Coxx ES-175

This guitar was bought in 2005. It was made in China. It a pretty close copy of a ES 175 with a set neck. It has got a laminated top, 2 volume and 2 tone controls, 3-way switch (close to the volume controls). It has two humbuckers with silver cover. The finish is violin sunburst. The bridge is full wood. The tuners look like standard Grover, but are not original. Tuning is stable.

I only use this guitar for jazz and play it through an Engl Straight 50 (which, by the way, works very well for this kind of music with its great clean sounds). I bought the Guitar on ebay and the first impression when receiving it was that it had really cool looks and a surprisingly good finish for the price. When first plugged into the amp, the impression inverted: cheap pickups, snarring strings, brigde displaced so no acurate tunig was possible. Giving it a closer look, I also found that the frets, although tightly set, were of slightly different heights. I really considered putting it back on ebay, but since I still had 2 old DiMarzio PAF Pickups I decided to give them a try with DAddario Chome flatwounds. The result was very reasonable, with a really warm jazz sound coming out of this guitar now. So, since I figured that a better ES 175 copy would be much more expensive, I wasted another weekend, and fixed the frets, changed the bridge for a Gibson like tune-o-matic with wood-base. After these changes the sound wasn't comparable to the factory state. I have to admit that I started loving this guitar for its dry woody sound, without much substain, but very jazzy. I give it an 9 with the proper setup and new pickups, a 4 with the factory setting.

The guitar itself is pretty well finished. I would give it a 7 compared to my Ibanez Artstar which is definitly 10 or my Gibson SG which I would call a 9. The factory setup however can only be called very very poor. The marks on the brigde that are supposed to guide the string and hold it in its place a far to deep, so that the string could not swing properly, givin the guitar a dull sound. Changing the bridge made a really big difference. As described above, the frets seemed not to have received any setup-treatment at all. The difference in height is slight, but enough to cause snaring strings at lower bridge settings. Resolving this problem was also pretty easy with a fret setup tool. The last problem I had so solve was a wiring problem, causing dropouts every now and then. I resoldered the wiring and the Problem was gone. I think the guitar has not received any setup at the factory at all. So the score I give in this section is 1

As I said, there was a drop-out problem in the wiring. I don't want to rate the durability yet, I've only owned it for a few month now. It does withstand live playing, but on the other hand, jazz-people like me are not really the wild bunch, jumping all over the stage ;-)

I bought it new on ebay, but without warrenty. I've never tried to contact the company.

I've been playing for 35 years, starting of with rock, and nowadays more into jazz. I own a Ibanez AS100 and a Gibson SG. Amplification is straight from my Engl, no pedals at all. The above evaluation sounds pretty negative, which is true for the setup, but not for the whole guitar. Putting some time and a little effort in the setup, You can get a very reasonable ES 175 very cheap. I paid about 200 Euro and invested another 25 for parts (Bridge...), not counting the DiMarzio PAFs which I had in my big black spare-parts-box. If it were stolen, I'd get another ES 175 copy - Coxx or not - since I can't afford the original but love the sound.