"Rareelectricguitars.com"

[kingV]

Looks nice. I guess its probably Balsa wood! I like light guitars, but maybe not that light. I bet the Floyd is a terrible knock-off. What does it SOUND like?

I MIGHT go for the Concord. Always wanted a Jackson V with the side selector switch.

Whats Balsa wood?

It sound pretty good! Better than my expectations! It answers good to harmonics and stuff. I like the fretboard and neck. The frets are smaller than on a typical Jackson, more like a les paul.

Go for it, for the price its a good guitar I must say. I can recommend it.

[LaoWai]

could be basswood.. lucky it's even solid : )

[DonP]

Whats Balsa wood?

Balsa wood is used in flying model airplanes and rockets because it is very light weight.

But - balsa is also very expensive. Gibson used it for a short time in the late 1980s with their "Custom Lite" models to fill in the body after hollowing them out. Also used in some superstrat models like the US-1. But they always have a harder wood covering the balsa as balsa is very soft.

[xenophobe]

That actually looks pretty nice. I wonder how well it plays after a good setup...

[micha]

Can you tell what wood it is by this picture?

I bet it's cheapwood.
But it looks nice on the surface actually...

I'd try and see wether I'd be able to adjust the neck on my own. The Tech-section will help with that.
It's not I don't like shops, but if you start to replace tuners, trem, pots, pickups and let a pro do the fine tuning it will most likely cost more than the instrument is worth IMO.

But nice guitar anyway!
Glad it arrived and you like it.

[straycat]

Could be anything but I'm not looking up close at it.
If the add says mahogany its probably Luan which is an Asian form of a mahogany like wood.
It was widely used in the 70's by a lot of guitar makers in Asia.It tends to be light but not a bad tone wood at all.

[Whoopu2]

Maybe it's pine?

[xenophobe]

It was widely used in the 70's by a lot of guitar makers in Asia.It tends to be light but not a bad tone wood at all.

^ probably this.

Wood density can vary greatly just from what part of the log you get. And it can vary from tree to tree and by species.

They didn't rip him off by not sending a guitar, it's unlikely they would lie about wood selection. It's just the regional selection of wood that you're getting which may be vastly different than what you get here in the US.

[markD]

all-in-all for the price it seems to be a good looker. the size resembles my import FB-2s that i had...they were kind of like "dinky" firebirds. throw a floyd special on there, some decent tuners and decent electronics (i would hit GFS for that stuff, to keep the price down) and you could have a fun guitar!!!

hopefully it has a trussrod that can be adjusted!!

now i am REALLY considering nabbing a jersey star....

[Maiden89]

Looks pretty good! I mentioned this in another thread, but I'll mention it again. I had a friend that bought a chinese black/white striped Kramer 5150 for $200. I really liked the guitar too. The floyd was a joke, but the neck, humbucker, and tuners all worked fantastic. I would just buy a licensed floyd off ebay for $50 and it would make a great guitar.

After hearing that you received Firebird and it looks good, I might consider getting one of their kramer 5150's or a jersey star.

Please tell us how the neck setup went too...

[Hellraiser6502]

Maybe for the money it's cool, but the body and headstock shape and size are way off from a real Jackson.

The lower horn looks particularly goofy.

It's probably basswood if it's that light and basswood actually sounds pretty good.

I think it's a small miracle you actually got a guitar from them!

[kingV]

Thanks for all the answers. I've played for a couple of hours now and I'm really excited about it. Its got the look of my dream guitar for 10% of the money. This body shape is very comfy playing standing up.

I'm gonna give it a good setup, put the red rose on the headstock and use it as my main stage guitar from now on!

Yeah its weird how easy it all went. I got suspicious when I got a pay pal invoice from "[email protected]" haha.

[Devotee]

Nice score! I agree with Hellraiser though, the lower bout looks off and the headstock is a little off too but considering what you paid for it, who the fuck cares??

It might be initially suspicious, but Hotmail and other personal email addresses are used throughout a lot of East Asian countries as official business email addresses. At a job i was working some while ago i used to deal with contacts from advertising agencies and Chinese, Japanese and Korean contacts were using Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, etc. emails 85% of the time as their official corporate contact emails.

[charvfan]

I just recently came across the website and then this thread. King, how's it going with the guitar, how is it holding up?? I so badly want one of the bumblebee "Charvel" EVH guitars they have on there...

[ginsambo]

I'm impressed it worked out for you. I think it would be better to make one yourself though. Does the truss rod work? (Stupid question - almost all necks are from China these days...).

I wouldn't mind a custom Pearl inlay guitar from Vietnam thinking about it. Crazy firebird inlays all over the body.

I think the way to go about with these companies is set yourself up with a temporary website, although they are probably savvy and will research the number of hits, but whatever, communicate and act like you are prospecting to become a major importer of their gear, say you want only the best and offer them a flight over here in the future for a business meeting if all goes well with the sample products...name drop a few other major importers....and maybe communicate in Mandarin....or set yourself up as a representative stasi of the communist party and you are testing them to see if they deliver because China's international trade reputation is on the line....then you might get one that is mahogany

I was thinking about guitar sizes the other day actually, I thought to myself, if a Star with a 25.5" scale length looks good on Chris Holmes and he is 6'4", if I am 6' 1", what scale length would be best for me? Maybe it was made for your average Chinaman?