Blade Guitars California Standard

I don't really know what year this was made- i bought it in 2000. it's hard to find out exactly where it was made too - some folks seem to be willing to obscure this fact to avoid some of the predjudices towards cheap asian instruments- which is a shame, since here is a product that could change alot of thinking. try it out next to an american series strat and you'll see what i mean. this is pretty much a strat copy, or think of it as a copy of the fender deluxe american ( though you could argue that the deluxe is actually a copy of this, since this model has been around longer.)
the pickups are levinson brand, s/s/h,W/coil split and i have to disagree with what i've read elsewhere here - they're great! this guitar has active electronics, and i suppose if you don't take the time to tweak them you might not get it. the electronics basically let you set three different 3-band eq settings amd flip them with a mini switch. the good news is it's pretty well thought out and works great. the bad news is the instructions are pretty lousy, and leave out important details such as which end is up in the diagrams, which means you need to trial and error it.
the woods on this guitar are just amazing. beautiful swamp ash body, rock maple neck and rosewood fretboard.
this guitar came with a wilkinson trem unit. it works ok, but it's strictly a better vintage style setup - you can't run amok the same way you could on a parker, for example.
ahhh - the tuners. THIS GUITAR WOULD NOT STAY IN TUNE! ! ! ! IT DROVE ME CRAZY BECAUSE IT SOUNDS SO GOOD! I FINALLY HAD TO REPLACE THEM WITH SPERZELS! now it is great.
the neck is the blade compound radius - but i'm not a big fan. it's a bit too thin/ wimpy,(wake up guitar makers!we don't all 2-hand tap anymore!) and that is what keeps this from being my favorite guitar. the frets are perfectly set, medium jumbo.
it came in a nice gig bag, and had a cool poch inside that came with a cord,trussrod wrench, and wrenches for trem adjustments and the third trem spring. this was a cool way to keep it all organized, and there was room for lots more stuff.
the crappy tuners are bringing the rating of this category down.

this is where this guitar messes with me. i usually use tons of effects play alot of gabrels-era bowie, adrian belew, (and some old school blues(read:muddy, wolf, etc)-but i can't stand to have anything cover up the sound of this guitar. now i play it through a reverend hellhound, and it's pretty much the best combo in the world. for any style. if you bother to play with the active electronics you can get pretty much anything.the single coils still have some audible hum though. anything sonically a vintage strat can do this guitar can surpass -from srv 'lenny' style clean to all out hendrix mayhem - BUT - when the bowie bbc sessions came out and i wanted to get that super-fat mick ronson les paul sound-suprise -this was the guitar that did it! the woods really have alot to do with this. again, i have to take issue with what i'm seeing posted here - swamp ash is across the spectrum from ash. it has the MOST mids of any wood outside the mahogany family. and mids are what make a guitar sound fat! it's just that swamp ash doesn't mute the highs like mahogany. the warmoth parts website might be a good place for some of us to brush up on our tone woods. combine this strong mid recipe with the extra bass of a bolt on neck, and the active electronics there's not alot you can't do. the sound is all there -it's just that you're physically limited by the strat design. if that's not a problem for you you may find this the ultimate axe.

the action is good. the tuning problems were terrible! the finish is perfect -gorgeous transparent swamps-ash the wood really comes through. i've never taken it out where someone hasn't said 'wow!' I am a little curious about the rosewood fingerboard - it has some pores, as though a low grade was used.it doesn't hinder the sound or playing, but keeps it from perfection. the fit of all parts, frets, etc are as good as anything out there at more than twice the price.

this guitar has held up well for a couple years of barband playing. still lokks like new. i use it without a backup. let me qualify this -NOW that the NEW tuners are on.

fortunately this has been built well enough that i havn't had to look for warranty service. the company seems to assign contact of any kind with our hemisphere a low priority. it took me months of e-mail and snail mail to find someone to buy a new one from! they don't seem to have a good distribution network. when i finally found a retailer, they couldn't get all the models or all the colors, and not for lack of trying. noticed today that yet another new distributor has taken over for the usa. hope they have lots of luck, since this is prabably the best guitar secret in the world today. i'm giving levinson a bad rating here, not the folks down south who finally came through for me and sold me one.

i've been playing about 17 years -guitar is a major life focus for me. i've got about 15 guitars, from vintage to ultra modern -whatever works. what i didn't like about the whole process of buying this guitar is that i never got the chance to play it first, since the only distributor was in tennesee, although the gave me a chance to try it out and return it. the new distributor is in colorado, so it doesn't look like that's getting any better. i love the sound of this guitar, and it 's really made me pay attention to woods, because the sound is so amazing. from steve cropper to thrash, this can do it all!I love everything about it but the neck. if you were raised on shred/ibanez style necks, this will seem pointless to you- i just like a deep, fat nack that's not too wide, and i felt this was a little wide in the upper register.
if what i said about actually getting a les paul tone out of this stretches the credible for you, compare this to just strats of all kinds. price wise, the closest thing to it is the fender 70's stratocaster; compare them and see. then try the fender american series strats, which are about $200 more. feature by feature, it compares to the fender american deluxe, which by the time you add the optional bridge humbucker and ash body(fender doesn't even offer swamp-ash) you're well over twice the cost of the blade, which is simply superior to all strats past and present. and it proves that foreign guitars can be made right. yes, i'd buy another one.

Paid $600 new for a '97/98 swamp ash body strat style guitar. The finish caught my eye, & when I took it down to play, the action & feel sold me. S/S/H pickup config...pretty cheap Japanese but I just replaced them with Van Zandts & a Trembucker '59. NOW the sucker plays! It has a Wilkinson trem & Gotoh tuners. Maple neck. Made in Korea. Gloss finish with a reverse transparent red sunburst. Neck is nice & thin/medium narrow which is great for me as I have small fingers. Has vol/tone-tap knobs, 5-position selector & 3-way adjustable gain switch which adds the punch without a box.

I play classic rock: SRV, Little Feat, Stones, Dead, etc. through a Peavy Classic 50/4-10. No effects as of yet. With the new pickups, this is brighter and richer than any vintage strat I've played.

Construction of the guitar is first-rate. Finish and fittings are great. Graphite nut was alittle tight, but a file fixed that. Action was nice in the store, pickups were not set right, and intonation wasn't set well.

I've had many different great guitars in the past: SGs, Pauls, Paul Jr.s, Strats...I stopped playing electric for a long time, this Blade is my re-emergence to electricity...it'll remain to be seen if this ax holds up to gigging.

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I've been playing for 32 years. I don't know if I'd buy another one new as I like to customize any ax to get the best sound/action possible. The best feature is the way it played. The worst feature was probably the bohunk pickups on the stock model, but even they were OK enough to get me to drop $600 on it. I'd say this stands up to any regular strat in the store. With the new pickups, blows em away.