Well, having successfully resisted for months (John Bollinger's video notwithstanding), Duhvoodoman's post about having gotten one pushed me over the edge... So I bought one (shipped) from GC, and today I brought it back. It's a cool little guitar in a number of ways but the bottom line was I knew that with other nicer guitars on hand I would never really play it. If I had tried it in person first, I would not have taken it home.

So here's my take, FWIW. First, it is pretty amazing for a $99 guitar - but it is, in fact, a $99 guitar. Reasonably, there's only so much you can do within that price point. One of the reasons that I was interested was the light weight, and it sure is light - the one I had weighed in at 5.5 lbs. As a result, it does feel like a toy when you pick it up (the bright colored models add to that feeling visually). The action was fine, the neck was very good, flat (would need more relief with 10's I'd guess - but it actually felt good with the 9's on it), no buzzing anywhere, and just a hint of fret edges. The nut was cut properly, but the strings were a bit high at the first fret - sanding the nut a bit would have fixed it easily enough. The bridge needed to be adjusted for intonation (which can be done using set screws at both ends of the bridge). The tuners, as mentioned by most everyone, work but are pretty flimsy feeling. The pickups are pretty low output - had to crank the amp up above the usual - but they do sound decent. It really does have it's own sound in all three positions, and in a good way. It would indeed make a nice guitar for a beginner - easy to play, decent sounding, light weight, and not a big investment if the beginner doesn't continue.

So bottom line, that was my problem - it was an OK guitar for short money, but I was never going to get the sound out of it that Bollinger did, and after carrying out the setup fixes, was I really going to play it, or would it sit in the corner? So I wiped off the finger prints, and brought it back to the local GC... That's my story - of course YMMV!