Well, as I had mentioned in another thread on P-90 pickups, I ordered an SX SST Mahogany with P-90's last week. Well it arrived yesterday safe and sound via UPS, a day early, even (if you can believe that of UPS!).

Apparently, this guitar has become quite popular in a very short period of time, and I can see why. Within two hours of ordering mine, Rondo was out of them...and I had just gotten the e-mail that morning announcing that the guitar was back in stock.

Here's a preliminary review of the guitar. I only had about forty minutes to play with it last night, so my impressions are still somewhat superficial.

As with most internet ordered guitars, you're never quite sure of what you're getting until you open the box. Well, it didn't take very long after opening mine, to realize that I'd gotten a very nice guitar indeed. I've heard of varying levels of quality with the SX line, from a variety of purchasers. Everything from perfectly fit, finished, and set up, to awful in every catagory (although the latter are more the exception than the norm, it seems).

Right out of the box I noticed two things: The mahogany body was a nice, two piece, beautifully grain matched piece of wood. The neck is a pretty straight grained piece of maple with some nice grain structure that is accentuated by the evenly applied vintage amber finish. The fretboard has just a slight flame/figuring to it that looks quite good. The over-all finish on both the body and neck is nearly flawless. After inspecting it for several minutes, I could only find two very slight dimples in the clear finish on the edge of the neck where the tuner buttons are located. The flaws are so minor that they hardly bear mentioning, and I probably wouldn't have, if not for the fact that they were the only flaws I could find anywhere in the finish.

The hardware was another area in which I was more impressed that I expected to be. The tortise shell pickguard is properly cut and fit. It is aligned perfectly with the neck pocket and the bridge, with no gaps where there shouldn't be any. The pots are smooth, the three-way pickup selector switch positive and firm in each setting. The tremolo bridge is of the cheap Asian type with a thin cast metal block and cast saddles as expected, but it was mounted correctly right down to the proper saddle heights to match the radius of the fretboard. Clean and well executed, despite the cheap nature of the part. The P-90 pickups are centered properly beneath the strings and the fit within the pickguard is tight, with no gaps anywhere around them. The tremolo cover on the back side of the body is properly aligned with the tremolo block string holes, and is squared to the body and parallel lines of the neck edges. This is an area where less expensive guitars are often sloppy in their construction. Not so here.

The neck itself is straight with just a slight amount of relief. The fret ends are smooth with no sharp edges anywhere. The action is set up very well, and there is no appreciable fret buzz. The neck itself being maple/maple, has a finish sprayed on both the back and fretboard. In doing so, the frets end up with a slight amount of finish on them that can cause slight string buzz and/or "stickiness" when bending the strings. This is normal even on far more expensive Fender guitars. A minor scraping and fret polishing will alleviate the concern. The nut is made of plastic as expected, and is pretty well cut. There is some slight binding on the G and B strings, but a little 1000gr sandpaper and some nut lube will fix that. Besides, I plan to replace the nut with a Tusq soon anyway, so it's a moot point.

The tuning keys are Fender/Shaller, or Gotoh type knockoffs. They function well, and are smooth enough to facillitate effortless tuning. They're nowhere near as smooth as the Fender/Shaller's, Gotoh's, Sperzels, et al, but they are perfectly functional none-the-less. The string trees are fairly well mounted with the string path to the tuning keys fairly consistent. On my own guitar builds I'm a little anal about this, and I like the string paths to be perfectly uniform. In all honesty though, the string path/tree mountings on this guitar is very much like what you find on most Fenders (better, even than some of the MIM and Indonesian samples I've seen).

The guitar is a pleasure to play. The fretboard radius is 13" +, which allows a fairly low action. There is little I would do to change the string action as set at the factory. The intonation is spot on. The neck width at the nut is 1-5/8" which is just a tad narrow for me, personally. I prefer 1-11/16", but that's really splitting hairs. The neck is perfectly comfortable as is, and not different from other necks of the same width. The neck contour is a modern C type, and is quite comfortable. It's not a thin, flat neck, nor is it like a two-by-four either. The body has a nice resonant sound when played un-amplified which is always a good indicator of what the amplified tone will be.

I plugged the guitar into my Crate Vintage Club 20 after letting it warm up for a good fifteen minutes. Switching between pickup settings was smooth with no noticable popping sounds. The pots are smooth, but there is a slight noise (static-like) in the pots. It was more noticable with the one tone knob than with the one volume. Without even pulling the pickguard, I already know that the pots are the inexpensive small import type that are notorius for being noisy in use. Again, it was expected. SX had to cut somecorners to keep the price down. I bought this guitar with the intention of replacing the inferior parts anyway, but it is still useable as is for one not so inclined.

Now for the sound: The guitar comes stock with two P-90 pickups which are both made with ceramic magnets. I selected the neck pickup, set the guitars tone and volume at 10, and used the amps EQ to adjust the settings. I set the master volume at 1 o'clock, and the gain at 8 o'clock for a clean tone. I then set the treble, mid, and bass controls at 12 o'clock. In this setting, I found the neck pickup to be a bit bass heavy, boomy, and a little muddy. This amp tends to be a little brighter than most I own, so I knew it's either the pickup, or the pot/cap combination, or both that are contributing to this tone. Turning the amps EQ down to 10 o'clock on the mids, 9 o/clock on the bass, and turning the treble up to 2-3 o'clock cleaned the tone up some. The middle setting has a more pleasing tone with a more typical warm, midrangy vibe to it. The bridge pickup in this setting is a bit twangy but not spikey at all.

With the gain turned up to about 12 o'clock, the guitar displays that more snarly P-90 tone that we electric blues and rockers enjoy. On this setting, the bridge pickup seems to have the best tone. By rolling off the tone a bit a nice cutting, edgy, tone can be achieved...but without any ice pick tone. It has a bit of that sterile/fizzy ceramic magnet tone, but not in any extreme. The middle setting is a little flatuent, but not that bad at all, the neck setting still retains its boomy/muddy tone, just more distorted.

In conclusion, I am pleasantly surprised - no, more like shocked - that a guitar that sells for only $109.95 could offer so much. It's going to take a lot more hours of playing this guitar, through a wider variety of amps before I can formulate a more complete opinion of the stock tone. At the price point that this guitar sells for, I knew that the electronics would be a weak link. I wasn't sure what the rest of the build quality would be like, though. Well, to say that I'm surprised and pleased with just about every other aspect of this guitar would be an gross understatement. Not only is this guitar a modders dream, it's perfectly playable for any who just want to plug and play as well.

I just don't know how SX does it....