SX SST 57 Vintage

Features? It's got all that a strat has got through and through, standard stuff, nothing flashy. I ordered the stoptail version because: a)I don't tend to use tremelos even when a guitar has one, b)All of the reports of cheap and flawed tremelos on this guitar turned me off, and c)I have never felt this feature to be so vital that it's worth detuning my strings every time I use it. So, that's one feature that I won't be reporting on. Mine was made in China in 2006. The guitar came well packed with a tremelo arm (?) and two allen wrenches. The finish is three-tone sunburst, with a white pickguard which was cut poorly (though I'm very willing to overlook this). Tuners are SX brand, and are definitely cheap. However, after reading all of the reviews here that trash these tuners, I find mine to be just fine; they keep it as well-tuned as any other stock guitar tuners. The nut is plastic and cheap as well, but gets the job done for now. Electronics check out all right.

I play mostly blues through an EQ pedal and a Marshall amp, and this guitar is well suited to my needs. It can deliver on the deep blues notes when needed, plays good rhythm, and has great sustain in the upper and lower registers for soloing. There is a clicking noise on all settings when my hand is not on the strings, but it's not bad at all for cheaper single coils. Actually, I expected more idle noise than it has. I changed the strings out (it came with D'Addario EXL110 I believe) for D'Addario EXL120 (just my preference) and, though I lost some sustain, it's makes the lower strings especially a bit brighter. I was very impressed at how good this guitar sounds without amplification, which is one of my major tests of an instrument (and its quality of wood). I should also add that my sustain may be better than tremelo models due to the stoptail.

I was surprised at how well it came set up. I think I may have gotten lucky in this department. The action was almost right on, so I just adjusted the bridges a tiny bit, tuned it up, and was good to go. The pickups came set at the right height, and the nut is cut well. I really can't find any real fault in the finish except for a small knot on the backside, but I doubt it has any effect on the sound. The neck is acceptable but definitely not perfect on mine. The fretboard is just glued on and glazed over to blend in, and there is a small (very small) knick in the glaze near the 17th fret. That said, the fretboard itself is good with a nice finish and decent quality maple. The frets are filed well, no rough edges or any work needed there. The body wood is alder and is quality as well.

I would trust this for a show, but of course not without a backup (or two). The hardware should last for a good while, at least until I decide to replace the tuners, nut, switch, and pickups (More on this later); I see no reason that they'd break down. The strap buttons are just fine. I'm not one to thrash around a whole lot while playing, so I don't require much, but they're fine. I've only had it two weeks now, so I'm not going to rate this category.

Unknown. It was delivered in three days from NH to WI. I emailed customer support after receiving it just to ask if I needed to register the serial number, and got a reply a couple of hours later. Hundreds of people rave about their support, and I have no reason to doubt that it's worth raving about. I am not aware of any warranty.

I have been playing guitar for about six months, but have been involved in music for years and know a few things about guitars (though I can't say I'm an expert). I also own a Washburn WI64DL. At this point, if it were stolen or lost, I would absolutely buy another. If my washburn were stolen or lost, god forbid, I would be tempted to replace it with an SX (or perhaps an Agile) based off of my experience with the SST57. I really, really, like this guitar, but I do wonder if I got a "good one" since there's a few scattered reports from people calling theirs junk. But, that's complete speculation. If it cost twice as much, I'd still like it, but would probably want a better nut and tuners at least. My favorite feature is the price -specifically the freedom that the price gives me. I can swap parts here and there and not feel like I'm spending too much for too little as usual. I may not give this guitar the full customization treatment, but I could without going broke, and that's a great feeling. I very highly recommend this instrument, and I hope that everyone's experience with it will be as positive as my own.

this is a response to people who have talked up this guitar.this guitar is a complete piece of garbage.iv'e read people say on here that this guitar plays just like my fender reissue fender 57 strat.bullshit.this guitar looks feels sounds nothing like the real thing.i bought one of these guitars from rondo music and i can say for sure the build quality was very bad.some people say this is way better than a squier strat.i just bought a squier standard ltd strat and it is vastly better than this turd.

