Cort HBS2

Same spec as the others listed. Not sure on the year it was made.
Lots and lots of features within any reasonable guitar players needs, Cort could have gone further but that would have meant active circuitry and onboard FX which most players dont need.

The set up is ideal for me, i prefer humbucker pickups but a single coil pickup is priceless for crystal clear cleans and some funky thwack or Fender twang.
Best of both worlds here.
I've used this through a Marshall JCM2000 and various Multi-FX and separates like a Tubescreamer, Big Muff and Marshall Guvnor.
The Mighty Mite pickups are pretty good but not a tone to die for, they do lack a bit of character to my ears. I would like to hear some quality PAF pickups in this like Seymour Duncan 'Pearly Gates' for instance. This is a modification i may do at a later date but it would be disappointing to lose the distressed Nickel look. The current sound lacks low end a little and the mids are not strong enough to dominate a mix. I have to engage an EHX Big Muff to add some major balls to the sound... but i have to do the same with my Fender Jaguar and Fender Mustang, its no hardship as such.
Depending on your gear you can quite convincingly cover a lot of styles with this guitar, anything from Metal, Blues, Indie, Punk, Funk, Ambient...
But the pickups lack that little bit of spice. Having said this, upon reflection of the price paid it would be foolish to give the guitar less than 9.

I bought mine second hand but virtually brand new, i also played one habitually in the local store before i got this.
Basically, the neck is butter. Its a speedy yet expressive neck that really encourages good phrasing. Really, really nice.
Its a well balanced guitar and everything is top banana as far as fitting goes.
If i was going to be critical, i would say the volume knob is very close to the strings/bridge, more so than a Strat. This makes 'volume swells' effortless but its easy to accidentally knock your level down if you are strum happy.
I lowered the middle pickup, it can also get in the way of picking due to the staggered pole pieces. There is a lot going on on this relatively small bodied guitar!
The tremolo is good, i'm familiar with Floyd Rose trems and this stands up to some abuse. The G seems to go flat or sharp regularly but i suspect that may be the string tree at fault.
The machine heads are solid.

Again, for the money, this is hard to avoid a 10... but...

This is definitely one of them guitars you could travel around a country with playing in bars and never need a back up. Of course spare strings are always essential if you set a Tremolo in a floating position though.

N/A.

I've been playing guitar 20 years and i have also been a tutor. At the moment i own 12 guitars most of which are Vintage, rare and collectable. Over the years i have owned hundreds of different guitars, i've tried most brands. It sounds ridiculous but my 'snobbery' made me dismiss Cort guitars, but in the shop i could not deny this guitar was a beauty and eventually i bought one off fleabay.
It has an almost organic feel to it with the open grain body and birds eye maple neck, its kind of a personal relationship that i have only ever found a few times in the past. One of which being a Patrick Eggle Berlin Stage. I foolishly let that one go but i will hang on to this! It is a one off in my opinion, these kind of guitars come along during your musical journey but not very often. So if i lost this i would be very pissed off.
Like the Eggle it lacks character of having its own strong 'voice', but i think a pickup upgrade would change that. But when you look at the specification, well, if it said the big 'F' on the headstock you would be lucky to buy this for ??1,000.
Indeed, when i bought this i sold two Fender Stratocasters shortly afterwards, go figure.
As guitarists, i would like to think its time some of us moved on and recognised some of the 'newer' brands. Afterall, we cannot live in the last millenium forever!


I know not many people will probably read this and it is shame in some ways.

(You can refer to other thorough data in other reviews)
Impressions: To play out or record or just jam -- this axe has enuff features to satisfy and get the job done.

You can get a nice variety of feel from this axe from grunge to screamin highs to Stratty twang. Pickups stock are fine really. If a push-pull pot to fiddle with pickup signal routes was added, this axe would be a 10. Hmm, that's an idea I just may try doing later on . . . myself!

Action is fine, neck butter could be tweaked with luthier neck smoothing job, axe looks pretty sweet but I wish the torched-grain was a titch less contrast and more subtle. One could always sand and recoat though. Battleship grey antique'd metal finish is nice with matching whammy. Overall pretty cool.

