SX GG2

This review is for the SX GG2 BO TWR LH. model.
This is the 2nd SX guitar I've bought, and was a steal at $99.95.
I guess this would be called the Gibson explorer type copy.
I bought it for its looks. It's going on my wall.
SX brand tuners. (they usually need tightening with a socket/wrench)
Chrome hardware, it looks really nice right out of the box.
Alder wood body, maple neck, rosewood fretboard. The fretboard was very dry. I'll work on that next...
22 frets, 3 way selector, 2 humbuckers.
Please note that hese scores are kind of based on the unreal price.

I tried to set it up with very low action but raised it a bit as I couldn't get it to sound right. The pick-ups I put as close as I could get without touching on the 22nd fret.
Ok, the guitar wasn't set-up at all out of the box, but it's amazing that you can get a guitar with this look and quality woods for under $100.

I actually got this to sound pretty good with the stock hardware.
I nice heavy metal sound, I was really surprised. I'm not sure it will stay in tune forever, as I only just got it set right.
This would make a great 1st guitar for ANYONE.

No set up expected, and not much if any done. The fretboard is very dry. Loose tuning pegs as I expected.
They don't tighten them much at the factory, maybe that's a good thing?
The fretwire could use a little work, but I'm not too concerned.
I expected far more problems at this price, but they are all minor concerns for me.

Very well made guitar for the price, and it looks awesome.

I wouldn't gig with this, but I guess you could.
The strap buttons are a little small I think, I'd HATE to drop this and have to buy another. (and yes, I would.)
It's a $100-$150 range guitar, but I could see paying $200-300 for it...
I hope that describes the quality.

These guys are very fast at shipping the stuff out.
I've never tried to return anything. I did ask a question on a matching case once, and I got the email back within 12 hours.

I planned on putting this on my wall, but I had time to kill so I set it up to see how bad it would sound.
I've been smiling ever since.
I might actually put some better pick-ups, better tuning pegs in later on.

I was suprised for the money.it suits my style quiet well i play alot of hardcore metal. it is a bit noisy and could be a little more crunchy but with a little amp setup it's not bad. more than likey gonna replace the pups with Dimarzio x-2n and Evo Neck

Setup was total crap tuners are cheap and need to be replaced they were like trying to turn the klusions on my 47 Gibson.The neck is HUGE compared even with my older gibsons. all the harware is good and the finish is great

Have not plyed live in a long time but after i finish replacing the pups and tuners it should not be a problem

I've Been plying for 20 years(drums for 4,Bass for 4 and guitar for 16)
if it were lost or stolen i might buy another

Same as below.

Hated the stock pickups as expected. Not a big deal. I put in a set of Mighty Mite Motherbuckers, and it sounds killer now.

Very well put together. The fretboard looked very dry though. I didn't like the cheapo plastic knobs, so I changed them. I also changed the tuners. The stock tuners were the SX logoed ones, and sucked big time. I'll be honest, I did a fret level and polish on this thing, because there were a few high frets. The inlays are neat, but the pieces of abalone used in the 12th fret inlay look like cast-offs, with voids in them. The finish is flawless. Very nice and shiny. One thing I hate about this thing, is the ugly headstock. It's not just an esthetic thing either. The tuners are crammed way too close together, and as such, are difficult to turn without moving the adjacent ones.

This guitar would stand up to gigging as well as anything.

Kurt at Rondo is fantastic.

Overall, considering this guitar cost $159, you can't go wrong for the money. You might have to spend a few bucks to make it solid for gigging, and to sound better, but $159 for a solid mahogany set-neck guitar is just stupid cheap. I can't justify giving it a bad overall rating.

This is an addendum to my review below... good to check in after the "honeymoon period" is over.

I finally got around to starting work on this guitar.. I drilled a new hole for the top strap button down beside the neck joint, on the back of the guitar (is drilling holes in the neck joint of a set-neck guitar a good idea? probably not, but luckily mine didn't fall off.... be careful.. I wasn't thinking at the time... perhaps drilling a few inches above or below this spot would be a good idea or have a professional do it). Now it's perfectly balanced where it once was neck-heavy; no more neck dives or extra effort to keep the thing upright while playing. After this period of time, that's been my only real problem with the guitar, everything works and it still feels good despite any abuse I've put it through. Still needs a new nut. I think EMG 81's are in the near future, and I've replaced the plastic knobs with some nice chrome cylindrical ones that match the rest of the hardware.

