Product: Switch Strav
Price Paid: USD 135 USED
Submitted
07/05/2008
at
07:15pm
by
Plank Spanker
Features
:
10
The Strav is the SwitchMusic answer to the Stratocaster, or I should say WAS since the company went OOB. Too bad, had a really good, cutting edge product. The Vibracell (polymer) concept was interesting. The company claimed that Vibracell emulated mahoghany in it's sound and they hit that pretty much dead on IMHO. This is the typical Strat layout, 3 single coil (I'm sure ceramic) pickups, 5-way, 1 V & 2 T. The tone usually reserved for the middle pickup actually controls the bridge pup tone on this one, don't know if thats stock or not because I bought it used. Has a Rosewood fretboard instead of the ebonite. Gets fairly close to a Strat sound with a little quack but still different. BTW it is the 1 peice neck/body contoured heel with the natural rosewwod fretboard dot inlay. frets med/jumbo (?), 25.5 scale, guessing radius at 12 with a very stratlike feel (think MIM Standard) Gotoh tuners vintage type trem. Don't know the pot values but I'm sure they are the small dime sized slighly inferior Chinese variety, why? Because it's made in China. Solid strap pins. Mine is red burst to black.
whith the 1 peice design it has the jump on a "REAL" strat in sustain dept.
Sound
:
9
Good blues machine thru classic and hard rock. Country, elliviknow. Have a set of Am Standard Strat pups I might try for fun and a set of off-brand ceramic stacked buckers I might give a shot too but the Stock Pups are actually very good, not great, but good. Nice feature to have tone control on bridge. 60 cycle is no worse than any other strat. mid pup is RW/RP. necks just a tiny bit chunkier than a MIM but not a hard transition at all. Clean sounds are very clear and crisp, a little bell-like. Dist/OD is as good as any strat, maybe a little better in that the vibracell is close to mahoghany in sound.
Action, Fit, & Finish
:
No Opinion
Reliability/Durability
:
10
Solid made workhorse. hardware is functional and locking tuners would be a plus but very dependable as is. N E V E R gig without a backup. Even a $5000 LP can have problems.
Customer Support
:
No Opinion
N/A
Overall Rating
:
10
I would buy it again and in fact will when I find one. Company is belly up but they are floating around out there in Pawn shop or eBay land somewhere....
