Switch Ultima EQ

This is a very versatile guitar. The body/neck is one piece and moulded from Vibracell, a synthetic material designed to respond acoustically like wood, but without the inconsistencies. The fretboard is rosewood. This model has two Wilkinson humbuckers; an Ovation-style bridge pickup with a separate out (essential feature if you can afford an acoustic amp as well as a regular amp; if not, you can use a Y connector); three-a-side Grover tuners; through body stringing; volume, tone and three way selector for the humbuckers; three band active EQ and volume for piezo; graphtech nut; three way selector for piezo/humbucker output; three sturdy strap buttons (two at the bautt end.) The sparkly green finish is very durable. The scale lenght is around 645mm and the neck has a similar profile to a les paul. The ergonomic heel-less design gives easy access to all 22 frets.

I have eclectic tastes ranging from celtic and blues acoustic styles to jazz fingerstyle, classical and classic rock. This guitar doeseverything except the classical. I use a yamaha silent for that. I want to limit my road rig to two guitars and two small amps. I use an AER for the piezo and an Orange valve amp for the humbuckers. The Switch gives a good range of electro-acoustic sound with a useful EQ. The neck pickup can deliver a lovely smooth jazz sound. The humbuckers give the range of sounds you would expect of a les paul type guitar. They are vintage voiced and give superb sounds, clean, crunch and overdriven, great for classic rock, though not ideal for death metal. My Les Paul sounds a little better, but it cost about six times as much. The switch gets a solid 10 in its price range.

I got this second-hand. The basic set up was excellent although it needed to be slightly adjusted to my personal requirements as always. I have a medium action, but you could set it up as low as you like. The neck is great. The pickups were already well balanced. There are no flaws or issues. It is a very well constructed guitar.

This guitar is very reliable and durable. It will keep its sparkle for decades. The strap bullons are solid; the tuners are top quality; pots jacks and switches are pro quality too.

The company seems to no longer exist so there is no support. You are unlikely to need any though.

I have been playing for decades. I own Fender and Gibson electrics, Gibson, Fylde and Lowden acoustics, plus some classical guitars. The Switch fulfils its purpose as a versatile workhorse to an excellent standard. It does not sound like a top flight acoustic but it gives a useable live sound. It is not as good as my Les Paul for electric duties, but it comes close. I leave my valuable guitars in my studio and I gig with the Switch. It does it's job superbly for its price. If I lost it I would look for another, though you don't see many of them second hand and there are no more new ones as far as I know. It gets a 10 in its price range.

my 5th switch guitar, my second ultima eq..22 frets semi hollow?not really just routed a lot for all the electrics.rosewood fretboard vibracell body.switch p\u's, belcat piezo and preamp pickup config is hh with piezo bridge.grover tuners .the strings come out of the end of the guitar where the strap should attach.they put 2 buttons above and below where the strings come out,sounds strange but i have 2 holes in my levi strap with the same spacing..makes it feel way more secure.came with gigbag and wrenches

it's acoustic its electric its both ...its its its superswitch....ok ok i'll butt it out now.this guitar is my alltime fave guitar over any guitart i've ever owned.is like a les paul that can become a tele or an acoustic at the flick off a switch.I play blues,classic rock,and country when i'm drinkin,hmmm playin a lot of country these days and this guitar easily covers them all.i have mounted my gk3 roland synth pu on it as well so now i run that end of it through my new vg99

the setup was pretty close on this one,i like low action ,so i tweaked the truss rod and dropped the bridge just a tiny bitthe pu's were adjusted perfect and there wasn't any string line up problems,like the other fella had.This one is finished in black firemist sparkle kinda like a waterski boat i had in the 70's,and at different angles and light it changes color to darl green sparkle.there was a short in the wiring to the piezo when i first got this,luckily it was just a bad solder joint...note my other ultima eq,was defective in the piezo preamp..parts are on the way.

I never gig with out a backup...neither should you!!!This guitar will stand up as well as any other guitar on the market.there are no crap parts on switch guitars.there are however some bad to horrible setups,and as i'm finding now not so professional solder joints.but being an old guy i've had fender amps die due to cold solder joints,and the neck cracked and broke off a firebrand sg i was playing at a gig.so all in all despite some flaws,and not all switch guitars have flaws.generally speaking they are tough as nails

gone ,but you can still buy them on ebay

longtime player,tons of gear probably owned 50 high end guitars in my life these rank right up there.if this was stolen i would get another if possible.SWITCH GUITARS ROCK....TRY ONE NO LIE they can be bought for under $200.it's insane

First things first, I read the reveiw below long before I ever purchased this guitar, and while it made me somewhat apprehensive about this axe, I chalked it up to the writers mental capability and the possibillity he had recieved a DUD.

