Alesis XGuitar

All X Guitars are black an all the same. And I am one of those who think that type of wood is not so important in this typ of gear. I have two of them . I will explain later the reason.
Nice finish on the 2004 version, but fret ends on the 2005 are a bit edgy and may need some attention.
Volume pots are different, as 2005 version has got a Tele style one, while the older one has a stnandar strato pot.
Pickups of the older one are much clearer, more powerful and better than the newest one. Both are overall very well done guitars for the price.

I am an acoustic player, so I don not need any of them, but I wanted to have a toy with effects to play with.
I use it with a Torres Modded Fender Champ 12 of 1991 with one 12AY7, and 1 12AT7 in the preamp.
Sound is very good with both guitars with effects OFF, although the oldest one sounds better. Nice and clear. As good as some 400??? guitars.

But effects are a big deception. And this is the reason I have 2 units of this guitar. First I bought a second hand one on Ebay but effects were too noisy, Lots of hiss and humm everywhere. So I thought it was a problem of the guitar. About one month later I bought a brand new one from a shop. It was so cheap that I could afford it.

Same noise, same hiss, same humm. The guitar is like that. No way to use it on stage. I was not expecting great effects, but this allien noise is unacceptable. I can not understand how none of the owners mention this hiss. It is everywhere. Always.

A 9 rating for the pickups, a 3 for the effects. So a 3 is fair.

Action and eveything was acceptable. Except fret ends on the second one.

well constructed

For the price. It is a bargain. Good to learn about effects.

Add on to my review below

My friend liked the Alesis X I bought so much he bought one from the same store. When it arrived and he asked me to check it out for him I could not believe the shape this guitar was shipped in! The fret ends were truly like razorblades! I actually was unable to play this guitar for fear of slicing my hands open, I'm not kidding even a bit...this was the worst I've ever seen a guitar delivered in 30+ years.

On top of that the neck had a very serious back bow. I loosened the truss rod 2 1/2 turns put the guitar over my knee and the best I could get was a straight neck, zero relief.

One and one half hours of filing the fret ends, tweaking the neck and doing a setup to even make the guitar playable. Very disappointing considering the good shape my Alesis X arrived in. This tells me at this price, 8th Street Music is moving these guitars so fast they are not even bothering to look at them from the factory let alone set them up.

Still a great guitar for the price, but if you are not able to do setups and file frets expect to add about 60 bucks to the price to have it done professionally. Price has also gone up 10 bucks since I bought my Alesis in mid January 07.

Built in guitar effects processing, tuner, whammy bar, H/S/S pickup config, this thing is packed with features. The bridge is a vintage strat type set up for dive bomb only, so it stays in tune well, tuners seem decent too. Strat style body/neck. Neck is a nice maple/rosewood, body looks to be plywood (my only serious beef with the guitar...shoulda spent the extra 20 bucks for solid wood Alesis!!!). Made in China, meaning the neck is not quite finished. Needed a good cleaning, fret polish, and fret end file topped of with some bore oil on the severely dried out fretboard. I do this on all my new or used guitars so no biggie for me.

Through the headphones this guitar sounds amazing. I'm not in love with the pickups through a tube amp, but easy practise was my main reason for buying this guitar and it fits that bill just fine.

Action was great, playable right out of the box. Pickup height was perfect too. Most everything fits well, the control panel on the top bout is a sloppy fit though. Like all Chinese guitars, the tret ends are very sharp (but not as bad as most) and require a fret file. Fretboard was very dried out, easily fixable with bore oil.

Plywood body usually leads me to beleive this is not a guitar for the ages. Still it feels as solid as any of my strats. This really isn't a gigging guitar, great for practise and impromptu basement jams where you don't want to drag out all your pedals.

Haven't needed to deal with them.

I've been playing since the early 70's and have owned over 60 guitars and 20 + amps. I really like this guitar as a practise toy but might have passed on it if I knew it was a plywood body, big mistake Alesis. Still, this guitar plays and sounds really great through the headphones. Guitar sounds a little less great through a tube amp, but still sounds pretty good. At $189.95 (their web page now shows it at $199.95, still a great deal) from www.8thstreetmusic.com with free shipping AND an accessory pack with expression bedal, great headphones, gig bag & strap...this is an incredible deal for a very fun guitar. Not really a pro level guitar as Alesis claims but a top notch starter/intermediate guitar that will give hours of fun.

