Larry Carlton T7 FR

The opinions of the instrument seems to be greatly regarded in a cost/benefit perspective. Which I agree with, it's great value for the money. However, it's not perfect. The reality is that nothing a part from the price tag is fantastic. Honestly a lot of it is kinda so-so - which might be true for a lot of guitars in this price range.

The neck is slim. In the beginning I got pain in my left hand from it, that phase passed, but playability wise it's a lot more thumb moving than what I'm used to. I find it particulary hard to bend the lower strings without gripping around the neck - which is not the case on my other guitars.
The heel of the neckjoint is a pretty distinct. It could probably be a lot worse, but I wouldn't call it good either (I assume it has to do with the neck being so slim)

The finish of the guitar is very glossy, to me it looks like the body ought as well be made of plastic (I don't like it but I consider that very subjective and I won't include that in my rating). If you're used to light guitars, then this will probably feel a bit heavy - not too heavy but not good either.

And if you haven't catched the drift, it will continue like this "not bad enough to be a red flag but I wouldn't call it good"

The fretwork was not good. There's some buzzes which I can't seem to get rid of by adjustment and it's specific to certain frets. The fret rocker indicates some wigglyness in the same spots. I guess for someone picking up their first guitar this would be acceptable (this would be a fantastic choice as a first guitar), but to me this annoys me to the extent that I ordered fret files which I'm very reluctant to use since I'll probably just make it even worse....

The set up of the guitar was pretty bad in my opinion. I get that it's made in Indonesia and shipped across the world to a cold country in northern Europe. But since the intonation was bad once the neck was adjusted I assume it was set up and intonated in factory without having the neck properly set up (I might be incorrect, notice the "assume" in the sentence).

After having struggled a lot with the intonation, which I rarely have to do with my other guitars, I found yet another problem. This is the big one. I couldn't seem to get the intonation correct for the first few frets. Having googled a bit I figured out that the tracks in the nut is too high. This is noticeable while playing since the string doesn't have contact with the first frets. That causes the cowboy chords to be a slight bit out of tune. Again probably not a deal breaker for a first guitar. But if you care about sounding in tune then it absolutely has to be fixed. Meaning I needed to buy some files for that as well. I've never done it before either, and yet again I'm reluctant being forced into fixing stuff that I'm not comfortable doing.

All in all it's kinda ridiculous that you when you buy something new you have to set it up and fix it which often isn't the case while buying something used if it's something that's been cared for. I went by a luthier for pricing for fixing the frets and the nut and they wanted more than what's justifyable for a cheap guitar.

Now I don't have great experience with playing guitars out of the box, I couldn't tell a lot about what standard to expect for different price ranges. But I picked up yet another Sire, the HSS strat which was dirt cheap used. It does have the same issue with the nut being too high, the whammy bar was not properly set up (it was pretty obvious the person I bought it from had not attempted to adjust it). And a part from the the strat also has a sharp edge on the low E-string which causes the strings to break. It also had some rust stains on some frets - which I've seen in other reviews is because the strings that they're delivered with seems prone to rusting which discolors the frets.

Sound wise it's all good for the country/americano stuff I play. Out of the box the pickups were pretty high and it tended to get a bit muddy on full volume, I've lowered the pickups and usually I play with the volume knob about half way which is what I've figured seems like the best option for the sound I want to achive.

But the best part of the guitar is of course the price. It's what justifies a lot of the issues and it probably makes them seem smaller. It wouldn't be surprising if this was listed by a more established brand for a lot more with the issues remaining. If the guitar was 1000 Euros I'd be very dissapointed since I would expect better.

tl;dr
The selling point of the guitar is based on features such as the neck, lockin tuners for a low price. It's executed a bit so-so, the set up is what best reflects the low price with the nut being unacceptable. For a handy person that's used to fixing guitars the issues are far from major and it might be a common quality error for guitar in this price range (as well as for even more expensive guitars), it's still pretty bad. But I guess the price makes it so-so.

My only gripe with it is that its a little neck heavy. Nothing too extreme but i feel like it would be such an easy fix to make the body a little heavier to make it more balanced. Or maybe leave out the locking tuners and replace bc maybe those are heavier than regular tuners and make it neck heavy.

But overall its better quality than Fenders mexican counterparts. I like the satin finish on the back of the neck and the roasted maple looks great and the frets feel smooth and beefy when doing bends.

Gitarre ist 1a verarbeitet. Der Satin Neck macht besonders Spaß. Der Ton gefällt mir sehr gut, aber das ist wohl Geschmackssache. Locking Tuners auch prima.

Ein kleines Manko: der Headstock ist so geformt, dass das Instrument weder in einem Hercules Stand noch in einer String Swing richtig gut hängt, sondern dann auf einem der Tuner aufliegt. Auf Dauer ist das wahrscheinlich nicht optimal, also muss ich mich wohl nach einem anderen Stand umsehen.