This axe was bought used from a guitar shop called BluesMasters in north Durham, NC USA and it grabbed my attention as I had been watching prices on this axe for several years and there one was in great shape for a fair price -- anyway . . . it feels, plays and looks solid. Shop owner tweaked input jack that had loosened due to an incorrect nut used -- after that, not a prob ever.

Never needed.

As far as playing since 1967 and having owned over thirty axes, I'd say this one is a keeper! Birdseye maple fretboard is a real eyecandy. I am still a Les Paul man but that extra middle single-coil pup adds an extra feel that and LP lacks.

As if you care, you can grab a listen to extreme virtuoso axe rock here: JazzRock-Radio.com

Ciao!

Cort HBS-II made in Korea in 2006.
21 vintage frets (2.0mm)
1 volume, 1 tone, 5-way selector switch
Mighty Mite BBLP(-P)/PSSB(Alnico)/BBLP(-P) pickups H-S-H
Swamp ash start style body
Bird's eye maple neck 'C' Shape bolt-on
Bird's eye maple fingerboard 9.5" (240mm) radius
Neck width at 1st fret 43mm / 21st fret : 56mm
Neck thickness at 1st fret 21mm / 12th fret 23mm
Scale length 25 1/2" (648mm)
Cort CFA-III bridge
Graph tech trem nut
Self locking tuners
Black dot inlays
Burnt open pore finish & rusty hardware

I own two HBS-II guitars & each one of them sound a bit different to me acoustically. The first has a fuller sound while the other is brighter & funkier. Both guitars are loud when played unplugged & you can feel the resonnace in your body.
I play rock/blues/funk music & the Mighty Mite pickups work really well for my style. They are very versatile & very quiet. The balance in the volume & the tone on all 5 pickup positions is remarkably well & hard to beat with any other pickups set.
For a rockier sound I replaced the pickups of the first HBS-II with a set of DiMarzios: Air Zone (bridge), Red velvet (middle), Paf Joe (neck). But I still couldn't beat the balance the Mighty Mite pickups offer.

I can't rate the factory settings since the guitars have travelled all the way from Korea to Lebanon. I prefer very slight neck bow & low action. The action at the last fret is 2mm for the high E & 2.2mm for the low E. Both HBS-II guitars work very well with this set up.
The fretwork is very well done & the tuning stability is perfect even with wild tremolo bar abuse. The graph tech trem nut & the bridge combination works great to keep the guitar in tune.
The only thing I dislike is the plastic tube in which the tremolo bar is inserted & that you need an allen wrench to tighten or loosen the tremolo bar.
What I like the most in these guitars is the finish. Each guitar looks different then the other thanks to the burnt open pore finish & the birds eye maple neck. Even the rusty hardware on each guitar looks different.

The solid construction of the HBS-II makes it a very reliable guitar. I never take any back up guitar with me when I have any of my HBS-II guitars.
The burnt open pore finish doesn't let the scratches be obvious & this is a positive point if you want to sell the guitar in the future.

I've been playing guitar for 14 years & I've had many guitars. I had an Ibanez JS1200 & honestly prefer the HBS-II for its vintage looks, tone & features. I would keep these guitars with me forever.

Modified Strat - C-shape neck w/21 frets, lightweight premium swamp ash body, 5 way selector, H-S-H pickup configuration (Mighty Mites all), Birdseye maple neck and fretboard, smoked natural wood grain body, black pickguard, self-locking tuners, Cort CFA Tremolo. All hardware oxidized to give a well broken-in, comfortable look.

As you might expect from the pickup configuration, it's covers a lot of ground. I play through a Tech 21 Trademark 60 and Trademark 10. I use a few pedals too: Boss Blues Driver, Boss CE-2, TS808, Homebrew compressor, Guyatone TD-X (among a couple of others). The HBS 2 is good in terms of additional versatility - a lot of tones come through this guitar. There are pleasing out of phase tones in the pickup configuration as well as straight ahead Strat and Gibson sounds. I've never played through Mighty Mite pickups; they're quite versatile and full.

