Brownsville IS300

bought in December 2004
Stay away, unless you need a nice looking guitar as a replacement of a broken picture on the wall. You won't get more use out of it.

This falls in the category: Entry level low cost strat clone.
relatively light weight body (paulownia) with a very pretty flamed maple top. Not sure how thick the maple layer is. H-S-S pickup combination with a 5-way switch and 3 pots. The licensed Floyd Rose Trem looked impressive. Locking nut on the maple neck. Has a maple fret board. Sealed die-cast tuners.
The body looked like it came from a $400 guitar. The wood is a bit thin for my taste but it had an excellent paint job. But, please note this is only how it looked. Neck has an extra poor paint job

It had the typical strat quack sound in switch position 2 and 4 exactly how I expected it and why I got it. Played on an elderly Acoustic 100W tube amp. Though it was not as quacky as a real strat, due to the humbucker in the bridge position. I cannot blame the guitar for being less quacky - this is what you get if you opt for a humbucker instead of single coil in the bridge. Has the usual noise if the neck or middle pickup is selected only - considering the low price, I give it a 9.

Action out of the box needed some tuning. Be realistic, you cannot expect that someone sets up the guitar for 150 bucks. As I mentioned before the paint job of the body was excellent. The paint job of the neck was below poor (you can do justice by spelling poor with 100 o) . I'd guess someone used one layer of transparent primer and called it satin finish ? that?s it. Wait, that was not it. To make matter worse, the final product at hand appeared like the frets were trimmed/filed and polished without protecting the almost not existing layer of paint. The result, the raw wood was exposed consistently around the corners of the fretboard(where a Les Paul type guitar has the bindings). You can imagine how dirty the raw wood edges would look after playing it for a week.

Unless you want to use this guitar only as a piece of decoration in your living room it is not reliable nor durable. Why: I'd say it has a major design flaw. The very light and soft paulownia wood (only balsa is probably lighter and softer) paired with a Floyd Rose trem with 2 studs and a humbucker on the bridge is calling for disaster. On the one I got from the store the 2 studs holding the trem were no longer straight in the wood. They were both bended/pointing towards the neck. The one on the lower E string was more than on the one on the high e string, due to the higher tension. The string?s tension was practically pulling the 2 studs towards the neck so badly that the trem was already touching/scratching the pickguard. Having the humbucker on the bridge leaves almost no wood between the routing for the trem and the routing for the humbucker. That's why the soft wood just cannot hold the 2 studs in place. I didn't pay attention to this when I looked at it in the store. I realized it at home and returned it the next day. I checked out out about 10 more in the store. They all had the same flaw. If they had used harder wood or a single coil instead of the humbucker pickup this would not happen.
Giving it a rating of 1 is already inflated. It deserves a -20.

Not used, the dealer took it back in a heartbeat. Sam Ash is great in this regards!!!!!

Since it is not usable due to the soft wood which cannot withstand the string tension, it is only good to decorate your living room.

Made in China, guessing sometime in '05.
This is basically a Fat Strat w/ Floyd Rose knockoff.
22 Frets, paulownia body with tobacco sunburst "Flamed Maple Top" (looks kinda laminatey to me). One volume, 2 tone, 5 way selector switch, passive pickups in s-s-h layout. The neck is maple, as is the fretboard, has a liscensed FR trem, sealed tuners and a 25.1" scale. The neck is fairly chunky, not quite a baseball bat, but there's definetely something to grab onto, sorta like the neck on my Epiphone LP Jr. Special only slightly more tapered. The fretboard is fairly wide, plenty of room between the strings up in the higher registers of the fretboard.
It came with 3 allen wrenches and a cheap-o instrument cable.

I play mostly rock and the offshoots off, a little funk or reggae here and there, some fake country or fake jazz every once in a while, I find myself evolving from the more punky to the more proggy.
I run it through a Crate Vintage Club 30W or through a Johnson J-Station direct-in amp modeler.
The single coils hum in the 1, 3, & 4 position, the 5 is the humbucker which isn't noisy, and the 2 position acts like a humbucker too.
It's sounds pretty good for a buck and a half. The singlecoils are pretty clear and bright, sound good through a clean channel. The humbucker is warm and has a little bit of punch, through the overdrive channel it sounds really nice and brown, like early EVH.

The action out of the box was too low and buzzed, but a few cranks of the allen wrench fixed that. The neck is straight and solid-feeling, the pickups seem to be in the right place. The top is almost bookmatched, Looks nice enough, not like this is a museum piece or anything. The piece of the Floyd Rose where you insert the whammy bar was a little loose, but again, a few cranks of the included allen wrench fixed that.

This guitar is pretty heavy, feels solid, I think it'll last. I just got it, so we'll see. I always bring a backup.

Haven't had to use them.

I have been playing for about 13 years now, my electric guitars are a 40th Anniv. USA Stratocaster, a couple of Squier Affinity Strats, a Squier black & chrome Telecaster, a Dearmond Jetstar Special, an Epiphone LP Jr Special, a Danelectro Innuendo, Ibanez GAX70, Oscar Schmidt OE-30 Delta King. All but the 40th Anniv. cost me less than $200, I've figured out that if you can tweak some minor issues, most cheap guitars aren't bad at all. I bought this because I wanted something with a Floyd Rose and it was the cheapest I could find. If it were lost or stolen I'd probably get a new one. For $150 I feel like I got a prettty good deal.