Antoniotsai Flowers Guitar

Mine is a perfect strat copy colored burnt orange. Has a standard tremelo, die cast tuners, that I did NOT feel I needed to change, C shaped thin maple neck with a maple fretboard with 21 medium jumbo frets. It came with a very nice heavily padded gig bag that even has a place to zip the headstock up in it, a strap, cord and the two allen wrenches that are standard with strats. I believe this guitar would have been made in 2007 and it's a solid top made out of solid alder. It's quite heavy for a strat. Standard strat controls, I don't have the same bad experience as the other rater, mine is awesome. I took mine apart and was pleased to find that the three staggered coil single coil passive pickups had alnico magnets. This is the most beautiful guitar that I have ever seen and mine plays and sounds as good as it looks. I have to max this work of art out. I mean the artwork on the pickguard and the inlay and headstock work - are just truly awesome.

I play blues, blues rock, classic rock, country, electric folk, grunge rock and hard rock. This guitar suits all of those styles just fine. I'm running this through several amps which are a Laney VC30 212, a Laney VC15 (both all tube amps) a Peavey Blazer 158 that has been converted to a tube amp with a 12AX7 and an EL83 which changed it from a 15 watt solid state amp to a 5 watt tube amp. The only noise from this guitar is the 60 cycle hum that you always get from single coils, but in positions 2 and 4 it is quiet as a church mouse. This guitar is excellent. The alnico pups give it a warmer sound than what you would find on a Fender Mexican strat with ceramic pups. It has a very vintage strat sound. When you get a guitar that is absolutely beautiful, plays great and sounds incredible - what is there not to love? This guy is good.

The strings were just a little high for my taste when I took it out of the box and tuned it up, so I lowered them slightly. The neck was pefectly straight and did not require a truss rod adjustment. I lowered the pickups just a tad but that was out of personal preference not because they were adjusted improperly. Absolutely no flaws at all on this guitar. A true work of art.

I think this guitar would withstand live playing, but I wouldn't gig with it. That's not why I bought it. I bought it because when I saw the pics on ebay, it was so beautiful I had to have it. I could have cared less if it even played or not. However, this is my "home" practice guitar now. I gig with my 67 strat, my 72 strat and my Epiphone Pro. Everything is solid. I can't find anything wrong with the hardware or the strap buttons. Nobody who has ever gigged would gig without a backup.

These people communicated very well with me throughout the entire transaction.

I've been playing the guitar for 45 years, professionally for 35 of those 40 years. I've got so many guitars and amps that I have bought at stores, garage sales, pawn shops and that people have given me over the years that I couldn't even begin to list them. Let's just say I have some very good, nice expensive guitars and some that are totally cheap pieces of crap, but I'm a pack rat. I would get another one if it were lost or stolen. In fact, I'm bidding on one of his SG style guitars right now! Everyone has a different perception. When I purchased this guitar on ebay, I wrote an email and asked them to please pick one of their perfect guitars for me because I have very limited resources where I live to do any major work on a guitar. They answered promptly - don't worry, we'll send you one that is perfect. They did. I'm happy.

Strat-copy. 21 frets, 3 single coils, alder with maple neck and rosewood fretboard, 3 knobs and a five-way switch, and it came with a decent but not outstanding hardshell case.

Mine has a transparent finish over a 1-piece, highly dense (heavier than either of my telecasters) 1-piece alder body. The neck is a gorgeous piece of flamed maple with a rosewood fretboard and rosewood headstock veneer, both of which look great. The body, neck, and head of this guitar are all adorned with beautiful intricate abalone flower and vine inlays.

The tuners (standard 14-1 no-brand), pickups (no-brand), pots (crackly junk), selector, jack (single-prong), bridge (no-brand), and strings were all crap. Like, not the standard "cheap guitar from China" type of crap, but honest-to-God-rip-it-out-and-throw-it-away crap. If you purchase one of these guitars, plan on replacing all of the above before it becomes truly playable in any enjoyable sense of the word.

Do not expect this - or any of Antoniotsai's guitars for that matter - to be playable out of the box. When you buy from him, expect to buy into a project.

The pickups and electronics were atrocious; I don't remember HOW bad they were as they were removed quickly. The strings were worn and grimy as well.

Hardware and electronics aside, this guitar has great resonance. Once a proper set of strings were installed and the action was dealt with, it sounded much better (unplugged). Out of the box, though, garbage.

Terrible setup, terrible action, truss rod needed turning, nut needed replacing, frets needed some filing, entire bridge needed to be re-mounted. Pickguard was poorly cut, neck bolts were stripped, plastic bits were worn. Terrible on every conceivable level setup-wise.

The wood this is made of is amazing. The single-piece body has beautiful grain, and a gorgeous 1-piece flamed maple neck with a rosewood fretboard is bolted on, topped by a rosewood veneer on the headstock. All of the wood is very high quality.

The finish came with some dings in it out of the box, which was disappointing, but I've since put in a couple dings of my own. It happens.

This entire guitar is 4 pieces of wood: one for the body, one for the neck, one for the fretboard, and one for the headstock veneer. It is ridiculously solid and could probably be used as a blunt weapon of sorts if necessary. The finish is nice and tough, pretty standard as far as strats go. The hardware, as previously mentioned, will NOT last, so plan on replacing that.

No warrenty, haven't dealt with him outside of exchanging goods for money. Paid about $200 on eBay plus $100 to ship.

I think I'll go right down the line on the listed questions here.

- How long have you been playing? What other gear do you own?

I've been playing 2 and a half years now. My other guitars are a mixed bag: A 2004 Fender std. telecaster, a 1990's DeArmond M-75, 3 SX guitars: a strat, tele, and Les Paul copy, an Ibanez PF6-NT acoustic, and a 1970's Ovation Balladeer. This guitar was and is played primarily on a Peavey Bravo 112 tube amp, though sound tests involving it involved plugging it in, attempting to play the rusted strings, and shuddering at how awful the pickusp sounded.

- Is there something you wish you had asked before buying this guitar?

"Am I up for a hell of a project?"

- If it were stolen or lost, would you buy it again or get something else?

I don't think I would be able to find one quite like this again - with these particular inlays and this uniquely flamed neck. I'd probably pick up a different Antoniotsai and start over.

- What do you love about it? What do you hate? What is your favorite feature?

Love the wood and the looks, hate the electronics and hardware. My favorite feature is the flaming on the neck.

- Did you compare it to other guitars? Which ones? Why did you choose this one?

This one was pretty.

- Anything you wish it had?

Playability out of the box? Ha.

- Anything else you'd like to share?

Sure. Now that I've bitched it out a bit, I'd like to show what I've done with it. Step one was removing everything. Then, I put in Planet Waves locking tuners (I highly recommend), Fender Custom Shop 70's pickups in the neck and middle and a 50's Reissue in the bridge, some decent pots, a Fender selector switch and jack, and strap locks. I removed the white pickguard and replaced it with a red tortoise shell one, discovering in the process that the old pickguard was cut oddly and the bridge was misaligned. I replaced it with a Wilkinson 6-point tremolo bridge, but I had to re-drill the holes. Finally, I put some chrome pickup covers, knobs, and a selector cap on it to finish it off.

Here it is as I bought it:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v235/Carbohydrates/72_3.jpg

Here it is now:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v235/Carbohydrates/STR01_Overall.jpg

And that flamed neck I love so much:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v235/Carbohydrates/STR05_Neck.jpg

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If you buy one of these guitars, think of it as buying a neck bolted to a body, 'cause everything else must go.