this guitar sounds terrible even if you replace the pickups.they say on there web site that this guitar is made with a alder body.it's not alder.the squier standard strat ltd i ordered has a real alder body.my squier is the limited edition verision the regular ones have a agathis body and they still sound way better than this guitar.they also come with alnico pickups.

this is where this guitar is really bad.the fit and finish where teribble.this guitar has a maple cap fingerboard.you could see glue squirting out where they mated the fingerboard to the neck they just finished over it.on some other spots of the glue joint you could see spaces between the neck and fingerboard again they just finished it over.piss poor quality.heres the reason i say this guitar does not have a alder body.i pulled the neck from mine to clean out the neck pocket and a piece of the wood between the neck pocket and pickup cavity was broken out.this wood did not smell or look like alder.i was able to take this piece of drift wood and break it into several pieces with just my fingers.this so called alder was very brittle.

this guitar is garbage.if you want a cheap guitar thas is well built buy a squier or a epiphone who also build very nice affordible guitars.i don.t see why anyone one would want to play this turd live.evey piece of this guitar is poor quality.the standard squier series guitars are all up graded with very good hardware and electronics and they only cost $100.00 more than this piece of shit.

will never buy anything from this company again.iv'e been playing guitar for over 20 years and this is one of the worst guitars i ever bought new.iv'e have exspencive guitars before but i like to buy and play cheap guitars now.all of my guitars are under $500.00.it's increadable what you can buy now in guitars for cheap.ibanez,samick,jay turser,and many more makers are building good guitars at cheap prices.cheap at these manufactures does not mean cheaply built.the sx is very cheaply built.why buy something this poorly built when you can buy a name brand with a full warrinity.there is a reason why your local music store dosen't carry this garbage.

This is for the SX VST57/LH/VWH.

Vintage White finish is not too shabby. I expected some flaws but was pleasantly surprised by the quality. Strat style guitar with all that implies (vintage-style trem, non-locking tuners, volume and 2 tone controls, S/S/S config, etc.). Maple neck and fretboard, alder body. 21 jumbo frets. All electronics and components are no-name, as one would expect for $99.

I was pretty impressed with this guitar. I have a Fender 50's Strat reissue and the "feel" of the guitar is comparable. By that I don't mean it's right on, but they obviously considered the neck and body shapes in designing this. It's a solid guitar, and the neck alone is worth the price. Came with extra trem springs and adjustment wrenches, no manual or other accessories though. I'm completely satisfied with what I got for the price.

I bought this to gut and redo, and fully expected it to sound like shite out of the box. For the most part, yeah it's not so great. But it's better than I expected. I have a 25w Fender amp, and when I plugged it in I immediately figured out where the cost savings come from. It's pretty limited in stock condition, but you can actually live with it which was a surprise.

That being said pickups aren't terrible if you just want something to bang on or are just learning. There's a great deal of variation between the pickups, too much in my opinion but maybe you might like it. The bridge pickup is reasonably bright and strong, the middle less so and the neck is downright muddy. It's cool to have tone variation, but there's too much too soon on this. Other than the bridge and bridge/middle settings, I'm hard-pressed to find a useable tone. It's a nice touch to have a reverse-wound middle pickup so you can get some out of phase sounds, though. As for noise, it's comparable in hum to a low-end Fender.

Seriously, who plays a guitar with the factory setup? You can play with it out of the box, but if you're at all serious expect to either put some work into this on your own or get a professional to help. But that applies to any guitar.

Factory setup on the action is reasonable, clearly they put some effort into it. The pickups were kind of randomly adjusted, so not so much effort there. The tremelo is screwed down tight to the body, but seems to be responsive. Finish on the neck and body are great, as is the fit.

The neck and body are outstanding for the price, better than a Squire in my opinion. As I've said before, the neck is worth the $99 price by itself. The tremelo is thin metal, so either replace it or take it easy with it. If you're a tremophile, it just won't stand up. For lighter use, it will be decent enough with some setup. Any use of the trem throws this thing way out of tune because the nut is cut laughably bad. I'd say that the nut might have been cut by monkeys, except monkeys would probably have done a better job. At least it would be funnier.

