The finish on the guitar is a matter of taste. Same goes for the pickguard which is not sanded enough and has some rough edges.

The knobs look nice although they are made of cheap plastic and have some rough edges. The toggle is a bit of a low quality and can shift positions unintentionally easily. The finish on the neck feels satin-like and the neck is comfortable.Īs for hardware, the tuners are solid, the bridge looks good and the guitar intonates nicely. Towards the 12th fret it is more a D shape than a C shape. The neck itself is straight which is good but it is not a C shaped neck. There was also a rattle noise in the body and after shaking it upright, a piece of wood fell out of the f-holes. If I was a beginner and this was my first guitar it would discourage me. I know this is a low cost instrument but if I compare it to a Sire U5 bass I have that costs a bit less and made in Indonesia, it is in a totally different level. In addition, both the strings and the neck were extremely dry. The fret edges are sharp and the frets were not nicely polished. This eliminated both the buzzing and the problem with the 12th fret. Removing the strings and using a string rocker I found that each fret was in a different height (!) and I had to level all frets and recrown them to get to a playable state. My guitar was unplayable out of the box - it had a buzzing D string and the 12th fret on the high E string was muted due to a higher 13th fret. I was surprised since a lot of reviews praised the build quality. Well, first of all, the build quality is poor. If you play with low gains, feedback is not really an issue either. Again, very little noise which is really cool. If you roll off the tone knob completely in both pickups you get a very dull muddy sound, so it's not very usable in this position, but you can dial in some nice tones. To get nice sounds from the bridge pickup you have to roll off the tone knob at least to 7 or 6. In my ears, the neck pickup is the more usable one. I was afraid of the quality of the pickups and although you can get better, they are solid, without much noise and very versatile. Unplugged it gives a round sound with more emphasis on the bass and mids. Sonically it has acoustic qualities from its hollow body and unplugged it is loud, but don't expect an acoustic guitar sound. It is very light and well balanced and in spite the big body, it doesn't feel big due to its weight. The Epiphone Casino is a classic instrument and to get one in this price range is really cool.

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