Lots of effects on this guitar. I've spent 3 evenings, so far, to figure them out. Some effects are good and clean. Some are noisy and weird. Also, I need my reading glasses to see the LED display.

The guitar seems to be reasonably well constructed for the price. I bought mine for $150 new.

Produces a wide variety of sounds, though I'm no expert on how good these sounds are. For me, and for the price I paid, I would say I got a great bargain. A sound module alone, would have cost at least half the price I paid for the guitar with its built in sounds.

Played straight, without the sound effects, this guitar comes close to my Fender Strat. Both are S/S/H. I compared them side by side. The Strat has more of the Fender quack attack, but the Xguitar is pretty close in sound. The Xguitar misses that initial attack of the Fender. But for the price, the Xguitar is great!

I took the guitar out of the box and it was perfectly set up. Very easy to play. I would say slightly easier to play than my Fender Strat.

It's difficult to comment on the durabilty of this guitar. Who knows if the electronics will be still work in 3 years. For all other points, the guitar seems reasonable.

Never used customer support.

I've owned Roland midi pickups and modules. Gibsons. A Fender Telecaster and a Stratocaster. Jackson. One of the first Roland midi guitars with module. Loads of junkier guitars.

For the price, the Xguitar is excellent value. I find myself fiddling around with it while my Fender Strat and Telecaster are sitting idle in a corner.

Very convenient and easy to play. In guitar headphones jack makes it very useful for quit playing. The guitar features full array very nice sounds that range from popular to incredibly cosmic. The 5 position pickup switch and tuner. I would say it is very nicely equipped guitar, in fact it is the only on this planet guitar of the sort. Literally TONS of features and sounds.

I can't judge as I never pit it against any "expensive" guitar. I use it in my studio as it makes perfect studio instrument and it can sound as anything else. It is good enough for my needs, she certainly has her edge in sound and can sing like many others. It fits for my jazz, fusion, some techno leads etc. It has the full rack of effects onboard!

Well, it is certainly has no feel of $1000 guitar as it is cheaply painted, but the FIT is as good as any pro instrument. Action is very low, right out of the box on mine, the neck is VERY FAST, the fretwork is very good. I would say from players prospective it is one very playable instrument with more stance than some much more expensive sisters. Everything made inexpensive and very clean. I have to say that assembly is of very good quality. everything is straight, well put together.

I have mine for not too long to review the reliability.

Had no use of this.

Overall as I said it is not a guitar for someone who is looking for fancy look, but it is quality assembled and great sounding instrument. It retains form factor of Fender but it certainly has its own merits, great effects and I would agree with Alesis on their claim: yes it is cheap but professional instrument. If you need one to play and bundled with whole bunch of all possible effects and custom patching it is a steal for the money. For the price it is sure 10 worthy guitar.

Like the other reviews say, a Chinese made Strat copy. Body is slightly altered to accomodate the brain in the upper part of the body. Fretwork is decent, no problems with medium action height. Got mine as B-stock with finish flaws - a few lines in the paint that don't bother me - and no accessories other than wrenches and manual. No structural problems with the guitar. Assembly is good, parts are cheap but everything fits well and works fine. Tuners could be better and are typical of cheap guitars. All the effects parts fit in the guitar nicely, it looks well thought out as far as these sort of things go.

All three pickups are humbucking. When it's time to change the strings, I'll open it up and see how things are set up under the pickguard. Adjusted the pickup height and it sounds ok. Pickups aren't great, but for a low-priced guitar they're not bad - I've heard worse. I'd like to swap in a pair of vintage Fender pickups in place of the stacked single coils currently in place, see if it would work as well as it currently does.

The great aspect of this guitar is all the sounds it can generate. Not necessarily great traditional sounds, but it'll do everything a typical multi-effect does. Forget most of the factory presets & learn how to program your own patches. There is a fair amount of user control available over many of the effects - same as what you'd find on typical 3 or 4 knob pedals. I'm waiting to get an expression pedal to get even more out of this thing.

Action was good, just had to tighten all the screws down including the neck. Fret ends are good, don't stick out/aren't sharp. Everything was assembled correctly other than the paint flaw. Adjusted the pickups and output/tone improved. Only thing that gets a thumbs down is the tuners. They go out of tune too easily.

