Product: Fret King Super 60 HB
Price Paid: UNKNOWN
Submitted
08/10/2009
at
12:33pm
by
Frettie King
Features
:
10
2009 Blue Label Super 60, made in Korea. Strat-style, 22 frets, two-piece centre-jointed American alder body, Canadian hard rock maple neck and Indian rosewood fingerboard. Two (rather high) chromed control knobs: volume and tone, plus 5-way selector. S/S/S pickup configuration (calibrated balanced Fret-King pickups). Gotoh locking tuners with height adjustable posts and Wilkinson VS401V vibrato bridge. Came with a nice, padded gig bag.
I replaced the control knobs with standard Strat volume and tone knobs: the reason being that the vibrato arm fouls against the volume control. Incidentally, the vibrato arm looks like it is missing something in the end which goes into the bridge, as it's got a screw thread cut into the inside leaving a hollow: this is just to make you ring the excellent support staff at JHS who tell you that it's normal.
Sound
:
10
Classic Strat sound. SRV / Hendrix / Hank Marvin all on hand through Vox Tonelab SE. Nice 'hollow, woody' tone too if required, bordering on electro-acoustic with neck pickup. Very versatile. Most of what I want is achievable apart from the Les Paul bludgeon sound (for which I use a Les Paul. Duh). No noise from the Wilkinson single coil pickups. Very pleasing to the ear.
Action, Fit, & Finish
:
8
Action was a little high and I replaced the strings. I think it must have had 10s from the factory because the intonation needed a lot of adjustment after I loaded it with 9s. But I was able to achieve a very low action with perfect intonation relatively quickly (this is a vibrato unit, after all).
The finish was exemplary - absolutely no complaints (this one is Burgundy Mist which looks a bit like copper).
The nut was a little bit ragged but a bit of filing sorted that out.
The vibrato arm pushes into the block easily - to adjust the grip you have to press the whole vibrato unit down (i.e. full dive bomb) which then reveals the extremely well-hidden grub screw.
The string height is fully adjustable, but the supplied Allen key wasn't the right size - beware before you chew up the two grub screws on each string saddle.
Reliability/Durability
:
10
I play this without a backup. It seems very reliable and robust.
Customer Support
:
10
JHS, the owners of Fret-King, are excellent in their customer service.
Overall Rating
:
10
I've been playing for 35 years and have been through most 'standard' guitars. This is my first non-Fender / Gibson / Rick and I'm delighted with it. I would definitely replace it - perhaps with the Green Label Corona 60 equivalent, but at twice the price (actually, four times what I paid for it)?
I'm not sure whether it was just me, but I could have done with a bit more technical documentation than was provided. I received a warranty card (fine), and a couple of pieces of paper 'explaining' how to adjust the Gotoh height-adjustable tuners and VS401V bridge. Now, their English is far better than my Korean / Japanese etc., but they are a comic tour de force that had me smiling and thinking back to the early days of Tamiya plastic kits (you know, "Place dob of glue on Tiger's axle, then rotating with smoothness until proposed calibration is right way" etc.). Nothing about that grub screw either!
Take care with the locking tuners. They are counter-intuitive but, if you decipher their 'Operation Manual' actually very good.
