I'm primarily an electric guitar player so this was my first acoustic. Hence I'm not absolutely qualified to judge it. I have 3 other HB electrics, I'm very happy with them and I have a lot of love for the brand.
The Good
- packaging was good and undamaged.
- The guitar looks really nice in a dark, understated way. This is a budget guitar and in my opinion, the flashier the budget guitar, the cheaper it looks. I paired it with the cheap, leather HB strap, which is also chocolate brown and looks great. The HB logo looks cool and minimalist on the headstock, better than the full name logo. I don't really like the name, but I love the guitars.
- The guitar sounds great to me. Really loud, vibrant and clear. The body vibrates like crazy and really lives.
- The tuners are really nice and this surprised me as it's often a weakness of HB's cheaper guitars. They're solid, chunky and kidney bean shaped, like the Grovers on my Epi SG. They're really smooth and precise, and the guitar is easy to tune. They feel much higher quality than the price.
- the guitar stays in tune really well, much better than my other guitars, which are generally more expensive. I don't know if this is a peculiarity of acoustics vs electrics.
- The nut is bone and perfectly cut. The guitar arrived very clean - no fretboard gunk, over-glue or wood shavings in the cavity. The bridge is also bone and compensated. The guitar intonates near perfectly.
- the Fishman Presys II works well and sounds great through the acoustic channel of my Boss Katana. I'm no expert, but I'm happy with it.
- the supplied strings seem reasonable quality, but I got rid of them immediately as, being an electric guitar pussy, I hated the relatively heavy gauge, but this is a personal thing.
The (not very) Bad if I'm being really picky...
- The fret ends are very crudely finished and not rounded at all. Fortunately there's no fret sprout at all so this doesn't really bother me. They were also quite scratchy so I gave them a polish.
- Frets 3 and 6 are a little high in places, but only noticeable with a fret rocker. There's no perception when playing.
- The action was very high at 3mm+ on the low E at the 12th. There was a QC ticket with the guitar which was very comprehensive and gave the height at 2.5mm. but I didn't believe this. I lowered the bridge which was really no hassle and took some relief out of the neck.
- there is only one strap button on the bottom of the guitar. It's plastic and I think glued in. The guitar is very light so it's not too much of a worry. I installed a metal strap button on the heel of the neck.
- The battery cover despite being branded Fishmann, is very cheap looking and feeling, but it's hidden at least.
The Neutral
- There was slightly excessive neck relief, but again it was no hassle to tighten the truss rod with the tool provided. The truss nut is a bit tucked away so the tool is indispensable.
- I changed the strings for 10s. Apparently this is detrimental to the tone on acoustics, but it still sounds fine to me. Ok, maybe there's some depth and resonance lost, but it still sounds better than my not being able to play the 12s supplied.
In conclusion...
- a great guitar for the price. It needed some setup, which I was ok with, but beginners might prefer to add 50 bucks to the price to get a pro set up.
I'd give it 4.9 out of 5, but this rating system doesn't cater for pedants like me.