The electronics are laid out very well and make everything easy to access.

It's a $159 Chinese made guitar. Caveat Emptor. Works fine for me; I'd hate to see the brain on this thing die. I've considered buying a backup just in case. It deserves careful handling, but I wouldn't hesitate to gig with it.

8th Street had my guitar delivered in less than 48 hours by standard shipping; they were easy to deal with. Never tried contact Alesis and do not intend to.

Currently I'm using it as a practice guitar in an apartment, it doesn't get any more convenient than this. Plug a set of headphones into the jack, turn it on and go.

Editing the patches are very easy as is copying a patch from one location to another. Layout is good enough so that a footpedal to select presets is not necessary.

I've been playing for nearly 20 years, and always wanted to get one of the guitars with built in effects - but none of them caught my interest. From the 70's Japanese Les Paul copies loaded with effect modules, to the Cort Effector and the Daneletro ones from a few years ago, all seemed more of a novelty. The Alesis is still a novelty due to it's cheap vibe and marketing, but it does every sound a full rack unit (granted, an older one) is capable of. Great tool for experimental players, or if you're just too lazy to hook up a bunch of pedals. The cheap batteries that came with it have lasted through several hours of playing, so it's probably good for it's rated 30 hours per battery set.

I would really like to see the effects array from one of these put into a Squier Affinity `52 Reissue. The effects are great for what they are - and for the price.

It's basically a full-sized Strat copy with the Alesis GuitarFX pedals' electronics built into the guitar. Look up the specs for the GuitarFX pedal and you'll see they're exactly the same. A very cool concept for an electric guitar. All you need are 4 AA's (or an optional 9v power supply), and some headphones and you're ready to rock. The pickup configuration is like the Fender Standard Fat Strat with two stacked single coil pickups for the neck and middle position, and a humbucker in the bridge position. There's only one volume knob, and where the tone knobs should be (as on a Strat), there are two silver (plastic) toggle switches - the bottom one to turn on the effects processor and the top one to scroll through the presets. On the top edge of the guitar is the built-in effects processor control unit. There's a 2-digit red digital display that shows all the presets and parameters as 2-digit "codes" - and yes, you do need to have the manual nearby to decipher all of these "codes". There's two knobs/dials to the side - the left one to dial through the preset's effect parameters and the right one to dial-in adjustments and "set" the values of the effect parameters (by pushing the knob in). There's two up/down arrow buttons next to the display that also scroll through the presets. And when pressed together, it turns off the effects and activates the built-in tuner. A cool idea, but not the best or easiest tuner to use. The only other guitar that comes close in comparison would be the Fernandes Nomad Deluxe with built-in effects and built-in speaker. Although the Nomad is smaller (for travel/practice) and a lot more expensive. So I'm pretty happy with this purchase.

There are tons of sounds/effects as you scroll through all of the presets. Clean, Chorus, Flanges, Distortions, Delays, Reverb, etc. All the sounds you'd typically find on a multi-effects processor. There are a few "weird" sounds too - spacey, distorted, delayed experimental sounds that are totally unusable - like if aliens were broadcasting through a transitor radio while it was burning and crackling in the fireplace (or something like that). Some of the presets are noisy and hissy. Even more so when going through headphones (Sony MDR7506). The cleaner presets like chorus/reverb and delays are less noisy and some sound pretty decent. I also play it straight to my Marshall AS80R Acoustic amplifier. The sound is very good going through the amp. Most of the presets need major tweaking, but experimenting and adjusting the parameters, you can create some decent sounds. One cool feature is; you can move the presets or your own settings to any order in the preset chain. The presets are "numbered" A0 - A9 all the way through G0 - G9. So if you like the preset sound of F6 and don't want to scroll through all the presets to get there, you can copy it and move it to position A2 for example (overwriting the original A2 preset). When the processor is turned off, you can still hear the "un-effected" sound through your amplifier like any other electric guitar. The "off" sound is pretty decent, although there's NO tone control, you have to control the tone with your amplifier's tone knobs. This is a design flaw. All in all, for the $249 price tag, the sounds are pretty decent, and should satisfy beginners, intermediate players and even some of us semi-pros.