I'm gonna go play it now :)

Alright. A very, very nice looking guitar. 22 frets, two volume and one tone controls, two humbucking pickups, 3 way selector, mahogany set neck (yes you read that right), black body and neck, but with a mirror pickguard. A mirror pickguard! I am not even exaggerating, the pickguard is really a mirror. Stop tailpiece bridge, some SX tuners (stays in tune pretty well, could be better). Because of the Mahogany body and probably the mirror pickguard, it weighs 9 pounds which tends to ache on your shoulder after a while of playing standing up. Otherwise, for 160$, where else will you find a set neck, mahogany bodied guitar that looks this nice? Everybody I've shown it to will not believe that I only paid 160$ for it.

I play mostly hard rock and metal but I like to experiment with different things and it sounds good for most of them. The pickups aren't too great, but what can you expect from 20$ pickups? I usually run it through a Crate BT100 (which is a bass amp), and it sounds great, especially with distortion, I get that super crunchy sound I've been looking for. No noise anywhere. As far as clean goes, the bridge pickup sounds good, very punchy and nice, and the bridge is a little mellower but useful for things as well. And if you're lazy, you can put it on the neck pickup position with distortion, and turn down the tone knob, and you have a clean sound! Nice..Sometimes it leaves a little to be desired (IE, for leads), but most of the time, just amazing for this cheap.

The guitar was relatively well set up at the factory (nice action, set up with good D'Addario strings, etc), except for one big flaw. On the stop tailpiece, it was very rough, and because of this it kept chewing up my strings and breaking them, and I had to buy new strings almost every other week at times. Also, the input jack on it after a while of use, started to drop the cable out, if you were standing up and sometimes if you were sitting. This was remedied by my friend at a local music shop, but it's something to consider if you need something that you don't want to have to tinker around with. I've got to give it credit for the body though, very shiny and nice, and the pickguard is just awe inspiring.

Before I took it to the shop, I wouldn't use it live because of the fact that sometimes it would drop out the cable from the input jack. But other than that, I'd use it live, the straplocks have held up fine and I like to thrash around when I play standing up. The hardware definitely seems like it will last, and the finish is great, I made a huge scratch on it, and I managed to make it almost invisible, which is great. Before, I wouldn't say I could depend on it but with a simple little setup at your local music store I definitely depend on it, and would gig without backup.

I dealt with the company, namely trying to get a case, and asking questions about the guitar and all, and it was top notch. Kurt would always get back to me quickly and help me very much. So that's a 10, amazing customer support (As I'm sure you've heard from other reviews of guitars from the seller-rondomusic.net). Also it was packaged extremely well, double boxed with bubble wrap around it and everything, not a scratch on it, when it arrived.

If it were stolen or lost, I would definitely buy another because they're so cheap, and for the value. I've been playing guitar almost a year now, and before all I had was an Ovation AE28 acoustic electric. I love how it looks, and how I can get that crunchy distorted tone everybody loves. I only hate how it would drop my guitar cable out and cut out when I was playing standing up, and sometimes sitting down. I didn't get to compare it to others because I bought it online, but I took a chance in buying it like that, and I definitely will buy from the website again, because it's definitely worth it. Nowhere else can you get a set neck mahogany body guitar for 160$..

Bought this brand new from Rondo Music just after Christmas of 2004. There was a sticker on the back of the headstock that said Made in China, which may be a little unsettling but read on. Right-handed model, 22 frets, 3 way switch for 2 SX passive humbuckers, 2 volumes and 1 tone knob. Solid Mahogany body, maple set-neck with rosewood fretboard, unique split-parallelogram inlays (pics available at rondomusic.net). Its an Explorer body, with slight grooves cut out of the lower horn and the big "fin", otherwise a dead ringer for the original. It's got a stop bar tailpiece, no floyd rose madness here. The tuners are generic die cast sealed "SX" tuners. All the metal is chromed. White plastic nut, no pick guard (on the red model, the black version has a chrome pickguard). Came with just an allen wrench for the truss rod. That's all I can think to list, I'll give my email address at the bottom if you want to ask me anything about this guitar :) I'd say this guitar is well-equipped, a solid 8.

