3,968 posts
|
Post by salteedog on May 13, 2018 22:20:49 GMT
Amazingly it's arriving tomorrow. I've never had a faster shipment from Thomann. Usually it takes at least a week.
In any event according to the invoice the guitar has Wilkinson pickups and a rosewood fretboard so that's a positive. Apparently it was imported prior to the CITES rules coming into effect..so it's fairly old stock.
Best case scenario is some simple electrical fault..like a disconnected switch or the like. Worst case scenario is warped neck or broken truss rod.
Will find out tomorrow.
|
|
1,773 posts
|
Post by MartinB on May 13, 2018 22:23:28 GMT
Fingers crossed.
|
|
3,968 posts
|
Post by salteedog on May 14, 2018 22:41:07 GMT
Didn't arrive today. Seems to be stuck in the Irish parcel-post system. Unusual as it's typically sent on a truck first thing in the morning after arriving in the national parcel center. Maybe the rosewood sniffer dogs sounded the alarm?
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on May 15, 2018 6:20:23 GMT
My Compressor should have arrived last Thursday! But Danish post desired to take 2 days off , then came weekend also off and Monday they couldn't work efficiently as most were hangover. Maybe I'll get it today.
|
|
3,968 posts
|
Post by salteedog on May 15, 2018 20:17:07 GMT
So the guitar was waiting for me when I got home this evening.
Firstly, contrary to the description the invoice the guitar is clearly new stock - it is made in Vietnam, has Roswell pickups, has the new HB headstock logo and disappointingly has a roseacre fretboard. (Ugly grey-brown stuff quite unlike rosewood when viewed close up).
So...why is it a deko?
I suspect it is because the pickup rings are on crooked...by a couple of mm on the bridge and perhaps a mm or less on the neck. Not a big deal really but they would drive those with OCD mad...
The only other flaws are a bad scratch near the edge of the 6th fret and a bit of scratchiness on the tone pot (which isn't unusual with cheap pots).
I didn't bother doing a close inspection for tiny black dots in the finish and on the binding. I know some people care about such things but I don't at all. The guitar looks splendid to me apart from the dry roseacre fretboard and the funny looking wood grain on the neck (looks like the neck could be a few parts).
The body appears to be two pieces of mahogany so that's nice.
The frets are nigh on perfect. No rough edges and although one or two could be polished a bit more that will happen naturally with playing. No fret buzz at all - usually its a 50/50 chance with HB guitars that there will be a high fret or two. Nut is perfectly cut.
Set-up out of the box was perfect. Whoever intonated it did a great job. Intonation is great all the way up the fretboard. Action was as low as I usually set it to - just under 2mm at low E.
Furthermore the strings are not rusty!
The Roswell pickups are on the brighter end of the humbucker spectrum. A quite modern tone I think. They have really terrific clarity. They sound particularly good when driven hard but aren't so interesting clean I think (not as interesting as P90s or Tele bridge pups in my opinion). The coil split is okay but a bit meh.
So..presuming no major flaw reveals itself later it was a pretty good deal for €95. Even though it's absolutely not my style of guitar!
|
|
1,773 posts
|
Post by MartinB on May 15, 2018 20:20:01 GMT
Sounds like your deko is better than some full price guitars others have received!
|
|
3,968 posts
|
Post by salteedog on May 15, 2018 21:17:20 GMT
MartinB It pretty good alright. But the crooked pickup rings are pretty noticeable - see photo: Also - I think the coil split pot is a little dodgy -it might be shielding or bad soldering but there's noticeable inteference noise coming through it when it's dialed halfway between 0 and 10. (and not just the expected single coil noise). I'll open up the panel soon and have a look at the wiring. It's something I would need to replace anyway as it's wired incorrectly for my liking.
|
|
1,773 posts
|
Post by MartinB on May 15, 2018 21:32:06 GMT
Ah, they are pretty bad. Still seems more like B stock than a deko to me.
|
|
3,968 posts
|
Post by salteedog on May 16, 2018 12:36:08 GMT
Yup...after further testing and poking around in the control cavity I think the coil split is working as expected...it's just the design of it that isn't great. Also the internal shielding (paint) is good but the routing of the cavity isn't the tidiest.. interestingly the coil-split pot had a QC sticker attached dating the guitar to the 5th of Jan (I think...it was hardly the 1st of May). The sticker had a Vietnamese name on it indicating it was placed there at the factory.
Given that date , it's possible this guitar was a return from a customer who sent it straight back upon seeing the misalignment on the pickups...while the clear-film was still on the pickups and the cavity covers, I suspect anyone who paid €222 for it would have returned it...I know I probably would have at that price.
|
|
|
Post by blindwilly3fingers on May 16, 2018 19:44:18 GMT
Sounds like you got a reasonable buy, well done 😁
|
|
5 posts
|
Post by lilticus65 on May 30, 2018 15:51:43 GMT
Oooo this is making me want to buy the deko big tone white falcon guitar that’s on in left handed for 108 merkel vouchers , there’s loads more poss things to go wrong with a hollow body though..... the grade A ones are not back in stock for 5 weeks , I’ve been all over the net and just about every person who buys a deko guitar seems to get a good deal or at least a playable instrument. . Every one of the 4 harley Benton’s I’ve bought have had some issues and I’ve modded them all to some extent........ dang it’s tempting , I got a big festival gig coming up at worst I could smash it up on stage , I’ve never smashed a guitar as I always hated the idea of such waste
|
|
3,968 posts
|
Post by salteedog on May 30, 2018 16:02:40 GMT
Yes..I'd be nervous of the Hollow Body. Harder to fix wiring etc.
I wonder if Thomann would give you any info about it if you rang them.. that Lefty has been there for a while now and I'm sure they'll be anxious to get rid of it.
And you'll still be protected by change of mind rules if you are in the EU although you will probably be down by €30 or whatever the shipping cost will be if you return it.
I'm convinced that the own real deko-ness of my CST24T is the skewed pickup rings. The under-lying cavities are perfect. The intermittent wiring noise seems to have cleared up after I poked around with the wires (probably a loose wire strand in close contact with another). And the mysterious mismatch between the spec and the bridge pickup..well the pickup sounds great anyway.
|
|
|
Post by simonbedford on May 31, 2018 2:38:50 GMT
i bought a big tone deko and i cant find what the issue is,it plays great stays in tune and the electronics are working as you would expect thats me with it in my pic lol
|
|
5 posts
|
Post by lilticus65 on Jun 1, 2018 14:07:32 GMT
I’m going for it then , can’t see why the hell not too really , I’ll let you know how it goes
|
|
|
Post by Vincent on Jun 1, 2018 15:46:57 GMT
Would it be too much trouble for Thomann to explicity state the faults in the deko advertisements? It is such a leap of faith blindly buying guitars this way. Problem could be anything from a broken string to a broken neck. Maybe guitars with broken necks are discarded into the trash but there is still the risk that the the guitar will never be playable without major surgery. I accept that Thomann are selling these guitars for decoration only but it would be nice to know what the problems are before buying them. lilticus65 Hope it goes well for you!
|
|