Pretty satisfied overall though. Well-constructed neck and body, better than a Squire. A half hour or so with the included wrenches and you're set other than the trem. Points off for the nut though, you'd think they'd spend the extra $2 for something decent. I'd pay $105 for this if they did....

Man, if you're so hard on guitars that you need to worry about them falling apart onstage, then you DEFINITELY need to buy $99 guitars. Other than the trem (and you oughta get that settled before gigging with it) yeah this is just dandy for onstage use.

I ordered it, it came in 2 days. I haven't had to deal with them for any problems, but they shipped quickly and securely and that's all I really ask for. No warranty information included, but Rondo's reputation for service gives me confidence.

This is the best investment dollar-for-dollar I've ever made on a guitar, and I've made a bunch of them. I've been playing for decades, and I own (or have owned) guitars of every price range. Up to a point you get what you pay for, after that it's just foolish. Personally, I subscribe to the theory that paying more than $1000 or so for a guitar is idiotic unless it's strictly for an investment.

I wanted a project guitar that I could gut and upgrade, and this is perfect. What surprised me is that depending on your playing level and style, you could even use this without major upgrades. I'd recommend this over any Squire or other similarly-priced Strat model, and I'm completely confident in saying that you couldn't get a better guitar for less than $200. I'll probably buy another of these to mess around with, and am planning on getting one of the Rondo basses soon just for the hell of it. So buy one already!

For a $99 dollar guitar, this is really a steal. The features at this price-point are incredible. The 57 Vintage I purchased is antique white (very close to the color of my Gibson Les Paul). Stratocaster body, 3 single coils, vintage tremelo, chrome tuners, skunk stripe maple neck and alder body. For $99 its not a junk guitar at all. Amazingly good !

I play country, rock, blues and contemporary Christian music. I play every weeek and have played for, ummm more years than I want to mention... I have AGE disease. I'm in my 40z, closer to 50 ... yikes! The guitar has amazingly good sound just the way it is delivered. I will change the pickups soon, but the stock pickups are really decent. I am surprised at how good actually. It sounds very stratty (is that a word?). There is definite definition to the sounds gained by all five positions on the main switch. Volume and the two tone knobs dial in different sounds.

The action out of the box wasn't very good. But, I've purchased high-end guitars and unless a music shop goes over them, they likewise have required a set-up to play decently. My guitar had no major flaws, a couple of very minor things that only someone looking very critcally would find (ie. small imperfection in the paint, end of the neck small spot in the stain finish, pickguard screws not driven straight, some scratchiness in the tone pots (not a good thing)). But, this is a $99 guitar... not a $999 guitar. It is not perfect but... for what it is.. this thing is amazing!

I just bought this, so I have not had enough time to assess durability. Anyone though that would gig without a backup is an idiot. Stuff happens. I've learned that across the years. Murphy's law do apply at any and all randomly selected gigs.
I may post again after living with the SX 57 for awhile. The strap buttons seem very solid and are tight, as is everything on the guitar. I would say the tremelo seems very light, the tuners are weak and the football shaped cord fitting/jack is of cheap construction.. but more on that later.

Here is where Rondo really shines! The big companies could sure take a lesson in customer service from Ronda and specifically from Kurt. Whatever Rondo is paying him, they should give him a raise. He responded to my emails very fast, on an inexpensive product, even in the rush of a busy Christmas season were product was flying out of their warehouse system he had time for me. Thanks, Kurt! In all honesty, this is the best customer service experience ever with a company. I had a similar experience with MTD as Michael Tobias took the time to answer my emails personally. Now that is service. I'm an MTD fan for life! Great basses by the way :)

I have to give this guitar a 10 for what it is at the $119 (including shipping) I paid for it. This would make a great starter instrument right out of the box for someone or a great fun and don't worry about it instrument for someone more advanced. With a good setup it can be made to sound really nice.
My plans for it.. after I play if for awhile and make sure there are no undiscovered flaws I'm not seeing, is to upgrade many of the components and turn it into something better than basic. I will be putting new locking tuners on it, upgrading the pickups to alnico texas premiums from GFS, rewiring the guitar with all new electronics (pots, capacitior, switch, cord football/plug). Eventually I will probably replace the tremelo.. but after the earlier upgrades are done.. I'll see if I want to put any more money into it. I bought the guitar for 119.. tuners, pickups and electronic upgrade 113. I hope to have something that sounds/plays well to gig with for under 250. That's a bargain.