This guitar is designed and put together well. The birds-eye maple neck is substantial and plays well. The neck is well tooled - even, straight, balanced, and good fret work. The fret wire is thinner than my other guitars and easy to play. The body is comfortably contoured. I actually rate this section an 8.9 and not 9 as the guitar came set up with light gauge strings. I thought since Hiram Bullock uses medium gauge strings his signature guitar should've been factory set up with 10s on top (which is my preference). I had to have the guitar set up additionally - problem solved and now it plays superbly. Anyone buying a guitar sight unseen should get a pro setup anyway, so perhaps it's not really a problem in the strictest sense. I've never purchased an instrument via website before and the set up it shipped with was "factory default" - translated: bupkis, junky. For the extra running around, 8.9 it is (still, that translates to an A-). The luthier who set up my HBS2 commented very favorably on the quality of the guitar comparing it to several USA made guitars - I don't think Cort instruments cross his threshold all that often (and he's a real luthier, not a guy 'in the back' calling a set-up restringing and polishing guitars). The guitar is comparatively light in weight but quite resonant. The HBS 2 falls in the vintage category looks-wise (it is, after all, a strat style 'geetar') but the smoked finish combined with the oxidized nickel hardware gives it a unique funky edge (that's my editorial comment).

A solid instrument. It's not a museum piece; you can play this thing. It stays in tune well; I tend to use the whammy bar and consequently the Graph Tech trem nut is a good touch. I haven't detected any of the pot/switch problems mentioned in reviews of the previous incarnations of this guitar.

I called the company to find some dealers and after negotiating a non-mystifying automated system spoke with actual human beings - one returned my call from a voicemail - imagine that! Both guys I spoke with were very cordial and helpful. Also, they were genuinely enthusiastic about this instrument and gave me more than 'the time of day' so to speak, which I much appreciated.

Over the years (I've been playing for about 18) I've put my hands on several instruments ranging in price from a couple of hundred bucks to just under a couple of grand. I own a USA Hamer Diablo and and a '97 USA Strat Plus; these are my reference points. Are there differences? Sure, but the HBS 2 definitely compares very well with both in terms of sound quality and surprisingly (to me anyway) construction. It's produced by Cort (Westheimer Corp.) in Micronesia (Korea?), and I think it's reasonable to to assume that if it was built in the US the going price would be half again as much but I doubt there would be an appreciable difference in the actual manufacturing quality. After looking things over closely (milling, joining, frets, wood, finish, hardware, etc.), it's apparent that a lot of care went into the design and making of this guitar. For the record then, I think Hiram Bullock is a great player. I saw him in a trio at a club called 'Mikel's' in NYC, early-mid 90s. At that time he played a Strat that appeared awfully well used (might even say beat up - look on the cover of the "Way Kool" cd). The finish was worn off, the back cover was who knows where... he used that guitar for the entire night - his performance was superlative as he covered quite a variety of genres and styles (as was and still is his custom). I think Cort had this in mind when they designed/manufactured this affordable guitar. It definitely covers a lot of ground sound-wise (the pickup configuration is the same HB uses and frankly more versatile than my other guitars - which is why I bought it.) It's reasonably priced for what you get, especially compared with some of the competition signature guitars currently on offer from other manufacturers. There are some tremendous instruments available, make no mistake, but with all due respect I just can't see a $1K+ difference in actual quality (I was looking at USA factory run guitars not custom shop editions). No, it's not elaborate as far as inlay goes, active electronics, other "bells and whistles" etc., but I think this guitar is well worth consideration in terms of cost-value ratio. It's got real nice feel. I also think it's musically sensible considering the various sounds you can get from it. I hope the HBS II doesn't get overproduced and lose some of its very decent touches. Oh yeah, did I mention it's FUN as all 'get out' to play this guitar? Jeez, that's got to count for something too, right?!

