shop where you can go put your hands on something before you bring it home?
Click to expand...

I will have to do it the old fashioned way, I suppose.

During the pandemic, I got two really good LTD guitars sight unseen. 2 for 2.

Recently I am 0 for 5. This is not right. They must be sending their garbage B-stock guitars to the USA. Or as I mentioned in another thread, all the good guitars have been filtered out; they are just attempting to keep reselling returned guitars to some sucker.

I expected better from Sweetwater. It did appear that this guitar was a previous return.
 
This guitar is gone. I spent even less time with this one, but it was still a complete fucking waste of my time.

That sideways angle you see the trem at? That is the angle that the fretboard has coming into the body.

When I was talking to the "sales engineer", I said I wanted to buy it but I needed some specific questions answered about it. They gave me the stock line "we have a 55 point inspection process that will catch anything out of the ordinary." And he said, "its in our warehouse, I don't have it here, I'm not sure if we could do that right now." Then he sent me a quote for roughly 15% off and said to call back if I wanted it.

I had concerns about the alignment of the strings based on the pics. There was something that looked a bit "picasso" about it, like the strings weren't aligned and they were using trick photography to line everything up. Of course, if he had it in his hands the second question I would have asked is about the action and how much back pull clearance there is on the trem. If they had just taken five minutes to answer my questions, we could have avoided this BS. (And yes, the strings aren't particularly well aligned with the neck either.)

Its obvious the guitar had been opened three or more times. The initial unboxing at their warehouse, then two other sets of packing tape. So they are trying to resell this defective guitar. Incidentally there was no candy or catalog in the box.


In hindsight, they were being evasive about questions I had about the guitar when I called to buy it. I should have listened to my intuition, but everyone says Sweetwater is "the best". BS. Then later when I called to get a return label, they gave me BS script like "a plek job can often fix issues like this" and "well, the 55 point inpection is different based on the price of the guitar. If we sent back every guitar to the manufacturer that wasn't perfect, we'd go out of business."

Sweetwater has lost all future business from me. They are just grubby clowns trying to make a buck. I don't need a "friend" or a "sales engineer". I just need them to be honest and sell me a non-defective item. Their whole schtick is pretending to screen the guitars and make sure they are good before they get to the customer. That is total BS. At least the other places are not pretending.

Just as a side note, this is the kind of weird shit that a plek machine can do to a guitar if its operated by a monkey. Never trust a pack of monkeys with a plek machine.
 
Wow, that's some serious bad luck. Only buy what you can put your hands and eyes on, I guess. I only got burnt once with a guitar through the mail, a private seller through Reverb. But everything else was great.
Are there any local dealers? What's your next step?
 
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