Body finish: Black gloss paint w/ clear gloss lacquer
Neck finish: "Ambered" vintage lacquer

Strat body style

Import-spaced vintage-style tremolo (10.5mm string spacing)

Standard C-shaped neck with 13.7" radius maple fingerboard, 21 jumbo nickel frets

Only included "accessories" were a truss rod hex wrench and another hex wrench for adjusting the string height on the bridge saddles

Made in China in 2006.

3-piece alder body, 1-piece maple neck

Standard Strat controls: 1 volume, 1 neck pickup tone, 1 mid pickup tone

Pickups were low-output import no-namers. The pickups didn't sound bad, but they didn't sound very good either. They lacked sparkle, but would get the job done for a beginner.

Passive electronics.

Out of the box, the SST57 Vintage sounded OK. It wasn't noisy or defective in any way, but it was also kind of flat and uninteresting.

I purchased this guitar with the full intention of replacing the electronics, pickups, tuners and tremolo right away. I did play the stock guitar prior to tearing it down, just to make sure it wasn't defective.

I was almost shocked when the string height and intonation were very nearly set correctly. The .09 strings that came on it were crap, and they did not provide enough string tension to keep the stock tuners in tune. It was playable, but not very enjoyable to play. Once again, a good guitar for a beginner or someone who isn't very picky about tone (which isn't very many guitar players I know), but if you don't upgrade this guitar, it is really only a starter guitar or a "guitar kit in the making" as it is sold now. Surprising quality for $125 delivered, for sure.

I replaced the tuners with Wilkinson EZ-LOK tuners. I replaced the pickguard, fully shielded both the pickguard and guitar cavities. I replaced pickups with two GFS ProTube single-coils and a GFS Loudmouth humbucker. I also added in a Sprague Orange Drop 0.22uf tone cap, a 500K blender pot, a full-sized 500K tone pot and a 500K push-pull volume pot.

Why did I tell you all that in the Sound section? Well, after all those mods, this guitar sounded incredible.

Unmodified, the SST57 Vintage is a 5. But the potential for this guitar when properly modified is incredible. It gets an extra point for this fact.

Shockingly, the setup on this guitar was pretty good right out of the box.

The .09 strings on it didn't provide enough tension to keep the stock tuners in tune, which would be a MAJOR annoyance if I played .09s or lighter strings (which I don't.)

All body routs (under the pickguard and trem cover) were very rough, but everything that wasn't covered up was finished pretty darn well.

Another pain in the butt about this guitar is that it uses an import string spacing on the tremolo. This makes it impossible to replace the stock zinc tremolo sustain block with an after-market steel one. I ended up having to fill the holes for the tremolo mount, re-drill them for a US-spaced vintage tremolo replacement, upon which I then mounted a steel tremolo block.

This is not a defect per se, but more of a heads-up to anyone out there thinking they'll just swap out the crappy zinc block for a steel one....you'll be replacing the trem (and drilling the body) for a US-spaced trem.

So once again, unmodified fit and finish were good, but for the price range of this guitar, they were great. After modding things a bit, it shapes up quite nicely.

Bottom strap button screw was stripped right out of the box, so minus one for that. Thank goodness Dunlop Straploks use a larger diameter screw, so that resolved the problem without further fixing.

Stock tuners seem spotty, but I suspect that was more due to using ultra-light strings on it. Tuners would not hold up (or be tolerated) for very long, I suspect. Another minus point on that.