I bought this guitar for playing metal, from Black Sabbath to Iron Maiden to Kreator to Darkthrone to Winter to Immolation, and all points in between. I felt the uncontrollable urge to buy a bigger and pointier guitar :) and to move away from the annoyances of the floating tremolo bridge (which I rarely used on my other guitars). I dare say that the people who put the pickups together weren't intending them to be used in a screaming metal guitar, they might work fine for softer music if you choose to play such on an Explorer. The bridge pickup is bassier than my Ibanez RG's stock V8 pickup, and the GG2 doesn't get quite as much of a palm muted crunch. After fiddling with my knobs I can kinda make it work though. The neck pickup has less mud than the Ibanez V7, it works pretty well for playing mellow leads, if I change out the bridge pup I might just leave the neck where it's at. The neck pickup also sounds passable clean, kinda dark and mellow. The guitar isn't noisy at all, but i use a noise gate anyway. I haven't noticed any feedback when having the volume cranked, sometimes my gear feedbacks and sometimes it doesnt though. Bottom line, this guitar cost $159 and the pickups are cheap, you have to realize that when you click on the Add To Cart button. Chances are if you are buying a Rondo guitar, you are planning to hot-rod all the parts anyway :). this axe sounds alright to me, although I am considering a new bridge pickup just because of my musical preferences.

The guitar came strung with shiny D'addario strings, I suppose they were .9s because they bent like spiders silk. The intonation was quite good once i tuned it up to E standard, but I didn't dig the wimpy strings. I picked up some .11-.48 Power Slinkies and tuned up to Eb and it feels nice and tight now, although I will need to re-set the intonation. The action is great for me, this along with the nice fretwork makes the GG2 much easier to play notes way down the neck than on my Ibanez. My guitar has the Wine Red finish, its very pretty and deep red and glossy and very much finger-print city (get a rag). I originally arranged to buy a black GG2, they were out of internet stock but Kurt was going to get me a model from the store. I opened the box and found a Wine Red guitar staring me in the face.. but it's so damn nice I kept it and didn't complain :) There are some scuff marks on the fretboard where the neck meets the body, nothing anyone else will notice and I'm a guy who doesn't care about minor flaws that will get covered up by the major battle scars I've yet to inflict :) The finish doesnt have any obvious flaws, at least not until I got ahold of it and started running into tables and stuff. The neck is finished the same as the body, which I know bothers some people, it's certainly stickier than the unfinished necks I've played but I've adapted to it quickly. The tuners are stout and they have been holding pretty well, but the pegheads are damn close together, you have to be careful not to hit the neighboring ones when tuning up. Minor annoyance there. This is altogether quite a nice chunk of guitar.

I will play live with this guitar after I decided whether I like the stock bridge pickup or change it. The plastic control knobs don't look too sturdy to me, looks like a good shot would knock one off, so I'll be careful and I might wind up replacing those sometime. The rest of the parts seem great to me. I'm no guitar tech but nothing rattles when I shake it and nothing has fallen off, that's pretty much the extent of my testing :) The finish is pretty thick; this is my first Pointy Guitar and I've bashed some furniture and doors and took it for a car ride with no case or bag. I've knocked a couple of tiny dents in the finish, but there is no wood showing through, just more deep red (unlike the finish on my ibanez which just chips off when I hit something). The upper strap button is not in a good place on Explorers, if you hold the guitar just right (or wrong?) the strap will come off. This guitar has some cute little strap buttons, which probably need to be replaced with your favorite brand of strap locks. I've experienced nothing that would suggest this guitar is anything less than dependable, I would have backups at shows for different tunings probably, it's never wise to get on stage with only one guitar at the ready.

Kurt at Rondo Music is well known for being among the nicest and most helpful guys you can buy a guitar from anywhere :). I e-mailed him several times trying to arrange to get a black display guitar from the shop, but somewhere along the mail order line there was a communication breakdown and i wound up with the red guitar instead. I am quite certain that I could have packed the guitar back up and mailed it back and got it exchanged with no problem, but I didn't bother because its such a nice guitar. This is a company who will answer your e-mails, even when closed for the holidays. If your guitar arrives broken or if you get a total lemon that's not working for you, just let Kurt know and he can probably take care of it.

I've been playing for a few years, and nobody really wants to hear the exhaustive list of equipment I've owned ;). If this guitar was stolen or lost I'd certainly want to buy the same one again. It's absolutely as good as (and probably better than) any entry-level guitar by all the big guys, at nearly half the price for most of em. And with some replacement parts I could have it kicking some serious ass. I feel like this axe is gonna be sitting in my guitar stand (which I had to tilt 45 degrees) and hanging off my shoulders for a long time.

If you're looking to buy one yourself and you need to know something i missed or want some more info, feel free to e-mail me and I'll try my best.