Price paid: $ 160
Purchased from: rondomusic.com
Features: The SX SEG STD has a neck with 24 jumbo frets and an Ibanez RG shaped body with a flame maple top. The body is a deep wine red color, and for the price, looks very good in my opinion. It has 2 humbuckers, a 3 way selector swtch, and 1 volume and 1 tone knob. The bridge is a LISCENSD Floyd Rose, so it isn't as good as an original, but still stays in tune quite well and is good for a beginner. It came in a plain brown box that had "SX" on it and contained the guitar and 3 allen wrenches. // 9
Sound: I play mostly rock and hardcore/metalcore (Metallica, Nickelback, Bullet for My Vaentine, and Avenged 7x), and this gutar suits this style quite well. It will sound much better through a decent amp, however. The tone and volume knobs are very responsive, and one can get a clean sound even on a distorted amp channel by adjusting the tone. The humbucker pickups give a good metal/rock sound with not too much buzz on distorted and they give a nice, bright sound on clean. Chords, however, do tend to get a bit muddy with distortion. // 8
Action, Fit & Finish: This is where this guitar is lacking. The setup at the factory was, to say the least, horrible. The action was very high out of the box. In fact, after playing my Epiphone Les Paul then going back to the SX, the action feels at least twice as high on the SX than on the Les Paul, and it doesn't end there. Starting at about the 7th or 8th fret on the E, A, and D strings, there is horrible fret buzz. I tried fixing this by adjusting the truss rod and even raising the action even more, but the buzz is still there. It turns out that the neck badly needs to be shimmed. On top of that, the guitar was not in tune out of the box and the Floyd Rose was set up horribly. In the back cavity of the guitar, there was only one spring on one side of the Floyd holding it to the guitar body, causing it to be very lopsided. The only good thing I can say about this guitar is that it stays in tune very well once you get everything set up correctly. // 3
Reliability & Durability: I definately wouldn't use this guitar in a gig without a backup. It might be able to withstand Live playing, but I wouldn't trust it by itself. The hardware does actually seem good for the price. The Floyd Rose seems to be built out of decent enough metal to hold up and the strap buttons seem to be solid. The finish, however is almost as bad as the setup. I am not hard on my guitars and try to transport them carefully, but somehow this guitar already has 2 chips in the body wood and a large scratch on the back. I haven't dropped it at all and haven't hit it on anything hard enough that it should cause the wood to chip, but what do you expect? This is a cheap guitar and it does have a nice finish out of the box. Just be very careful with it. // 8
Impression: This was my first guitar and it was a good guitar to learn on. It fits the style of music I play (rock and hardcore) very well. However, if I knew the setup (mainly the action) was going to be this bad, I would have chose something else. If this guitar was lost or stolen, I probably would buy something else. Although this looks good with the flame maple top and Floyd Rose, the things that really count, such as action and setup, aren't that great. If your a beginner looking for a first guitar, I would recommend saving a little more and buying an Epiphone or an Agile. However, for someone that knows how to setup guitars and is just looking for something with a lot of features to mess around with, this is the one for you. // 6