Neck and body wood were very good for a guitar in this price range. The wood quality was the reason I bought this guitar so I could heavily upgrade it. The wood should hold up as well as it is taken care of by the owner. Plus one for the wood.

5-way pickup selector switch was better than the switch on my Carvin kit...by a long shot. I'm going to swap the stock switch (now that it's no longer in use in the SST57) into my Carvin because I like the way it feels and operates. Plus one for the 5-way switch.

The 1/4" input jack had a nice, tight fit and was wired correctly with insulated wire. I've seen and repaired other Strat copies which had horrible input jacks and jack wiring, so I was impressed that they took the time to wire in a proper input jack. (Plus one again...)

In terms of warranty support, I have no experience on that point. Once I verified the stock guitar did not have any significant defects -and- verified that it worked out of the box, I promptly gutted it and upgraded a lot of the components. So no warranty coverage for me.

Even so, Kurt was very helpful and responsive before the sale. I've bought several items from him in the past (including other SX guitars) and I've always been impressed with Kurt's helpful and responsive support.

I'm not going to get into all the usual rubbish about what other guitars/amps I've owned/played/etc. It really doesn't mean much, but I will say that I've been playing long enough to know what I want in a guitar and really only enjoy playing my customized guitars. To me, most other stock guitars feel like a brand-new pair of boots...until you break them in and make them your own, they never feel right.

If this guitar were stolen, I'd laugh at the thief. Even though I've invested about $400 total in this project, the resale value of this guitar is zero. I'd be pissed off that someone took my "customized baby", but for another $400, I could build up another SX SST57 into a replica of mine. It's a good starting point for a "project guitar", for sure.

One reason I picked the SST57 over the Squier Strats...I like the 12" fingerboard radius on my Carvin bolt, so the 13.7" radius on the SST57 was much closer to my liking than the 9.5" radius found on Fender and Squier Strats.

There's nothing else that I wish it had, as I've already added/replaced everything I want.

My overall rating reflects this guitars position amongst other "starter guitars", which is defined as a sub $300 guitar. The SST57 isn't fancy or refined, but it's a helluva good starting point in the Strat realm.

At the risk of being redundant to the other reviewers,,,, I bought this SST-57 upon advice of our Bass Player. It is Chrome Red with a Maple neck and fretboard. Vintage tremelo and 3 single coil p-ups. It came with a gig bag and appropriate wrenches for adjustment. I assume the body is Alder. 21 jumbo frets and a definite Strat knock-off as noted by everyone else.

My music style is Blues and Classic Rock with a little Jazz and Country added for spice. I usually play this and my other Guitars through either a Line 6 (Flextone,Flex III, or Spyder), Peavey Classic 50, Fender Hot Rod Custom, Fender Dual Showman Reverb, or a Pignose Tube amp. It has some noise if you are "gained up" or lean close to the amp. Right out of the box it nailed the single-coil sounds with great clarity and color. I particularly like the middle/fingerboard pick-ups switch position as it has a smooth yet bright/hollow tone especially on the low E,A,& D strings. I feel that the only drawback tone wise are the Caps used for the tone pots. Better caps would improve the tone control a lot!!

As noted by others, the factory set-up was not on par with more expensive Guitars. The nut grooves were too tight which prevented proper tuning and allowed for detuning via string-bends. The bridge required a new set of saddles because I broke strings constantly with the originals,,,,, and I don't use the Trem Arm at all. I put graphite saddles on and that created an entirely new and awesome instrument. I haven't broken a string on this Guitar ever since!!!! I should also note that this has become my main Guitar and I usually play 3 or more nights per week. I also added two more springs to the Trem simply because I wanted a solid bridge for staying in tune.

This Guitar REALLY will put up with weather extremes and take string bends as far as you can push/pull without losing tune. It is usually in tune when I pull it out of the case. I have dropped it and it is still in tune!! The hardware seems solid. Tuners hold just fine. Pick-ups don't "howl" from loose mounting. Strap buttons have presented no problems. String trees have presented no problems. Frets seem to be fairly level and even. I have and I would use this Guitar without any backup because it has yet to fail since I changed the bridge saddles,,,,,,, electrically or mechanically!

