Product: USA Custom Guitars Custom Body and Neck
Price Paid: USD 500
Submitted
10/09/2007
at
01:51pm
by
buttmonk
Features
:
10
I ordered a custom body blank and custom neck.
The body is a 2-piece mahogany with 1-piece walnut lam-top. Routed for H-H pups, neck pocket and TOM style bridge with stop-piece. So what this means is that the body is basically just a square block with the routes in the front, I will shape the body according to my own design.
The neck is mahogany with pau-ferro fretboard, custom U contour .86", black side dots only, SS 6150 frets, hockey stick head, OEM Earvana nut slot, 1.6875" at nut, 25.5" scale, 10-16" compound radius fretboard.
I have to give this a 10 since some of these options are not even offered on their site and they still managed to accommodate them.
Sound
:
No Opinion
No comment as yet. I need to build the thing first. Will post update later.
Action, Fit, & Finish
:
10
Of course the guitar is unfinished, but I can say the following. The woods used throughout neck and body are excellent. The pau-ferro fretboard and walnut top are particularly cool. Fretwork looks to be very good, better than my Carvin Bolt+. The neck is sanded so smooth it will probably only need going over with 800 grit before finishing.
The only minor niggle I have is that there is a tiny notch on the side of the fretboard just behind the nut slot where the fretboard tapers down to meet the neck back. This is so small that I will be able to sand it out without affecting the contour noticiably. If this was a finished neck this would likely have been done already and I would be none the wiser.
As said, I have not played the thing yet since it is not yet built so these comments are based on visual inspection only.
Reliability/Durability
:
No Opinion
No comment, nothad it long enough. Appears to be solid enough.
Customer Support
:
10
This is where it is not possible to select a high enough score. I read from other reviews how the customer service from USACG is top notch and this is 1 of the reasons I went with them after considering Warmoth, but I did not think it would be this good. Rob handled my order from start to finish and I have to say that this guy has the patience of a saint:) After about 5000 emails, changing my mind about the spec 99 times, requesting non-standard features, blah blah, I was finally satisfied with the order. And importantly, what I received at the end of this is exactly what I wanted. Ordering a body blank is not I think a standard product they offer but they did it anyway, even if this involved me sending over a body design and Rob having to go and verify that the thing would actually fit in the machine. Also, I wanted a walnut top and normally u need to source exotic woods like this yourself and send to USACG, but the guys had a hunt around the shop and managed to unearth a great piece for me.
Overall Rating
:
10
I was thinking that this was not gunna be another 1 of those gushing reviews that you can't quite believe that it is all that. However, hopefully, yet another 1 of these will help to pesuade that these guys really are that good. With service like this and a quality product, these guys deserver ur business:)