***I have had expierience with these Switch guitars before and I have to say that it is hard to believe how good they actually are.
~(this is my first harmony ceentral review although I have been using the opinions found here to make music gear choices for some time an have not been led astray yet.)

As for the features this guitar is one piece of a synthetic material somthing like fiberglass or other resin materials used in everything from billiard, and bowling balls to rifle stalks and police batons. It has two Switch designed humbuckers, and a piezo bridge, which leads the strings fairly straight through the bottom of the guitar- instead of out the back(*because of this they put a strap botton on either side of where the strings come out-**this does not cause any serious ballance problem in the guitar, also it serves as a quick way to change the hang of your guitar from a standing to a sitting position)-this gives you in effect the most direct string through design that I have seen. As for controlls this could not be more striaght forward, and as the guy in the first review found it complex I can only assume a lack of 'mental fortitude'. There are three (Eq)sliders on the upper horn of the tele style body, the top being High the next being Mid, the last being Low, also in this area there is a presence pot, and a small momentary push switch(used to test the battery-active piezo systems take a 9 volt)that turns on a small red test light. There is only one volume control for both pickups, and only one tone control, there is a three-way selector to switch between the 2 humms, and another smaller three-way toggle that in the upper positions gives you output only for the humbuckers, mid position gives you output from the hum and the piezo and the bottom gives you only output from the piezo. There are two 1/4" outputs the one closest to the bottom(towards the strap buttons) out puts the piezo, while the one closer to the horn ouputs the humbuckers. This means you will need to either be able to put to inputs into your rig/amp, or have two amps to play through simultainiously, to get both sets of pickups at once. I would like to make on further coment about the 1/4"ouputs- they are crater like and therforetake more of the cable into the guitar wich a find is a very good design, I have only seen these on Switch guitars but if I built a custom I might go whit these.
The strap buttons are heavy and I hav not had any 'slip-offs', the tuners are grover and they do their job and keep this axe in tune, the fret board is rose wood and has 22 frets.

the only thing that could be added to this guitar would be separate volume and tone pots and depending on your school of opinion either coil-taps, for the hums, VCC pots instead of, or in conjunction with the tone pots or nither.

I play Blues, Classic rock, Hard Rock, Heavy metal, Alternative rock, reggae, rockabilly, psycho-rockablilly, Acid, some folk, and any and every combination of these styles.

This guitar can sound basically like anything you want. It is a very, VERY, versatile bluse axe, but can be made to dump some pretty serious output for heavy stuff, It really shines when the two signals are used together either in one amp or two depending on the desired effect. If you turn up the highs and mix the eq fadders right on this you can achive a fairly authentic reso sound which I find comperable the Eastwood Delta 6(read the reviews).

As for the other guy complaining about the lenght of strings behing the bridge causing harmaonic sounds I really can't say I know what he is on about,(mabey he was playing on the strings below the bridge instead of above it?) although From his description of this scenario, I came up with a few solutions to the problem, either tape up the strings so they can no longe cause vibrations or stuff somthing like a sock(any peice of cloth) to dampen the strings.

I have found the tone pot to be of ggod quality in that it does not decrease the signal when you roll of the highs like alot of the cheaper guitar tone pots kicking around these days.

The other big thing you will allready know if you have been reading up on these guitars is that the sustain is through the roof!!^!!, due to the material that this is made from(the switch story is that vibracell was modled after the density of mahogany, a wood known for its dark and melancoly, sustaining qualities) And also in part due to the really well deisgned string through system.

The reason I give it only a nine is that the best setup for a tonal masterpiece in my opinion would have been to keep the single tone and volume as they are but to have added a VCC controll pot for each humbucker.

I have only seen one of the Switch guitars with this string trough body body in person and that is the one that I own. There is a fairly serious flaw in the make-up of this axe, whether in mine alone,one production run or in all of these string trough modles I do not know.
The flaw is that in the bottom where the srings enter the bodythe sixth E string hole is not on proper allingnment with the poles on the humbucker (bringing the string closer to the fith A) and almost does not even line up with the poles edges. Luckaliy there are two saving graces, 1 due to the extreamley long length past the bridge and the fact that it is a piezo bridge you can adjust the string so that it better lines up, and 2 being that this is the sixth and loudest srting, it is usually necessary to lower this side or pole to even the tones of the strings but this equals out perfectly.

