It is a bang for the buck instrument, without a doubt. The body looks just stunning, it's got binding, a maple cap, coil splitting and other things that you won't find on any simmilarly priced instruments. There is however a catch...
I bought this as a "disposable" guitar for my studies abroad. When it arrived, i was quite surprised how different the veneer was to the ones on the photos. It was a lot darker, almost looked like a zebra pattern but nonetheless it was an interesting and appealing finish. Having played for a while, I was pleasantly surprised that the action was quite low, but soon I discovered a strong buzz on the first two frets, which meant that the first fret was lower than the others (which is a serious issue involving a lot of work as it needs to be replaced). Fortunately, Thomann took it back although it was unclear wheter to reapair it or replace it. Later they've sent me a new one which I didn't expect, but hey, as long as it works...
The second guitar had a very different looking veneer (more like the one from the photos) and played a bit different too (probablly better). There were also painting imperfections on the first one, which were now not present. All in all, it is a significantly better instrument and after a quick setup it was ready to go.
Later I had to put some graphite on the nut, as it was not very well cut and one string was going out of tune. After that everything was ok, but the tuning stability is still not the greatest (it might get better in the future, but having played the guitar for over a month I don't give it many chances).
The pickups are very, very bright compared to your standard Les Paul humbuckers which is nice for distorted sounds, but you won't get as much chunk and overall, I think I'll put in an SH4 from my other guitar as I prefer the sound a lot more (which is fine since the pickup costs about half as much as the entire guitar). When coil-split, the neck pickup actually sounds quite nice but the bridge one is a disaster... It's just too bright and bity, not very usable. I suggest you to try to rewire it to use the coil further from the bridge or just disconnect it from the split switch and not use it that way at all.
Speaking of coil splits, you get some pretty nice metal pot knobs on this guitar, which are easy to spin even with swetty fingers but pulling out the coil-split switch is very hard. The knobs are very smooth and slippery when moving up and down and it makes quick coil splitting (something I like to do a lot) almost impossible.
Now let's talk about the wood. The first guitars body was made out of about 3-4 pieces of wood. The second one was made out of two, like any other better-quality guitar. The maple cap is quite weird, It seems to be only about 5mm thick and some of the arch seems to be carved into the mahogany itself.
All in all, its a very nice guitar, very playable, maybe not the best-sounding but very good for the money anyway. What concerns me is the consistency of the craftsmanship. Having had two of these guitars, they felt and looked very different, so hopefully you'll get lucky and get one which looks and plays well. If something is wrong, then I'm sure that Thomann will help you out, so don't worry.
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