I've not contacted Rondo for any warranty or repair. However I did recently order the "Ash" SST-57 and they were highly cooperative when the order was incorrect (my fault). They sent out the correct Guitar immediately,,,, no questions asked. NOW THAT IS CUSTOMER SERVICE!!!!!!!!! Rondo will go to extremes to make the customer elated and happy. YES, KURT ROCKS!!!!!

I've been playing Guitar for 40 plus yrs. This is my first Guitar purchase without playing it. Obviously I would do it again. I own 28 Guitars, 3 Bass Guitars, and a Cello (my first string instrument). My guitars range from a 60 Les Paul Jr., 65 Firebird III, 94 Blackhawk, 2 fender Tele's, etc. etc. I love them all but this inexpensive knock-off has won the competition. Chances are that I will buy yet another SX soon. Let's see,,,,,, that will make 3!!! The value with this instrument is,,,,,, oh,,,, 90 or so !!

This guitar has all of the features that the classic Stratocaster is known for, no need to go into detail. Jumbo frets and reverse wound middle pickup a bonus.

Testing done with guitar plugged directly into a number of amps (Soldano Decatone, Rivera combo and Omega modified Fender Hot Rod Deville, Fender Bassman). The sound will get you in the ballbark of a Stratocaster, stock pickups have the usual single coil noise, reverse wound middle so no hum in positions 2 & 4. The output of these pickups is on the lower end of the single coil scale, not much personality, pretty sterile. Roll back the tone controls and it turns to muffled crap. Definitely in need of some electronic upgrades.

This is where things get more interesting. When you open up the box the guitar has a nice sexy "wow" factor, and they look nice on the website too. Mine is finished in the asian version of Daphne blue with a maple neck, with all of the vintage treatments (tinted laquer, faux aged plastics). The body is finished reasonably well, nice color with an even spray job. The tinted laquer on the neck is almost comical, it is a bright orange color and it is very thick with plenty of uneven spots on the fretboard. The nut has extra slots, i think the "craftsman" was unsure where the slots where supposed to go. On the plus side the frets are big by strat standards and finished pretty well. Pickguard screw holes are pretty sloppy (some stripped, malaligned or slanted). Setup on this guitar is utter shit, non existant. Even with a good setup there is so much slop in the tuners it's impossible to keep in tune. I am guessing that the factory that makes these things is a training facility before they become "real" craftsman.

The bridge is not too bad, tuners have to go. Once this guitar is properly setup i'm sure it would hold up as well as an average strat.

Rondo is easy to deal with and has very quick service. All emails are answered promptly, virtually 24-7. Mine came shipped with wrong trem arm, they sent me the correct replacement immediately.

I see people throwing out 10's on these SX guitars like mad, great for them but i just don't see it quite that way, maybe just my bad luck.
The bottom line is this, i was jonesin' for a maple neck strat and for 100 bucks figured this would be a good platform to start with and could do the necessary setup, parts, ect to make this a good daily player. with the addition of Fender Hot Noiseless pickups ($100), Gotoh locking tuners ($30) and a professional setup ($35) I brought the total investment up to $282.00 and ended up with an instrument that is only O.K.
The moral of the story is this - You Can't Polish A Turd!
For the record this is my 2nd SX (SJM-62-looks cool, absolute junk) and my bass player has 1 (p-bass copy, not bad), so i feel i have enough of a background to judge their quality.
I would recommend anyone who is attracted by the cheap price to look elsewhere.
You can get a Fender Standard Stratocaster MIM that will absolutely blow the doors off of these things (that includes playing professional gigs out of the box) for around $350.00, or go the extra $ for a Fender Highway 1 Stratocaster, it's money well spent for excellent build quality and resale value. One other observation from this experience, there tons of independent local dealers stocking great affordable instruments that will cut some smooth deals. Go support these guys, they usally have on site service/support after the sale. Quit spending so much time shopping on the internet. Have Fun.