HIRAM BULLOCK SIGNATURE STRAT-2006-21 VINTAGE FRETS-2 PIECE CENTRE-JOINED LIGHT SWAMP ASH-5 WAY SELECTOR-V AND T-H/S/H CONFIGURATION-MIGHTY MITE PICKUPS-BIRDSEYE MAPLE NECK AND FRETBOARD-SATIN 'BURNT OPEN PORE' FINISH-MODIFIED STRAT BODY-CORT 'CFA' TREMELO-SELF LOCKING TUNERS-VINTAGE 'C' SHAPE NECK-WITH CORT GIGBAG AND ALLEN WRENCHES

A VERY VERSATILE ALL-PURPOSE GUITAR-I'M USING IT WITH A M.B.MARK1 REISSUE COMBO THRU A YAMAHA MAGICSTOMP AND A MORLEY VOLUME/WAH PEDAL-
WIDE RANGE OF SOUNDS-POSITIONS 2 AND 4(SINGLE AND HUM TOGETHER) ARE CLASSIC SRV-THE NECK HUMBUCKER IS WARM BUT NOT MUDDY-I'M VERY IMPRESSED WITH THE MIGHTY MITE PICKUPS-

I HAD THE GUITAR RE-CROWNED BY JANFLONE'S GUITAR STUDIO IN WASHINGTON PA,WHERE I BOUGHT IT-THE HEIGHTH OF THE CROWN IS .038, A RATHER SMALL FRETWIRE-NOW IT PLAYS PERFECTLY-NO FLAWS WHATSOEVER-CORT MAKES AN EXCEPTIONAL INSTRUMENT FOR THE PRICE-I WOULD EASILY COMPARE THIS(REALLY)TO AN ANDERSON, SUHR,TYLER IN TERMS OF FIT AND FINISH-

SOLID CONSTRUCTION ALL THE WAY THRU-THE TREMELO WITH THE GRAPHITE 'TREM NUT' STAYS IN TUNE REMARKABLY WELL-THE HARDWARE HAS A DISTRESSED(I CALL IT PRE-BEAT UP) LOOK THAT IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE SATIN COAT ON THE BODY SCREAMS VINTAGE-

I HAVE CALLED CORT ON OCCASION, AND THEY ARE COURTEOUS, HELPFUL, AND PROFESSIONAL-AND HAVE MET MR.JEFF HUBERT AT THE NAMM SHOW A FEW YEARS PAST-AS A COMPANY, THEY REALLY HAVE THEIR ACT TOGETHER-

I TRADED A CORT G290 FOR THE HBS-NOTHING WRONG WITH THE 290, JUST A BIT HEAVY, AS I AM DEVELOPING BACK PROBLEMS FROM 39 YEARS OF PLAYING AND SIMPLY NEEDED SOMETHING LIGHTER-MY ONLY COMMENT WOULD BE TO HAVE A HUM-CANCELLING SINGLE COIL IN THE CENTRE SLOT-I'M NOT SURE IF THE HUMBUCKERS HAVE 2 OR 4 CONCUCTOR WIRING-IF 4 CONDUCTOR, A SIMPLE CHANGE TO A QUIET SINGLE COIL WOULD WORK-AS FAR AS COMPARISONS GO, I OWNED THE CORT G290 WITH EMG PICKUPS, A 22 FRET ROSEWOOD NECK AND BIGGER FRETS-THE DIFFERENCE IS THAT THE HBS IS MORE VINTAGE-FEELING AND SOUNDING-WHEREAS THE G290 IS THE 'HOTRODDED' SUPERSTRAT(AN INCREDIBLE GUITAR IN ITS' OWN RIGHT)-I LIKE THE LIGHTER WEIGHT-AND EVEN THOUGH I AM A BIG FAN OF EMG PICKUPS, FOR A PASSIVE PICKUP,THE MIGHTYMITES ARE SERIOUSLY UNDERRATED!!--THE HBS CONFIRMS MY BELIEF THAT YOU DO NOT HAVE TO SPEND $1000-$3000 ON A BOLT-ON NECK STRAT-I THINK THAT MORE GUITARISTS SHOULD CHECK OUT CORT'S INSTRUMENTS-