Reviewed by:
megadeth01, on november 10, 2009
0 of 0 people found this review helpful
Purchased from: The guitar workshop, uk
Features: Fernandes Monterey Elite made in china. It has a maple neck with 22 jumbo frets, Les Paul style body in gloss ivory coloured finish, with a black trim and tusq man made ivory to enhance harmonic sustain. It has a string- thru body and active Fernandes sustainer system also equipped with a passive Seymour Duncan humbucker in the bridge position. It has a volume and tone control and two sustainer switches, Standard grover tuners in gun metal grey, it also came with a fitted Fernandes hard case. // 10
Sound: Music style wise it would be best suited to a heavy rock/ blues player although I play a more hardcore heavier style of music and I can achieve this style quite successfully with this style, but other guitarists may disagree. I currently use a full Line 6 spider half stack which I run through clean settings so I can use my Boss dd-7 and SD-1 effects pedals. I have a nice clean sound from the guitar with the set-up I'm using. The Seymour Duncan humbucker gave me a heavy rock sound, but the sustainer used while playing through the Seymour Duncan gives me a crackling interference through my amp( this may have been the amp) but the guitar could be adapted for different styles and variety with new pickups or different effects pedals to play more varieties of music. My neck pickup, although a sustainer pickup, when not active I.e. When not using the sustainer, is a fantastic neck pickup, it gives a great tone for shredding and sweeping, when active the sustainer is hard to describe because everyone uses the sustainer differently and there are lots of ways to use the sustainer, but I would recommend trying a guitar with a sustainer system if you haven't already. // 10
Action, Fit & Finish: There were no problems with the guitar when I purchased it, it was set up fine in Standard e tuning and ready to go. // 10
Reliability & Durability: It is a very good guitar to withstand Live playing, and it can cope with bumps and knocks that wouldn't be noticed or effect the finish of the guitar. I don't use a back-up guitar and the Monterey Elite holds it tuning really well, every thing seems solid and long lasting, I would recommend it for gigging. // 10
Impression: In my opinion it's a fantastic guitar, for me personally it suit's my style of music and playing, obviously there are other great guitars out there like Gibson les pauls, ltd eclipses etc which I have played and the Monterey Elite holds up the those standards perfectly, I've always like Fernandes in general, and I have owned a ravelle and a dragonfly I like the playability and tones that Fernandes produced and that's why I chose to get a higher end model, I chose the Monterey Elite in particular because I have always favoured the les Paul shape, I will add that on the Fernandes website, the guitar is shown with Standard fret dots, but mine has razorblade pearl inlayson the neck, which my Ravelle X also had, the guitar on the website also is not available in black, ivory or matt black, they are available in these colour options but through your local Fernandes dealer. I would like to add that I submitted this review once before and it came out wrong, due to predictive text and misreading the categories and spelling issues. I spoke more about what I had done to the guitar rather than the Standard setup, I wil give this guitar 10 on everything, because I can't find fault with it, but I have updated the pickup from the basic setup it came with to a Seymour Duncan blackout, due to my personal preference. // 10
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I'm guessing you tell people you use a TSL as well, I'd like to prove my point lol. 