Honestly, I figure the heap of reviews here cover this guitars features. It's strat... and as such has everything any other strat should essentially have.

I've played a number of strats, American, Mexican, and Squire. This is no American strat, but I've never been particularly impressed with the Mexican or Squire series (squire just isn't worth buying in my mind). After reading a series of reviews over and over again, I finally went ahead and placed the order for one of these. Wow... I immediately plugged it into my Marshall setup and it sang! The pickups aren't Seymour Duncans, but for the price I'm not sure how they managed to produce such a great strat sound. The middle pickup leaves something to be desired, but the bridge just screams. Straight out of the box it was obvious adjustments needed to be made. I raised and lowered the pickups heights accordingly, and it's made me an absolute SX strat fan. I play a variety of styles, including punk, blues, classic rock... you name it. For metal, this is definitely NOT what you're looking for, but for what I tend to play it suits perfectly. No real hum in the pickups, some reviews state otherwise, but I suppose I've gotten lucky in that regard. Bear in mind however, they're single coils, a bit of hum is imminent... but it's more than bearable. for the price, keeping value in mind, I can't give the sound on this axe anything less than a 10 following adjustments.

Factory setup was definitely subpar, but it's nothing 30 minutes of setup can't fix. Pickup height had to be adjusted slightly, truss rod needed some correcting as the intonation was pretty off (a little bow in the neck as well). The finish is gorgeous! The vintage white gives off more of a banana cream look and I'm absolutely in love with it. No flaws in the finish whatsoever. The neck itself is worth the money paid for the entire guitar! A little grime on the frets, easily taken care of with a little polish. the nut... as everyone's said here, is cheap. Plain and simple. For my style it's not imperitive I replace it just yet, but I'm considering it in the future. If your a stickler on tuning, you'll definitely want to consider replacing the machine heads. I have yet to do that myself, but it's at the top of my list. I've had worse, but if you plan on gigging with this baby, REPLACE THEM. Other than what I've listed above, this guitar is gorgeous.

Will it withstand live playing? I certainly feel it could... hell after a few weeks of play this has easily become my main axe (I own a washburn, and ibanez, epi les paul, and several acoustics). Again, if you're looking to gig with this as you're main guitar, a number of inexpensive modifications are essential. The tone pots, are completely useless. One didn't even work when it arrived. The volume and pickup selector switches aren't anything special, but they have yet to fail me. Strap buttons feel deeply rooted in this thing. I'm not sure how they'll hold up if you're stage diving on a constant basis with guitar in hand, but for your everyday rocking out, they've held up perfectly. As far as using it at a gig without a backup... that's generally not the best idea to begin with, but given I'd have no other choice, sure.

I've never dealt with repairs or anything of the sort. I've heard nothing but good things from Rondo. Shipping was prompt and to the point. Excellent service.

I've been playing guitar for 8 years, I've been in a series of bands, and I have plenty of experience with a variety of guitars. I feel this guitar is an AMAZING buy for 100 bucks... hands down. If you can work through the kinks and initial setup issues, you've got a great clean strat copy. Coming from me, this puts squire to absolute SHAME. If it were stolen or lost, I'd buy a new one the very next day provided I had the money. The look is clean and the neck is unbelievable for the price. Slightly thicker than any strat I've ever played, and jumbo frets, which makes it that much more enjoyable to play. Don't kid yourself, it's no 1000 dollar guitar, but it could easily pass as one provided you give it a good initial setup. For 100 bucks? If you've ever wanted a strat, do yourself a favor, and just GET it. Stop delliberating, and questioning it, just do it. :)

This review is for the SX SST 57 Vintage model. The body color of this particular example is baby blue. It's not exactly Sonic Blue, nor is it Daphne Blue, but I confess that one of the main reasons I bought it was the color. The Rondo site has had these baby blue SSTs go out of stock rather quickly at least twicw now! Anyway, standard Strat configuration, with 3 single coil pickups, maple neck, maple cap fingerboard, gloss finish on neck, jumbo frets, nicely finished, yada, yada, yada............. It has the same features you would expect from the guitar it copies, so since there are no surprises, I'd rate it highly.