The setup was good right out of the box. Even the intonation was spot on. It has a shiny black glossy finish and the headstock is finished to match the body. It looks like a Standard Black Strat with the standard white for the pickguard. There's a small "V" knotched out of the middle of the headstock between the 3rd and 4th tuning keys which is by design - to create some sort of original Alesis designed headstock look. So Fender purists can tell right off that it's not the genuine article. The action was good enough for my tastes and the strings are very easy to bend (extra light 9's, I believe). It appears that the quality control is very good at the Chinese factory that produced this axe.

I play in an acoustic trio (2 guitarists and 1 violin) - switching between my Taylor 514ce and Godin A6. I wanted an electric with effects to add some sound and sonic variety to my accompaniment and solos. I originally shopped around for an inexpensive electric and some sort of multi-effects pedal. I sold or traded other electric guitars in the past to go the acoustic route. Then I saw the XGuitar while surfing the net. I researched it and finally had to order one to try it - none of the local guitar shops carried it yet. I've used it to practice with the group and they seem to like the sounds it creates. I will officially gig with it next month (MARCH 2005). I'm sure it will hold up pretty well as I am not a thrasher or metal-head type of player (anymore). I've tweaked 5 presets to my tastes and will use them live. This guitar saves me from losing floor space (for extra pedals) in an already cramped coffee-house type of stage setup - and like I said earlier - sounds very good going straight through to my Marshall AS80R Acoustic amplifier.

Have not dealt with Customer Support except logging onto their website to fill out the on-line owner's registration. Website is pretty good with descriptions of their product line.

I've been playing for over 25 years and have bought, sold, traded, and collected a ton of guitars, amps, and related equipment. This is just another aquisition of the many "tools of the trade" I now possess. Many electric guitar purists will thumb their noses at this guitar because of what it is - an all-in-one unit with questionable tone right out of the box. But for me, it's perfect for what I need it for - low volume coffee house gigs! With some time spent tweaking the presets, you should find the sound you're looking for ... It works for me! And with the under $250 price tag, I would buy another one if it were lost or stolen. In fact, I'm buying another one and headphones for my son for his birthday and shipping it to him overseas to his Air Force base in Italy - I'm sure he'll have NO complaints!

Actually, its endless to list: What can I say. You even cannot remember all the sounds, have to carry the manual all the time. 80 programs, 9 effects modules and 8 different signal routes Built-in headphone out 28-bit effects- Delays, amp, and cabinet models, chorus, transposition EQ, Noise reduction, flanger, reverb rotary speaker Built-in digital tuner One humbucker and two stacked single-coil pickups, plus a five-position pickup selector switch Master volume and two tone controls 30 hours of operation (on 4 AA alkaline batteries) Input for expression pedal.

Works for all kinds of experimental and venture. You will instantly notice that the sound is from the computer chips not from the analog pickups. A primitive Casio like sounds. Not too cheesy though. Some space-age sounds or flanger sound make lot of "hiss" sounds. Don't expect tube sound ever from this guitar even with out module power off. Ive tried with Peavey and Fender Bassman but can't hear any difference. Its Totally a digital machine. NEways, Lots sounds! You will have to carry the manual or you get lost easily where you were and where your favorite tones are.

Action is relatively low. Just like a Fender Squire Indonesia feel on fret board. no more no less, just like it. Made in China, What can I say? Intonation had to adjust. Body seems basswood, medium weight, nice glossy painting. hardware OK, Comes with all tools and whammy handle.

I don't think I can play on stage, Its very risky, module parts unreliable but it will be OK if you don't use the module feature. Works fine for practice or travel, home recording is cool. Perfect for midnight practice, you won't need any amp, just plug a headphone directly to the guitar's output jack.

I don't know where they are. If it does not work, I will just keep it till it become a vintage collective piece. NOTE: Be sure to turn off the sound module button after playing. Those 4 AA batteries only last overnight, you will find the guitar is totally dead the next morning.

If it were stolen or lost, I will call Police department and my home insurance company but won't buy again the same her. It's tough machine to play, too much tones and controls with complicated controls, too little time. Pedal sold seperately(for WahWah). For all the features, $249 is perfect price for this guitar. Think about Fender Squier Strat indonesia with Alesis Bulk effect pedal price. Same, isn't it?