Blade Guitars Durango Standard

Made in 2002 in Korea. Pickup conf. is S/S/H with a 5 way selector and a volume and a tone knob. Position 4 of the switch offers a split humbucker together with the middle pickup. Wilkinson V-50 two way trem. 22 frets. The body style is pretty unique but it's certainly closest to a Strat. Transparent finish to the Mahogany underneath. Pickups are Levinson's own pickups.

In the end the features might be a bit lacking, but this is a simple guitar and it's not meant to play the genres in which the features might not be enough.

This guitar is great for Blues to Blues influenced rock and hard rock. The body is massive mahogany so the sound is very full. You won't get that much twang for this guitar, but on the other hand you get a very full tone.
The neck single coil offers great lead guitar tones and is just hot enough to give the tone that extra punch. The neck and middle pickup together (2. position on switch) gives me a very cool transparent sound. Think SRV in Lenny and you've got the kind of tone we're talking about here. The middle pickup offers a very bell like tone. I feel that this tone can often do things that I would otherwise have to use an acoustic for. Position four is the split humbucker and middle pick up together, I don't feel that this is a very useful sound and I don't use it much. The humbucker is a very cool one. It's slightly hotter than your average humbucker. It definately has a Les Paul sound to it when in this position and I can simulate tones like Jimmy Page and Slash's without any trouble. For jazz and the like you can get a decent tone by turning the tone knob down a little, but that isn't where it's force is. This is primarily a Blues to Hard Rock guitar. I guess you could play Metal with it if you really wanted to, because the humbucker is very capable of different tones. I use this with my Peavey Classic 30 so I guess that's why I would have a lot of trouble getting Metal sounds, but the humbucker does seem to perform well in most instances. The single coils seems to be pretty well shielded and they don't give out much of a hum as long as you take your precautions.

The setup was brilliant from the factory. The only flaws I can think of is that there is a little impurity in the rosewood used for the fretboard and also that the Mahogany isn't as flawless as it could be. Also there is one very little almost invisible spot in the finish that's pink. I don't know why that is, but it's almost invisible. Otherwise everything seems to be very stable although the finish might not be completely flawless.

I will thrust this guitar for anything. It's a workhorse. By no means very sophisticated, but it does what it does and it does very well. The tuners are rock solid and unless I use the whammy bar excessively it will seldomly go out of tune. I wouldn't use it without a backup, but I wouldn't do that with any guitar, but this one certainly seems to be very stable and I think that the hardware can last forever. There is nothing cheap about the materials used, they just aren't very flashy.

Haven't dealt with them

This guitar is fantastic for it's price. As it's more or less a strat style guitar I would rate it in between a MIM and a MIA Fender made strat. It's definately much better than a MIM and I feel that sometimes it almost touches a MIA. The flaws that does that this guitar doesn't cut it all the way to a 10 are the little flaws in the finish and the materials and though it's pretty versatile it does have some problems getting certain tones.

beautiful guitar. Solid mahogany body with the grain popping out true the cherry red finish. Pearl pickguard. s/s/h pickups. In my eyes it looks a little bit like the legendary "red special" from bryan may.

This guitar is suitable for many styles of music. You can play beatiful blues licks, clear lead guitar, and it has a great sound if you put a distortion on it.

I only had to put the bridge a little bit lower, that's something everybody can do because the needed tools are included together with a guitarbag. the pickups are adjusted very well. Also the standard wilkinson trem. is very good. The pickups and the pickguard are covered with a plastick protectionlayer witch you can be pulled off after you bought it.

I can't tell you much about the reliability/durability because I bought it the day before I wrote this. The construction looks good even now the neck is connected to the body with screws. The neck is pretty thin (wich I like). The finish looks great and so dous the pickguard. The only thing I want to change is the strapbuttons. They are very solid but I prefer a clicksystem. These strapbuttons are the standard strapbuttons wich you will find on every new bought guitar.

I've got a warranty of 12 months, wich is pretty long I think.

Like I said earlier in this review, I only have this guitar for 1 day. I can tell you that this guitar works like a magnet to me. I want to play it all the time and right now I want to walk upstairs and plug it in again. This guitar rocks. I like it!!!!!!!

H/S/S Pickups that have a broad spectrum of sounds. Wilkinson Trem. 22 Fret Rosewood Fingerboard, Transparent Red in color.

This thing can play anything from Hendrix to Zakk Wylde with the turn of the gain know on your amp.

I've been using Blade guitars for close to 10 years now, and as this may sound crazy, I have this Korean model that play better than any other guitar I've ever owned. I have had 2 Paul's and 3 strats, and the playability is 10x better on this thing than on all of them put together.

I wouldn't hesitate bringing it to a gig without backup. I hate the fags that come with the standup road case full of guitars and use a different one for every song. That's just gay!!!

Never had to deal with them

For what you'd pay for a high-end guitar, save your money and get a Blade.