I bought this guitar for frequent live use (8 - 12 gigs per month) in a band that plays a wide range of styles and which requires rhythm and lead playing.
As far as a performance machine, it is one of the best guitars I have ever owned. The neck is very easy to navigate, the 7/8ths size body is very manageable to have hanging off you for two hours and the hardware that comes as standard is brilliant - I thought the trem system would be crap but it really is not that far of a Floyd system, I was surprised at its stability and the locking tuners are a great addition. The nut is nice and the low resistance pots make swells easy. Something not mentioned in the description is that the thumb side fret markers are glow in the dark which is very helpful for performing on dark stages. Visually it is also quite striking, the white/gold combo works well and is eye catching. I love playing the thing - the single coils are slightly noisy (but still not as bad as some strats I've had) and required some adjustments to equalise output with the other single and the humbucker - which sounds beefy and sends a pretty hot signal.
Now, the negatives. I gave the truss rod a quick adjustment when it arrived I could swear I could feel the action creeping higher over the next few gigs. But I put it out of my mind. Two weeks after it arrived, I started to notice the jack input was failing - audio was cutting off and the guitar was buzzing. I tightened the tension arm in the input but it didn't fix anything. I brought the unit to a luthier who replaced the jack input (with a TRS input - good change as it clamps the lead in place) and while they were working on it they found the neck was never bolted on properly from the factory. This had been why the action was creeping higher - the neck was bowing gradually because the bolts weren't seated. These two failures (the jack and neck bolts) really threw me - if you are paying over a grand for a guitar you would think some basic QA checks were done.
Thomann in fairness to them covered the cost of these repairs to be done locally as well as the cost of a full setup.
With these changes made, I cannot recommend this guitar highly enough. I would also hope Charvel have their shit together and this is a rare once off QA failure.