This review is for the SX SST 57 Vintage model. The body color of this particular example is baby blue. It's not exactly Sonic Blue, nor is it Daphne Blue, but I confess that one of the main reasons I bought it was the color. The Rondo site has had these baby blue SSTs go out of stock rather quickly at least twicw now! It's not the first SX Strat I've owned, but certainly my favorite for reasons I'll get into a little further. Anyway, standard Strat configuration, with 3 single coil pickups, maple neck, maple cap fingerboard, yada, yada, yada............. Now there's nothing really wrong with the sound of these SX Strats with the stock pickups, and I've never modified any of my previous examples. But, they are what they are - and the electronics are the only components that don't really hold their own with the "name brand". Still, they sound good enough to leave 'em alone and enjoy them.

Here's where I was pleasantly surprised. As I mentioned, I've bought other SX gear, and I always fully expect that I will have to do some tweaking of the action, filing of fret edges, neck adjusting, etc. on a guitar in this price range. But this time around, I received a guitar that was perfectly set up, with no buzzes, excellent in all aspects right out of the box. It is as comfortable to play as any Strat I've owned (and that's a lot!), enough so that I decided to drop in a set of GFS pickups to replace the originals. That upgrade has resulted in me playing this cheapie rather than my high-end Strats.

Well, I replaced the pickups, and the only other weak link would possibly be the pots and switch. Since I don't gig regularly, I believe this guitar would be reliable over time. I am pretty easy on my equipment, and reliability or durability are in part based on how you treat your instruments. Since it's new, I can't rate this category now.

The hype surrounding Rondo and Kurt Z. is all well-founded. Simply the best customer service available!

I've been playing for 40 years, have had hundreds of guitars from high-dollar to cheapo, and this guitar will stay in my current collection for the foreseeable future. At $99, it is one of the best values available! I don't hate anything about it (even though I changed the pickups), and I love the playability, jumbo frets, vintage aged neck and....yep - that baby blue color! You cannot go wrong with one of these, and I'd buy another in a heartbeat if something happened to this one. In baby blue, of course!

3TS finish, strat style, tune-o-matic, stock tuners, fat neck, jumbo frets, came with allen wrench, 3 peice solid alder body (almost every strat guitar under $800 is a 3 peice out there, including Fender USA. Look into it). SSS pickups (pretty good pickups). Passive electronics. Whats so good about this gutiar is that if you just want a body and neck, you dont need to go to warmoth.com, just buy one of these. If SX was a USA factory based manufacturer, we wont get these for less than $500.

Sounds pretty good. Im using a randall rh100 (which is mostly a metal amp) and I'm getting pretty clean sounds and nice distortion sounds. Im also using a digitech rp1 which has a noise gate, so there isn't any hum. It has a rich and full sound, but not very bright, but thats because of my amp.

It has medium action which is my favorite, I dont like it low or high. No flaws. This is such a beautiful guitar. I got mine with a stop tail bridge because I have a tonepros set that I will be putting in this guitar. Other people say the frets are medium jumbo, but they are not. They are jumbo, kinda big, but nice. I will change the nut to bone. The neck is awesome and the vintage finish is a nice add on. The body sunburst is what you will see on very high priced guitars.

This thing is sturdy and reliable. Built solid. Finish is strong, and I dont need a back up, but I bought another one so I will have two. The tuners arent that great though, but work OK.

Kurt at Rondo is like the holy grail of customer service.

This guitar is a 10. I would give it an 11, but I dont like the tuners. I basically bought a overhaul kit for this strat. This review is before I put any mods on it. I'm puttin on wilkinson locking tuners, GFS vintage alnico staggered pickups, Tonepros complete bridge and tailpiece replacement, and new electronics, and new bone nut. Overall, this will cost me 200, which ISN'T bad at all!!. For a 100 bux stock, its as nice as any fender Ive played at guitar center inluding the US models except the ones that cost over $1000. With my mods, it will exceed the $1000 fenders. I just also want to say that this guitar is great even without changing anything.