Babicz Guitars Octane OT-818TB-06-3SE

For those who have heard of this guitar here are the company specs:

icZ Acoustic system for increased dynamic response
Bound Continually Adjustable mahogany neck
Rosewood Torque Reducing Split Bridge (adjustable)
Rosewood String Retainer
3 SINGLE COIL PICK UPS
Solid Mahogany back and sides
Satin finish top and neck
Gloss finish back and sides
Black/white/black binding
1-11/16" nut width
25.5" fret scale length
14" body width
2-3/8" Body depth
Two-Way truss rod
Grover mini tuners
Chrome hardware
NuBone TM Nut
Babicz polished aluminum compensated Saddle
20 polished frets

Hard shell case with Babicz electric logo and comfort figure 8 handle

This is such a unique guitar do yourself a favor and go to the website and check it out there.

Now for my two cents. I like to give as much of an objective review as I can. What kills me is how people give such rave reviews on their new purchase skewed because I believe they can't come to terms that they really may not like everything about the guitar. There are just too many reviews here that show all 9's or 10's. C'mon folks! I have tried some of these guitars you call killer and you aren't all being honest enough! It would be interesting to see how many guitars are sitting in corners gathering dust after about a year. (I am thinking of a certain Taylor T5 of my own. That?s right- I bought into all the hype!)

And now to the Octane. I bought this guitar with the hopes of having a good acoustic piezo and as well a good electric tone. Like I said I became disenchanted with my T5. This guitar had at least some decent Seymour Duncan single coils in it. To my surprise when I received the guitar it did not have the LRBaggs piezo in it. I found out that was an option you have to pay extra for. Now tell me something, why in the world would you buy a guitar known for its "new acoustic technology" called the icZ Acoustic system and not have a piezo pickup in it by default? For crying out loud it has an acoustic bridge! But no.. mine came without. Needless to say I was disappointed. For the most part there is nothing really that special now about the guitar without the piezo option. I plugged it in anyway.

Now I have to view it as strictly a hollowbody electric which is how I am going to review it.

This would make for a really decent Jazz/Pop guitar. With that said it has an unusual feature for being able to adjust the string height practically on the fly as the Babicz guitars are known for. Now that's great if you plan to play some hard flatpicking on this guitar but as strictly an electric it is a useless feature as you will keep the action low likely 100 percent of the time.

I give a seven because there are no other real features that put this guitar above the other great hollowbody guitars out there.

I play contemporary Rock/Pop rhythm and some lead using a Fishman Loadbox and a Fender Twin. The pickups are genuine Seymour Duncan single coils and not the "Duncan Design" crap you see on some of the cheapo guitars. As such they sound like you would expect them to in a good mahogany hollowbody guitar. You get a good range of tonal choices with the 5 way switch. The Babicz website has sound clips that give a good representation of each pickup sound.

Again I give a seven as this guitar sounds better than most of the lower end hollowbodies, it is still a step or two below a good Gibson, Guild or PRS.

This guitar was made in Indonesia. As expected the QA is not the best.

The guitar needed to be set up. Adjusting action was easy of course but the neck was too straight and needed a slight truss adjustment to keep some buzzing down when you adjusted for really low action. The bridge as well needed adjustment to get optimal intonation as it was way off. It has an adjustable bridge that moves vertically across the soundboard to adjust intonation. It was a bit of a pain as you affect all strings at once and not individual strings.

The finish was good but there was some hazing on the surface as well as some what looked to be light water spots. It was nothing that a good buffing could not get out.

For the amount of money you would think Babicz would open these and clean and buff them out as well as set them up a bit. The average player who has not learned how to dink with adjustments enough will need to take it in to a guitar repair guy to have it set up properly.

I give this category a six. Again not extraordinary. I have seen a good Ibanez hollowbody setup better than this guitar.

Hardware is solid but the finish will likely not take much of a beating if used playing live all the time. It least that my first impression. I will never really find out as I am sending it back from hence it came.

3 year Warranty - I have never dealt with the company

Well not much to say here. If this guitar had a piezo pickup as I had wanted I may have looked at it from a different light. I still don?t think I would have kept it though unless it had an incredible acoustic sound plugged in (as I had hoped for). As a hollowbody electric it is not bad and it is better than some of the low end hollowbodies but for the money I'd go buy a Gibson, Guild or PRS.