The reason I give a low rating is that I bought this guitar off eBay as a brand new guitar, the writeup failed to mention that it was a wall hanger and as so fairly beat up, it looks to me that the shops luthereier tried to rectify the problem by moving the nut which was a useless thing to do, the presence pot needs replacement as there are huge dead spots, the tone knob was dirly and crackled alot but after a few months of use is almost perfect and clean.

These are nothing to do with the manufacturing company only a reflection on Magdon Music.

I believe that I would have rated this guitar a 7.5 if I had recieved it new, but as you can see from my sound coments it is more of a cosmetic flaw than anything(altogh it could have been fairly majour if the flaw had been on one of the quiter strings)

I have had this guitar for about 2 months now, and as long as I can keep my self from using it to smash a whole in the stage I think it will last the beatings that will be doled out to the drunken agressive bugers who try to jump the stage and mess with the band.

That said I think alot of people think these guitars are nearly indestructable. They are definatley notfragile but as with any of my guitars I will take care not to damage it. I think under the right circumstances a blow could cause it to be cracked.

On the inside of the battery compartment another sing of its bening a demo modle there is a good quarter inch chunk of a bulge that has been knocked out reveling the thickness of the finish and the material of theguitar itself. It is white and very rough in a fine grit sandpaper way, sugsesting a puorousness. In my minds eye, I some how had a picture of hardend fibreglass rosin, I realy don't know why I guese its just the feel and wieght of these instraments.

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*The Very biggest concern I have is that these guitars not be exposed to large amounts of, or extended periods of time in the sun, as this in my opinion will cause fading(which is probably the least of your concern), as well as the possibility of the uv and infared rays of the light spectrum causing the structural damage that causes so much of this worlds plastic to erode and slowly desintegrate.

I asked fo rsome literatutre and the tools as I got absolutley noting with this guitar, and they sent this stuff righ out to me, I was rather circumspect as I am up here in BC Canada and alot of american companies these days won't have nuthing to do with non-US citizens.

Two thumbs up here!!

I have to say that this company looks incredbily promising, there biggest down fall is there marketing department. I can definatley see where the got their name from and all but its not a good product name search for switch guitar on ebay and it brings up about 20 full pages of results including every guitar switch on ebay. This is only the first marketing flaw, there are and have been little to no campaings for this companies products, and very few stores online or real world stock their products as far as my knoledge goes they have only one dealer in all of Canada. They need to get these guitars to the people once you play one you have a hard time puting them down.

Hopfulley this company is not doomed simpley because of poor marketing and the people that can't look past the past. Wood
is where it started and I will always own wood guitars but expand your horizens and look past what its made of if you dont take the steps to hear the waves from the ocean, you can neither see the trees for the forest. Thanks for reading the review people keep making music, keep living the your life for you and Stay Awake, if you catch my drift......

Weird fixed neck guitar made of synthetic material. Twin humbucker layour, 3 way switch,vol and tone. Piez0 bridge, controlled by Godin style sliders top horn. 3 a side Grover tuners. rosewood 22 fret board

Couldn't set it up, stupid wiring,see below. The humbuckers are fairly meaty in output. The piezo thingie works quite well, with a good range of sounds. LOTS of noise fro right hand on bridge. It also picks up ,chime style, the long string length BEHIND the bridge, which sounds awful. On existing switching, it is not possible to combine the piezo and magnetic sounds. Overall, pretty useless really

Set up awful. The bridge(tunomatic style) is far too flat in radius for the board, which is much more rounded. Consequently, you have to set everything REALLY high too get it to play. The long string length provided by the weird stringing arrangement makes it feel at least two guages heavier than it is. Paintwork is a nice spangly colour. Did anyone try this after the prototype? It shouldn't have got past that stage as it is.

Got rid of it as soon as possible.

No reply to emails from the company. Dealer knew nothing about the product, nor did the importers. No instructions with the guitar.

I've had 100's of guitars. I bought it without properly trying it oiut. Good ideas that weren't properly tested or carried out. I would never buy any of their rubbish again.